Whatever Wednesday, Who is Awesome?

I love this. I would take a strip and carry it with me all day.
from happyplace.com

How about you? Are you awesome? Leave a comment and declare to the world: I am awesome.

Just a Little Card

In with the new, use up the old.

I needed some thank you cards for my online customers, and decided to use the new Unscripted stamp set with the discontinued paper pack, Grace.

Looks pretty good!



A bit of bling is always a good thing. Here, I’ve embossed the stamp in gold, then added a dab of bronze Glitz glitter gel. Even wildflowers can be flashy.

Website trouble means more free stamps for you!

With just three days left to get four stamp sets for just $5, you still have time to get in on a fabulous deal! See the special here, or just scroll down.

UPDATE (8/29): The website shopping cart is now operational. Hooray! As a thank you to my customers, I'm continuing my special below. All orders placed on my website today will receive the mini stamp set for free. No minimum purchase required.

The shopping side of my Close to My Heart website seems to be having a problem today, and I'm hoping that the issue will be resolved Monday when the CTMH tech gurus can take a look at it. If you'd like to place your order today, just contact me by email and we'll just by-pass the shopping cart that seems to be having so much trouble at the moment. You can view the catalog here.

As a special thank you, anyone who emails places an order Sunday or Monday, (Aug. 28-29) will receive a free mini-stamp set, Lovable. This set is only available through your Close to My Heart consultant (that's me!), and cannot be purchased in the catalog. You'll receive it for FREE just by placing your order Sunday or Monday. Shop my website now.

New Autumn/Winter CTMH Idea Book

I spend a lot of time on the computer looking at things. Blogs, bulletin boards, websites… there’s lots of inspiration out there!

But there’s just something about the printed page that speaks to me. I like flipping pages and turning down corners. I like to flag ideas with post-its, and write in the margins.

Want a copy of the latest Close to My Heart Idea Book? You can mark it up and turn down corners to your heart’s content. You know you want to.

The Idea Book is just $5 for shipping anywhere in the USA, with a $5 rebate on your first order. So you end up with a free book. Yay for free!  Click on the idea book picture on the sidebar, or click here.

Roxy Scrapbook Layout

The Roxie paper pack is so hip, cool and fabulous. Like that ultra-fashionable friend who effortlessly combines a vintage embroidered cardigan with a pair of cuffed jeans and killer heels, Roxie is all about style. Mixed and matched to perfection!

This layout is my version of the Roxie Workshop on the Go, which includes all the stamps, paper, embellishments and instructions to create this layout, a second layout and you can create a bonus project with just a few additional items.

Take-away Tip: With the new double-sided cardstock weight B&T patterns, it was so easy to customize the layout for my own look. I love a busy look with lots of mixed patterns on my layout, so I flipped over the linen-printed B&T and used the swirled, flower-printed side. This gave me those lovely patterns I adore, but I needed to change the journaling and title areas, the pattern wouldn’t have let me journal right onto the cardstock and still be readable.

The title was easy, just make it a bigger, bolder title with black embossed chipboard letters. For the journaling, I added a colonial white cardstock strip with computer text.

Whether you are working with a Workshop on the Go kit, or a page from your scrapbooking class, adapting your layouts to suit your tastes and your photos is the key to working with pre-designed layouts.

You can find the Workshop on the Go kits for just $$29.95 on my website.

Noon to Noon Sale at Lindy’s Stamp Gang

24 hour sale on all Lindy’s Stamp Gang Products!

Get 20% off EVERYTHING in the store

Coupon code: 24hoursale

Sale ends on Monday, 8/22 at noon

Shop Now

4 Stamp Sets for $5!

During the month of August, you can get a screamin’ good deal with Close to My Heart. Plus, I’ll tell you how to get your own Close to My Heart idea book/catalog in your hands for FREE!

There are several ways to save, so it’s your choice….

Get 2 for $5

Spend $50 on my website, you’ll qualify to purchase the Stamp of the Month, Wicked, for $5.


When you purchase Wicked, you’ll receive the stamp set A Typeface (below), for FREE!

click to view larger

Get 4 for $5

Here’s where it gets good. There’s a window of opportunity in these last few weeks of August. See, National Stamping Month is coming in September, but Close to My Heart is starting the party early!

Right now, you can qualify for the special above, AND the special below!

It’s simple! Spend $75 to receive the exclusive double stamp set Pair-a-Phrase for FREE. You save $35.90!

Click to view larger

The stamp set above is available until September 30, but to get the best value, order in August to take advantage of both specials.

To get 4 stamp sets for $5……order a minimum of $70, purchase Wicked for $5 and you’ll receive A Typeface and the double D-sized stamp sets Pair-a-Phrase for FREE! You save $60.80!

(Shipping and tax charges apply on free/discounted items)

Don’t want to Wicked stamp set and free A Typeface? You can still earn the Pair-a-Phrase set for free with a minimum $75 order.

View the Close to My Heart catalog online here. To purchase your own catalog/idea book for $5, and receive a $5 rebate, see below.

