Family is Forever S1409 : CTMH Stamp of the Month Australasian Blog Hop

Hello and welcome aboard our Stamp of the month Australasian Close to My Heart Blog Hop. If you have arrived here from Jo Armstrong's Blog, Jo's CTMH Craftroom then you are in the right place. If you landed here by accident, no problem, please join in by following the link at the end of this post. This is my very first Blog Hop, so I am very excited. I hope you like it.

Today I would like to share with you the Page and Card I've made which features the September Stamp of the Month - Family is Forever set which is available exclusively throughout September for $27 or for just $5 when you spend $75.

The main thing I wanted to share was that I have used two ink colours to create my more realistic looking tree. I used Chocolate to create the tree trunk and New England Ivy to create the leaves. Black was the other colour I used on the sentiment and hearts at the top of the page. To get the two-coloured stamping look I used a bit of the Rock & Roll Technique (click here to view a Close to My Heart YouTube Clip on the technique) and put the Chocolate on first and then the New England Ivy around the edges for the leaves. To get into the middle of the tree, I used the corner of the stamp pad, so make sure you have baby wipes handy to clean up any excess ink on your pad edges or acrylic blocks, if you are going to try this technique at home.

FYI: The page is sitting on my Versamat™ in this photo so that is the black edging around the page, it gave it a bit of distinction from my wooden table. I love my Versamat, I use it for every single thing I stamp (upside-down on the foam side) and to line up my paper on my page (on the grid side). 

The page design was inspired by the Reflections™ Scrapbook Program Basic Title Topper section. The loveheart shape was cut using scissors this time but next time I will cut it out using the Cricut® Artiste Collection because its a neater finish but if you don't have a cricut you can still use this lovely heart by hand-cutting or "fussy cutting" as we like to call it. I used some 3-D Foam Tape to give the heart some dimension.

I am totally in love with the 12" X 12" Kraft Cardstock and have been using it for matting everything at the moment! The Kraft Cardstock really goes well with the natural look of the Chocolate and New England Ivy ink. The background texture paper I used is the embossed Sweet Leaf paper that comes from the NEW Paper Fundamentals Whimsy Assortment. I love that it is subtle yet creates texture and dimension on the page.

The cute little red lovehearts go so great with this Stamp of the Month because there are already so many hearts that match with it in this Stamp set. They are the NEW Red Enamel Hearts I think they are really sweet.

The card is the same technique using a different sentiment and I added extra Red Enamel Hearts and shimmer trim (all cards need Shimmer Trim or lots of Bling, in my humble opinon!!). This was a quick little card to put together using the 5 1/2" X 4 1/4" White Cards & Envelopes.

 

 
Septembers Stamp of the Month - Family is Forever is only available until 30th September from your CTMH consultant. I'd love you to leave a comment before heading off to the next stop on the Blog Hop, which is Georgia O'Shea's Blog.