Sunday, February 9, 2020

February 2020 - Joyful Stars Blog Hop and Birthday Promise!

Posted on by Joyce Gough

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Welcome back to the Joyful Stars Blog Hop! I'm sure Krista's blog had you in awe, so thank you for continuing on to join me here!  At the start of the year, I admit I started feeling overwhelmed - overwhelmed with responsibilities, overwhelmed with lack of time, and overwhelmed with stuff, namely crafting supplies.  In evaluating some things, I've realized that one of the conclusions I've come to is that I'm just not sending out as many birthday cards as I should be and want to be, especially considering I have all these supplies!  So in addition to enacting some other changes, I got myself organized and have started making birthday cards for the upcoming calendar year.  Therefore, for this month's blog hop, I am featuring a few birthday cards I have made so far.  It turns out some of the stamps I have featured are currently on sale for Stamptacular!



This first card was made in January for my brother-in-law's birthday.  He is a HUGE Washington National's fan, so I felt compelled to make him a baseball-themed card, especially since the Nats won the World Series!  The longest part of the process was stamping and die cutting the baseballs from the Paper Pal Pets set (yes, it has a baseball!).  I also diecut some chipboard and glued each of the stamped baseballs to the chipboard pieces to give the baseballs a little dimension so they would not flip over in the shaker window.


Baseball Birthday Card recipe:

 
This second card was made for my youngest sister's birthday (Mom, if you're reading this, do not show it to her!).  She is immensely fond of dragonflies, so this new dragonfly stamp was just perfect for her card.  Purple is also her favorite color, so I used the retired CTMH Pansy Purple card stock and ink to also use up some of my retired stash.  😉  The dragonfly was colored using the Pansy Purple ink and a water brush.  There is a lot of embossing as well since she definitely likes the shiny and glittery things!


Dragonfly Birthday Card recipe:

 

Since I was on a roll in January and there are a number of March birthdays, including a birthday for a male member of my extended family, I continued on by making a number of these birthday cards featuring the bee.  I remembered we have a hexagon pattern in our CTMH Cricut Artbooking cartridge that I thought would make a great background for the bee.  I used this pattern to cut a 6"x6" stencil out of the Stencil Sheets and blended out Canary ink using this stencil on the card.  The bee was also colored with Canary and Mink ink and a water brush.  After adhering to the card, I finished it with a Clear Shimmer Brush.


Bee Birthday Card recipe:
I have not done much in February, so need to rectify that!  Please move on to the next stop on the hop to see the art of Lori Meadows!

Thursday, January 9, 2020

January 2020 - Joyful Stars Blog Hop!

Posted on by Joyce Gough

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Happy New Year!  Welcome to the January 2020 Joyful Stars Blog Hop!  If you came here from the uber talented Krista's blog, you've come to the right place!

This month I'm featuring some things from our new January/February 2020 Idea Book.  And maybe it's because it's a new year, but I'm also feeling a bit overwhelmed with my continued accumulation of crafty items.  So I decided to make use of some things I've had for awhile in addition to using up some leftovers from the holidays.

The new Spruced Up collection in the Idea Book speaks so loudly to me that I had to be sure to make something with this collection first.  The paper is simply gorgeous and the stamp sets beautifully wintry!  And oh my, the birds!  I have always had a soft spot for birds.



The card base of this card was made using an old Cricut cartridge I've had for many years, Cindy Loo (still available from Cricut by searching from my link), for which I used Bluebird cardstock and the wood grain paper of the Spruced Up paper packet.  The bird was stamped from the Spruced Up - Cardmaking stamp set using Charcoal ink onto White Daisy cardstock and colored with colored pencils, then it was cut out using the matching thin cut from the set.  The "Thank You" sentiment was stamped from the same set onto a scrap of Charcoal cardstock using VersaMark ink and embossed with Ranger White Super Fine embossing powder.  I also cut an additional "hole" for the birdhouse base using another scrap of Charcoal cardstock.  Both the sentiment and bird image were attached to the birdhouse base using 3-D Foam Tape.  Finally, I embellished the card using a single Bitty Sparkle for the bird's eye and used up some leftover white enamel dots from my Christmas cards from a pack of Black & White Dots.

Now please hop on over to Lori's blog to see the beautiful art she has made this month!


Monday, December 9, 2019

December 2019 - Joyful Stars Blog Hop!

Posted on by Joyce Gough

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Welcome to the December 2019 Joyful Stars Blog Hop!  If you came here from the talented Nancy's blog, you've come to the right place!