 Shop my website now!

Placing an order of $150 or more? Receive $25 or more in free products with your order. Contact me before placing order for details.

Get your own copy!

Order the Close to My Heart fall/winter Idea book for just $5 and receive a $5 rebate on your first purchase of $25 or more on my website.


Idea books sent anywhere in the USA by Priority shipping. $5 price does not apply to international customers.

You do not need a paypal account to purchase. After clicking the Buy Now button above, select the “Don’t have a Paypal Account?”  on the lower right side of the screen, you will then be prompted to pay with your credit or debit card.

Make a Wish Album, page five

Today is the final day, it’s time to share the details of the last page on my Make A Wish Album!

If you haven’t seen the video, it’s a must watch to really appreciate the album “in action”. Watch it here.

These follow-up posts are for those die hard detail lovers who want to see things up close and personal. I’m talking about you, Miss how-did-you-make-that?

Before I get started on the last page, here’s a few pics you might enjoy. I snapped these photo of the pop-up castle in progress, when it was just beginning to take shape.

First sketch, with a more fortress-like castle. Meh… too predictable. I went to bed after this sketch and woke up with the idea to make the castle more curved, with a smaller base to appear like it was sprouting out of the page, and a different angle of pop-out so it would lean back, away from the reader.

Much better. I’m so tidy – like my workspace?

Alrighty, let’s move onto page five, shall we?

Lots of handmade flowers here. I particularly like the cardstock roses. I made them from Colonial White cardstock, then inked the edges in Smoothie. I also snuck in a little nod to CTMH products by using the package insert from an embellishment pack to create a rose. It’s the little rose next to the letter L. You can click on the photo to make it larger.

The page above is one of those I couldn’t remove from the page protector, because of the interactive element. So it’s a bit shiny in the photo here.

The album was displayed at convention to prevent too much handling, so all-in-all my artwork was in pretty good shape when I received it back. This element is the one that probably got the most abuse, because it could not be displayed opened up, so it had hundreds of opens-and-shuts. I tried to make it as secure as possible, so there’s only a bit of paper tearing and fingerprints, I’m pretty happy about it. My heartfelt thanks to all the consultants who were very careful, I appreciate it!

Well, that’s it! Just 5 pages in 14 days. I’ll admit I’m a slow scrapper, but this album is a bit unusual. I estimate that I spent between 20-30 hours per page on the construction. And I’d do it all over again, in a heartbeat. It was so much fun to dive into the creative process, and come up with a one-of-a-kind scrapbook that felt personal yet I could share it with the world.

Now that I have it in an album, you might wonder how thick a 5 page scrapbook could really be?

Yeah, pretty thick.

Make a Wish Album, page four

Ah, if I could go back to my 20’s again. The only thing I’d do differently is wear more sunscreen and not get the spiral perm.

This page fulfilled the requirement to create a layout using Studio J, the digital scrapbooking site by Close to My Heart. I chose to create a hybrid page, combining the best of digital and traditional scrapbooking.

The embellishments on the right side of the photo (above) are layered in Studio J. I used the paper kit Notebook, which had that perfect amount of grungy elements with coffee stains and handwritten notes on the background paper, yet it also fit into the color scheme I wanted to coordinate with the entire album.

Did you know? Studio J has dozens of retired papers available to choose from, as well as patterns never released in paper format, so if you’re looking for lots of choices, Studio J might be the place for you!

I created the page layout online, with photos, paper and some of the embellishments in place, then added additional embellishments and the interactive element after receiving my prints.

Above, I added patterned paper, a chipboard circle and I even sewed directly onto the smaller blue circle, which is printed on the Studio J layout. The EXEC letters are part of the Studio J layout and I cut them out then used foam tape to pop them up off the page.

I did learn that I could not heat emboss directly onto the page. Photographs just don’t like that at all, major heat bubbles. Yikes!

This page, above, is sliced down the middle to create the interactive element. I changed all my photos to black and white in Studio J, it was easy with a click of a button.

I added a few additional embellishments to the page, including ribbon, sewing, flower with brad and pearls.

The page opens up and reveals the pop-up butterfly. I’m still new to the pop-up engineering, so this took me much more time than it should have, getting the angles right. The butterfly is rather heavy, with several layers of cardstock, embossing, glitter and wire antennae, but it worked out well because it makes the butterfly bob when the page is first opened.

Happy discoveries are the best!

Make a Wish Album, page three

I’ve had many people ask about page protectors on this album. In most of the photos I’m sharing here on my blog, and in the video I do not have the protectors on the pages. The entries were required to have protectors for display at convention, and I have kept them on now that I have the album back at home.

The page protectors do not cover the interactive elements, of course, but they do keep the storybook safe from handling. I sliced, diced, taped and sewed the protectors to get them to accommodate the pages, so they’re not perfect but they do the job.

You can see the sewing on the above page protector.

Just to set the record straight, the globe above is all hand-cut with an X-acto. Yes, more hand-cutting. Whew! I should get a commission from X-acto for all the free advertising on my blog.

