New Idea Book - Check it out!

The Spring Summer Idea book is now live, check out the great new products! 

Let me know if you'd like your own paper copy of the Idea Book, in the meantime you can check out the Idea Book online here at my shopping site.

Shrinking fabric handmade flower embelishements

This card was inspired by one of the cards in the new CTMH Idea Book.

The flower embelishment is made with some fabric scraps that I had from dresses made for my daughter when she was little. 

- Starting with rough circles cut from the fabric a little larger than what you want the end product to be.

- Use a small dowel or pencil, something that will not melt, to hold the centre of the cirle down, and quickly "hit" it with heat from an embossing gun. Play a little with it, each type of fabric can handle a different amount of heat.  It's really cool to see out the fabric shrinks up and puckers...

- Then simply stack a bunch together and sew a button on top.  I used a little piece of cardstock on the back to sew through so that I had something to glue down to the card.

Here's a picture of a pile of "shrunk" circles.  Don't they look just like a bunch of flower petals?



TeaBag Folding

I wanted to add a little something extra to this card and decided to try tea bag folding.  It's actually alot of fun to play with and creates a great outcome that looks really good on cards.  I found the directions online, if you google "teabag folding" you will get 100's of sites popping up.  I found this one had great instructions, here is the link to the instructions for this card. 

The medalian is made with 2" squares of paper.  I made the paper also, I used plain printer paper and coloured it using a spritzer pen from CTMH.  The mix in the spritzer pen was made with 6 drops of chocolate reinker, a blob of CTMH Create-a-Shade pearl paints and then filled up with water.  It takes a bit of shaking to get the pearl paints all mixed in, but it's a great look when complete and well worth the time spent shaking :-)

Clean and simple - Love the new For Always paper from CTMH!

Two options for the same card, one a valentines card and one a birthday card.  The valentines card could also be a happy anniversary card easily.

Measurements and recipe:
 - Card base - 5" x 9" piece of white cardstock scored at 5"
 - 1.5" x 5" piece of CTMH For Always cardstock, this is adhered on the edge of the 5x5 back  of the card base so it's visable from the front when card is closed.
 - The sentiment is mounted on a 1.5" x 3.25" of Whisper cardstock and it is stamped with Ruby ink on a 1.25" x 3" piece of white cardstock
 - The background for the images are a 2.75" x 2.75" square piece of Whisper cardstock with a 2.5" x 2.5" square piece of For Always patterned cardstock on top.
 - The flowers/hearts are from CTMH stamp sets and they are stamped in Ruby and Cotton Candy ink.
 - The little bit of bling is a CTMH round sparkle

I love the new For Always paper, especially paired with a pop of the beautiful rich Ruby ink.

Lighthouse Card - Edge Distressing

It's always hard to find a card for guys, it always seems easier to make a flowery pretty card :-)

This is the masculine Birthday card that I designed for my card class.   

Measurements and instructions:
 - Using a 8.5" x 5.5" craft cardstock, score at 2 1/8" from both sides to make a 5.5 x 4.25 card opening in the centre
 - Patterned paper in back is two pieces of cardstock from the retired CTMH Sonoma 2" x 5.25" each
 - The Colonial White cardstock base for the stamp is 3.25" x 3.75"
 - The matte for the image is Olive cardstock at 3.5" x 4"
 - The patterned strip along the bottom is the zip strip from the CTMH patterned paper that is the background paper.  It is two pieces both 1/2" x 2 1/8"
 - Stamp the image in Chocolate ink on the Colonial White cardstock
 - Using the CTMH edge distressor tool (such an awesome tool!) distress the edges of the colonial white and olive cardstock as well as the patterned zip strips.
 - Attach all pieces to the card base.