This month I've made two contrasting Christmas cards - one whimsical and one traditional.  When I send Christmas cards I usually have a style in mind for the recipients and one size usually doesn't fit all.  😉  So I like to have a choice of two cards and make them in bulk.  Recently CTMH created two stamp sets that were right up my alley in philosophy.  Although these two special stamp sets are no longer available, I still wanted to share some ideas for those of you who may have one or both of these sets, or are just looking for ideas.


This first card is my whimsical card using the Whimsical Holiday stamp set and was so much fun to make.  I just loved the cute Santa face and knew it was the first stamp in the set that I was going to make use of.  I also kept with traditional red and green colors but grounded the main image in black to make it pop.  Here is the recipe for this card:



The second card took a little more time as my traditional card.  I've been playing with various watercolor mediums (Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers and Strathmore Bristol Smooth cardstock), so wanted to watercolor the poinsettia stamp in the Traditional Holiday stamp set.  I also used the masking technique to get overlapping poinsettias on the card.  Here is the recipe for the additional CTMH materials:

Thank you for looking!  Now please head over to the very talented Krista's blog where beautiful things await!

Saturday, November 9, 2019

November 2019 - Joyful Stars Blog Hop!

Posted on by Joyce Gough

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Welcome to the November 2019 Joyful Stars Blog Hop!  If you came here from the talented Nancy's blog, you've come to the right place!

A few weeks ago I posted a couple of Christmas cards I made using the CTMH Custom Ornament Thin Cuts that I thought would be easy to replicate in bulk (link here).  With that same goal in mind, I created three different variations of a holiday card using the Cricut, some thin cuts, and a retired embossing folder.


Card 1 Recipe:


Card 2 Recipe:

Card 3 Recipe:
Do you like one over any of the other two?  Again, all can be done pretty easily in bulk, and certainly using an assembly process.  Now please head over to the uber talented Krista's blog where beautiful things await!


Sunday, October 20, 2019

October 2019 - Ornament Cards

Posted on by Joyce Gough

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Although I'm not close to thinking about Christmas, it's time to look at the beautiful new things from Close To My Heart that are available for this year's Christmas cards.  Have you seen the new Custom Ornament Thin Cuts from CTMH?  I was so excited to get these in the mail and start playing with them.  So after being inspired by a post from Lisa Tilson, I decided to try that technique with these dies and our two new paper packs, Holly Jolly and Cedar & Pine.  Both are beautiful, whether you like a traditional look and colors, or go in a completely different direction.  Please let me know what you think and if you have a preference!


Recipe:

Recipe:

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

October 2019 - Joyful Stars Blog Hop!

Posted on by Joyce Gough

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Welcome to the October 2019 Joyful Stars Blog Hop!  If you came here from the talented Lori's blog, you've come to the right place!

This month I wanted to focus on "old" meets "new".  If you're anything like me, I suspect you have scraps in your craft rooms that are not the most current but are still beautiful.  Taking care of our environment is important to me, so I don't like to dispose of things that are usable if at all possible.  So when I vended at a local crop this weekend, I created a card buffet that not only used some of our latest products from CTMH, but took advantage of scraps of retired patterned paper, which I will list below each card, where applicable.

Now please head over to Betty's blog to see what beautiful creation she has in store for you this month!


 

Monday, September 9, 2019

September 2019 - Joyful Stars Blog Hop!

Posted on by Joyce Gough

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Welcome to the September 2019 Joyful Stars Blog Hop!  If you came here from the very talented Lori's blog, you've come to the right place!

September connotes the end of Summer and back to school.  For Close To My Heart followers, it also brings new goodies to play with!  If you haven't already checked out our new products, be sure to click on the link to my website to see the fun new things that may strike your fancy!

For this month, I decided to play with a couple of new stamp sets that were calling my name:  Every Little Thing-Scrapbooking and the September Stamp of the Month, Random Act of Cardness.  It has also been awhile since I played with Kraft paper and colored pencils, so these two stamp sets helped fulfill the urge to use those items.


First I stamped the large floral image from the Every Little Thing-Scrapbooking stamp set in VersaMark ink and embossed it in Ranger White Super Fine Detail embossing powder onto Kraft cardstock.  Using a white colored pencil, I added some highlights to the flowers and leaves.  Then I used a couple of pencils in complementary shades of red and greens to do the bulk of the coloring, being sure to color over the white pencil.  Next I used a white gel pen to fill in some of the stark areas around the floral image.

To finish the card, I used Black Archival ink to stamp the "sending a smile" sentiment from the Random Act of Cardness stamp set.  The stamped piece was then layered on the bottom right of a piece of Candy Apple cardstock, which was also then layered similarly onto a white cardbase.  A few Clear Sparkles seemed to be the right touch to finish the card.

Now please head over to Betty's blog to see what beautiful creation she has in store for you this month!


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