One of the “challenges” in the contest was to create a page using no B&T paper (pre-printed patterned paper) but we could use stamps to create our own patterns. The globe has many layers of stamping using several different sets. I use a technique I call “bad stamping” when I’m layering images. I don’t press fully on the stamp when inking or stamping, to create partial or faded images.

The ship is adapted from a pattern by Robert Sabuda, one of the best pop-up artists and paper engineers in the world. You can get the ship pattern for free, here.

I love how the big flourish stamp fits perfectly as the wake of the boat. I created the waves by tearing, distressing and edge-rolling Lagoon colored cardstock, then painting the edges with adhesive and dipping in glitter.

More embellishment clusters. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to keep track of the products used in this project, or even use currently available products. As long as it’s all CTMH, it’s good. And I have plenty of CTMH products, you can be sure of that!

Make a Wish Album, page two

Ah, the pop-up castle. What can I say? It’s the most in-your-face scrapbook embellishment I’ve ever created.

The pop-up castle was part of the plan right from the start. Just how to create it was the puzzler. I studied dozens of pop-up books, watched videos online and created several sketches and mock-ups to get it right.

As with the dandelion blowing girl on page one, I sketched the castle first. I began with a more traditional shape, with straight sides, kind of like this. It wasn’t really coming together for me until I came up with a more whimsical approach and drew a castle that seemed to be sprouting up out of the top of the page.

Again, there are no straight lines so I couldn’t use a paper trimmer or even a straight-edge to cut the pieces, it’s all cut with an X-acto blade.

I made the castle as big as I possible could… for the WOW factor. I love to watch someone’s face when they open this page for the first time.

On each of the pages about my “wishes”, I have photos of myself. Yep, that’s me at 5 above.

Here are my three girls, at approximately the same age. My attention-loving Jessica, on the right, informed me that she doesn’t like this picture of herself. A little too late, it was already in the layout. I think she’ll get over it, especially since she loves being in a video that gets lots of views. Before you know it, she’ll be hosting a youtube show of her own.

Above, the entire left page.

And here is the entire right page.

A layered embellishment cluster. One of my favorite colors to cover in Prisma Glitter is baby pink. The pale pink star above shows this off above. I cut out the star, inked the edges, painted it with glue (mod podge or bonding memories glue) and dumped on the Prisma Glitter. Heavenly! The flags on the castle and the heart in the castle window are also baby pink with glitter.

More embellishements below. Looks like my pink rhinestone in the flower center went astray. Darn those traveling accents.


If you’re still reading this far, good for you! I’ve been asked many times if I’ll be sharing the techniques and instructions used in this book, specifically the pop-ups. The answer is yes, no and maybe. Since the album was a huge undertaking, I’m sitting back and resting for a bit. I am exploring the possibility of offering a template for purchase on the castle, since it is my own design. I also plan to create more artwork using the pop-up concept with cards and scrapbook pages, and I’d like to share those with my readers too, in online classes or as templates.

Just give me some time, okay?

Make a Wish album, page one

I’m overwhelmed with the responses I have received after sharing the video of my Make a Wish album. I have read every single comment here on my blog, on my youtube channel, on facebook and twitter. My heartfelt thanks to all who commented, I’ve been walking around with a smile on my face all week.

Over the next couple of days, I’m going to share some close-ups and info about the making of my storybook. I’ll take it one set of pages a day. There are 5 page  layouts (double pages) so over the next five days I’ll be posting daily.

For the first page of the story, I tackled the “no photos” challenge. There were several “rules” in the contest to challenge us, one being that one of the layouts could not use photos.

I created the girl’s face, hand and dandelion by drawing it first, then creating the pieces using cardstock, B&T paper, inks and chalks. The dandelion has a paper pieced stem and the seeds are drawn with an embossing pen.  I used white embossing powder over the pen. Final touches include glitter for the seeds and flowers in the girl’s hair.

This particular layout took forever to complete, probably longer than any of the others in the book. There are almost no straight lines in this spread, so all of the cutting had to be done with an X-acto knife. My hand was pretty sore after a few days. (How we suffer for our art).

The interactive turning element was adapted from a Victorian wheel card technique. You can watch a video of it here. I made several prototypes from white cardstock to make sure that everything would move properly.

The size of this element is much larger than a card, so it wasn’t as stable as I had planned. In shipping the album to CTMH, the element was dislodged and no one knew that the wheel could turn and make the dandelion seeds move. I’m so glad I filmed it before shipping, I still need to fix the page to get it to work properly, but there are a lot of layers involved and I haven’t been able to bring myself to face the job yet.

One of my favorite stamp sets, A Tweet, provided the adorable bird. I gave it a little crown to wear. Cute, right?

In keeping with the hand-drawn look of this page, I even went so far as to hand create the lettering on this part. Here’s a tip: don’t drink lots of coffee when hand lettering, and take your time.
Tomorrow, the pop-up castle page!