Sunday 24 May 2015

Taste Of Summer - National Scrapbooking Month 2015

May is a great month because its a whole month of celebrations with a special May only Paper Pack and Stamp set called "Taste of Summer". All month long the Close to My Heart Facebook Page, Instagram and Pinterest accounts are all being bombarded with ideas using the Taste of Summer ideas and you can search using the hashtag #CTMHTOS in all the social media arenas. 


May is NATIONAL SCRAPBOOKING MONTH!!!

To celebrate National Scrapbooking Month I attended a 2 night camp at Swanleigh in the Swan Valley with a group of consultants and a whole bunch of our customers. I had a great weekend and spent a lot of time organising my stamps and papers and labelling EVERYTHING... Yes I think I was the only person who went to scrapbooking camp with my label maker but I felt happier having things all organised. I also made a lot of other ideas for future blog posts.



The taste of summer paper pack I have used in my last blog post (Click here for the link)



After I got organised I completed a lot of ideas that I had not finished. The above picture - was a page that my upline had cut for us at our last consultant training day but I had not got around to finishing it. So camp was the perfect opportunity to complete it for us. This used the orange paper from the using the Taste of Summer Paper Pack. The Orange Stamp from the the Taste of Summer Stamp set. The oranges are Goldrush Exclusive Inks™ Stamp Pad and Sunset Exclusive Inks™ Stamp Pad (some are double stamped to get that lighter shade) and the vines with Topiary Exclusive Inks™ Stamp Pad. 
I'm pretty sure the paper is 12" X 12" Sunset Cardstock and I think the green is 12" X 12" Topiary Cardstock - I'm saying "I think" because I didn't cut out the card it was cut for me. 12" X 12" White Daisy Cardstock was cut to go on top. 




This is one of my cards I made using the Taste of Summer Paper Pack. With the Taste of Summer Stamp set. How cute is that strawberry. I used the Hollyhock Exclusive Inks™ Stamp Pad for the strawberries with Topiary Exclusive Inks™ Stamp Pad for the leaves and sentiment. I cut the Silver Shimmer Trim in half on my SureCut™ Deluxe Craft Paper Trimmer using Washi tape to secure it. I used the heart cut with the Cricut® Artiste Collection and 12" X 12" Pixie Cardstock.

It is great value for a paper pack for only $12.95. Go to my website to order your pack and you can get it delivered directly to your door.








Friday 1 May 2015

Just Sayin’ – May 2015 Stamp of the Month Australiasian Blog Hop





Hello and welcome to our Stamp of the Month Australasian Close to My Heart Blog Hop. We have all been creating with "Just Sayin' – May 2015 Stamp of the Month" Stamp set. If you have arrived here from  Jenny Gilbert The Creative Heart  then you are in the right place. If you landed here another way, please join in by following the link at the end of this post. Follow the links, check out all the amazing ideas and eventually you'll come right back to where you started.


Today I would like to share with you my Page which features the Just Sayin' – May 2015 Stamp of the Month available exclusively throughout May for $27 or for just $5 when you spend $75. This is an awesome Stamp set for enhancing your scrapbook pages.



Close to my Heart are so good to release the Just Sayin' set especially for National Scrapbooking Month, its perfect! When I looked at this set I knew I had to make a page for this special month. I decided to use the special National Scrapbooking Month paper pack Taste of Summer Paper Packet which is available this month only. See your consultant or my website for more information about the Taste of Summer Paper Packet and the Taste of Summer Stamp Set which are limited edition for May only (like a bonus Stamp of the Month). 


So the first thing I did when I decided to make a page was to look for inspiration from our Ideas book Reflections™ Scrapbook Program (soft cover). I found a page I really liked called Front and Centre Trio on page 70. 

From Reflections Scrapbook Program pg 70.

Firstly I set out all the matching papers and inks. I picked my favourite two papers. The pink and purple. The geometric shapes on the paper really suit this Just Sayin' – May 2015 Stamp of the Month.

 
 I started out thinking I would make some random stamping paper using the Just Sayin' – May 2015 Stamp of the Month in place of the bubbles in the example page. I had seen another consultant in our team using this stamp set in a similar way, so I set to work stamping on my
12" X 12" White Daisy Cardstock. I arranged the three geometric shapes onto my 3" X 3" My Acrylix® Block and stamped them in a random way by rotating each time I stamped.


After completing my random stamped paper with Hollyhock Exclusive Inks™ Stamp Pad I decided it was too busy and too dark. If I had more time I would have done second generation stamping or used a lighter coloured ink like Cotton Candy or Pixie for my random stamping so it was more a lighter background but I had finished the page I didn't want to waste it.


I cut the purple piece at 6 inches x 12 inches and laid it over my white background paper. I then cut three 5 inches x 3.5 inches in the pink from the Taste of Summer Paper Packet.

I wasn't 100% happy with this so after going away for 24 hours I came back to the page and decided if I used the random stamping paper for the title then it wouldn't be as busy, so I took a section of the stamping and made my title with it. Using Handwritten Print Acrylic stamps. I did "DREAM" first and then added "WORLD" afterwards because the R and the D were in both words. To get my title straight I lined up the Handwritten Print letters using the front of my Versamat™ .



When I framed the title on the completed page, I used the Zip Strip - which is the half inch off the top of the 12x12 purple paper from the Taste of Summer Paper Packet.
Note: All these papers have zip strips and all our Background and Texture (or B&T) paper has a Zip Strip.


I stamped all the titles using Black Exclusive Inks™ Stamp Pad and then fussy cut them out with my Non-stick Micro-tip Scissors.

I grabbed three photos from my stash of 3x4 photos from our holiday to the Gold Coast last year that I had printed with Studio J. They fitted perfectly with a break at the bottom for the Date stamp. We went to Dreamworld on 3 seperate days while we were on the Gold Coast so I wanted this page to represent that. I haven't written the exact dates in yet because I have to check my camera settings to work out which date which photos were taken. I picked a title bar/arrow that seemed most appropriate for each photo and stuck it above using 3L® E-Z Dots® Adhesive.


Remember this great stamp set Just Sayin' – May 2015 Stamp of the Month is only available throughout National Scrapbooking Month of May from your Close to My Heart Consultant
Thanks so much for dropping by to check out my latest page, I hope you get to make a page this month too. I'm really interested to hear what you think about it, so I'd love you to leave a comment before heading off to the next stop on our Australasian Blog Hop which is  Designs by Marguerite or head back to the begining of the blog hop at Shaunna Richards Passionate About Pages.

  Come back to see me again soon.