Hearts and Glitter

I think I could keep making cards with hearts all the rest of the year, not just in February! There are so many reasons to share some love! I cut out the kraft, pink, and red hearts along with the title using the Cricut. Somehow I really like the look of kraft cardstock with glittery papers.

 The gold foil rose outlines and diagonal stripes in the background are from last year's CTMH Live Beautifully paper. The paper for the pink heart is from the long-retired Sweetheart paper pack.

May you be blessed as you share your cards and your love with others!

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

a2z Scrapbooking February Challenge - Red and/or Pink
Crafty Gals Corner #159 - add a heart
Die Cut Divas February Challenge - Love is in the air
Heart 2 Heart -  True Love
That's Crafty - I Heart You challenge
Stamps and Fun = Creativity Challenge #318 - glitter

Live Beautifully Wedding Card

Tomorrow the daughter of one of my scrapbook friends is graduating from college with a teaching degree and in two weeks she's getting married. I've often wondered why June has traditionally been a month for weddings. Maybe it's tied to the timing of graduations. I'm just thrilled for her daughter because she already has a teaching job in a big district in our metropolitan area, not an easy achievement. Both of her parents were teachers, so I'm also glad, as a retired teacher, to see a young person continue with teaching. (My own children saw how much I worked and knew they'd never want to be teachers.)

So with wedding bells ringing, I just had to share a wedding card:

The papers and the gold embossed rose and leaves stamps are part of the Live Beautifully special for May since this is National Scrapbook Month. I watched a youtube tutorial from Really Reasonable Ribbon for making bows with ribbon printed on one side. I was thrilled that all the hearts ended up facing the right direction.

The inside verse is decorated with a zip strip from the gold outlined flowers paper. That verse is one of Papertrey Ink's Tucked In stamp sets.

Thank you for visiting! May God bless your crafting and the recipients of your crafting!

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

4 Crafty Chicks Challenge #351 - Wedding
Craft for the Craic May Challenge - anything goes
Making Memories Crafting Challenge #5 - May-anything goes
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - a bit of Sparkle
Simply Papercraft Challenge 46 - anything goes
Unicorn Challenge #21 - Special occasions
Word Art Wednesday #282-283 -  anything family friendly


5" x 6.5" Wedding Card Recipe (all CTMH except the inside verse):
Paper - Live Beautifully paper pack, Gold Glitter Paper, White Daisy Cardstock for stamping
Stamps - Live Beautifully, PTI Tucked In Wedding
Ink - Versamark for rose, Memento Tuxedo Black
Tools - "love" Thin Cuts die, Ranger Princess Gold Embossing Powder, Zutter Bow-it-All, Scallop border punch, heat tool
Embellishments - Uptown Ribbon Pack, Gold Glitter Gems

Live Beautifully Tri-Shutter Card

I happened to catch Joy Tracey's tutorial last week to make this card. You can find it on her blog post at Obsessed with Scrapbooking. What I loved about this post was her Cricut cutfile for a tri-shutter card. It made this card quick and easy to make! I plan to use it a lot. I used the same papers she did for my friend's birthday card, but I decorated it differently. I stamped the rose with Cotton Candy ink, then sponged some pomegranate ink near the edges and restamped. I used Copic markers to shade each petal because I wanted more depth to the design. My coloring isn't perfect, but I like the depth it added.

I had already handwritten a personal message to my friend above the stamped sentiment inside before photographing this card, so I didn't take a close-up photo of that. I stamped a verse from Our Daily Bread Designs: "May you enjoy God's awesome blessings on your birthday!"

Thanks for visiting! May God bless you as you bless others with your creations!

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

Addicted to Stamps and More Challenge #242 - Make Your Mark (used Copics on top of ink)
Allsorts Challenge #415 - Roses
Cards und More Challenge #184 - Cards for women
Creative With Stamps #14 - Flowers
Dream Valley Challenge #156 - things with wings

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Sparkle (I used black sparkles)

5.5" x 3.75" card recipe (all materials CTMH unless indicated otherwise):
Paper - CTMH Live Beautifully patterned paper, Pomegranate and White Daisy cardstock,
Stamp - Live Beautifully (flower and leaves), ODBD All Occasion Sentiments
Inks - Cotton Candy, Pomegranate, Ponderosa Pine; Memento Tuxedo Black
Markers - Copics R83 and R89
Embellishments - White and Gold Ribbon, (Retired: Just Blooms flutter butterflies, black sparkles, black sparkle flourish)
Tools - Cricut Design Space and Joy Tracey's cut file listed above

Live Beautifully Card with Atlantic Hearts Sketch

May is National Scrapbooking Month and Close To My Heart has a special paper pack, Live Beautifully,  to help us celebrate. You can see all the papers, a coordinating stamp set, and a Cut Above Layout Kit that makes five double page layouts. The flowers remind me of old English roses, my favorites!

When I looked at the Atlantic Hearts sketch today I suddenly saw  this card in the making. I hadn't yet used the back side of the pink roses, the white roses on light green. When I saw the roses were lined up and could be cut in a strip, I thought it would be the perfect element for the horizontal strip across the middle. I also thought the gold dotted overlay would work well to dress up  the green ombre paper. Here's the result:

 I enhanced the card with gold four ways: gold dot overlay, gold glitter gems, gold embossed sentiment, and white and gold fiber. The sentiment is part of the Sending Smiles (Cricut Bundle) stamp set.  The back of the green ombre paper is a pink ombre which I used for the center panel mounted on the black dotted mat, all from the Live Beautifully paper pack.

I fussy cut and popped up the pink roses, then I decided to cut out matching rose clusters to pop up over the ones on the green background. For more card ideas for Live Beautifully, you can see the one I posted last week here or follow the link of the label at the bottom of the post.

Thank you for visiting!

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

A Gem of a Challenge #193 - embossing (used heat embossed sentiment)
Always Fun Challenge #4 - Flowers
Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge #210
Make My Monday Challenge #45 - May Flowers
Shopping Our Stash Challenge #301 - Back to Basics: ditch the dies and fussy cut something
The Crazy Challenge #247 - Leafy Green , include leaves

Mojo Monday Live Beautifully Mother's Day Card

I have been blessed to have a wonderful mother-in-law, Virginia! She's 92 years old now, but still has the loving, gracious personality she's had all these years. She was a teacher like me and always encouraged me.  On Virginia's birthday last month, I presented her two large scrapbooks that celebrated her life.  I've done this each year since her 90th birthday. I always have more layouts to add each year. She never seems to tire of the layouts, photos, and stories.  Her delight and comments make all this scrapbooking worthwhile.

With National Scrapbook Month coming May 1st, I thought I'd use the amazing paper pack and stamp set that CTMH has as a special treat for us in May.  The floral and gold foiled papers are elegant and perfect for Mother's Day. So was the sketch at Mojo Monday this week.

I wanted the beautiful papers in the background to show the most possible so I made the middle layer gold dotted vellum from the All  About Gold Fundamentals paper pack. I edged it with the gold shimmer brush but the lighting didn't show it very well.  The sentiment panel is backed with gold glitter paper. It was stamped with a sentiment from the CTMH retired "For Family." I had spent time practicing making bows thanks to Bonnie Darby's tutorial video's. on Really Reasonable Ribbon's blog! I used an old black organdy Ribbon Round to make this double layer double bow.

The rose was stamped first with Thistle ink then with Cotton Candy. I had tried several combinations to get colors that matched the paper and this one was the best. I used the Gold Shimmer Brush on the center of the rose. I added three gold glitter gems to complete the gold embellishments.

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

CCEE Stampers #1717 - floral image for National Garden Month
Crafty Cardmakers #187 - pearls and/or gems
Fussy and Fancy #186 - anything goes
Mojo Monday #494 - sketch
Really Reasonable Ribbon #162 - Put a bow on it
The Ribbon Girls April Challenge - use any image with ribbon