Serenity

Welcome March, Spring, Time of rebirth.

New peaceful music has been added to the blog, for your pleasure. The choices are becoming more spiritual.

I was so inspired by K D Lang singing Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen at the Olympics.

Also , Blackbird , by the Beatles, who sing "take these sunken eyes and learn to see"...

We can all heal and arise , change and deal with reality in dignity.

The Serenity cards are for my boyfriends Mom who runs a charitable home for alcoholic men in London. She has given her entire life to helping others in need.

I recycled a plastic envelope from Shoppers Drug Mart . It has a tab closure hidden underneath the paper strip. It holds a double row of standard size cards perfectly.

I made 10 cards of 5 different designs using the Grace paper pack. It is so rich and elegant.

All supplies are Close to my Heart.

Piece of Cake

This lovely cake is one of 6 included in the February stamp of the month. It looks so dimensional pop dotted onto the embossed cardstock. If you look closely, you can see just a little Its a Party Random Stamping on the Moonstruck background and texture paper . It was enough to make a celebratory backdrop with punch for the beautiful tiered cake! I used watermelon, citrus leaf and ocean ctmh markers to colour in the cake, and light green rhinestone flowers and white daisy organdy ribbon to finish off the look! All products are Close to my Heart.

A Felicitous New Years Wedding

A new year , a new decade, a new couple, a new life!

Our family attended the wedding of Kelly and Brad on New Years Eve 2009. It was a very happy and exciting event.

I used my new Felicity alphabet to stamp the title and the twilight blue Felicity die cut with vintage smoky plum CTMH fleur de jardin papers for the quarter cut background. The journalling will be on the lower right hand corner.

Holidays: Our Family

The Holiday dinner we held with my cousin was a success.

Our two families can play poker, enjoy high spirits, get dramatic, discuss science, behave silly, share a musical vibe, and always appreciate each other.

I used a 9 inch square within a square layout design for the background and layered the smaller photos, journalling, and texts at the bottom below the 5x7 photo.

The title will be our family name at the top of the page in Crimson lettering.

The colours really stand out in real life!

Strike a Pose

We had SUCH a good time with my cousin and her family just before Christmas. These photos show the relaxed and happy personalities

of our kids. They range in age from 16 to 20. It is a really neat age to witness and be involved in. They are so funny, creative and free at this age.

The layout was fun to do. I started with a horizontal background of intricate and subtle designs, and added the vertical 9 inch paper with the circular design. The dark colour seemed to really ground the photos.

Home for the Holidays

Page 4: the doggies.

Rick's large Rottweiler named Zowie was having fun wearing little hats along with Lana and Prints. Rick wasnt impressed at her silly behavior. Too bad! Everyone else thought it was sweet.

For this page I switched into horizontal lines, again keeping it simple and matching the star paper to the precious page. There are a few twinkle brads on the left corner and I used circles and scallops to soften the flow. I left a white border to tie it all together. I am VERY pleased with these four pages!

Home for the Holidays

Page 3: Rick and I.

Getting Rick to smile and relax wasnt easy until he put on his RedSox Tshirt. It was a breeze after that!

He really like his new pajama bottoms too.

I splurged just a bit on him this year. He is a good guy!!

I used Game On paper (with the stars) to tie in with the checklist stars and added some tiny white chipboard stars (CTMH) . The old ctmh black stripe background and texture paper

makes it look Classic! There is a tiny bit of garden green mat on the 2 right hand photos to break up the red on black and tie into the tree colour in the photos.

Home for the Holidays

page 2: features my children and me on Christmas morning. Poor Chloe had no makeup on! but she is a sweet pea. I love my Olympic mittens from Colton. They make a heart when you cross your arms. Chloe loved her pink powder puff from La Senza.

Journalling will be completed tomorrow!

For this layout I used one of Julia's tags with a nice bracket edge to spunk things up. The rest of the lines are straight up vertical so I added a circular rhinestone embellie to soften things up . Getting the 3 photos the same size was key to making this page work. i left a little white, the same width as the edge on the bracket die cut.

Home for the Holidays

I was elated to be catching up at Alexandra's last night with a great group of Brights Grove croppers, with all proceeds going to RayJon in Haiti and now I get to share the results with you!

First issue was the choice of background papers.

I had such dark photos, with a lot of red but very dim otherwise. (Time for a New Camera Soon)

Not very joyful looking when I laid the photos in front of me.

Julia had sent some black/red/white Christmas paper and punchout diecuts to go with it, with a very modern twist that inspired me to pare down the colour scheme. It worked wonders to bolden up the photos, since on brighter more Christmassy papers the photos were dying and looking yellowed.

Once I decided on using white daisy as my background paper, I had limitless possibilities with several crimson papers, and the cute accents from Julia.

This page features Colton after opening his iphone and his new winter coat, and his immediate reactions! I used 3 of the cute tags from Julia, splitting the green semi circle in half to "punctuate" the photo, and underlaying the small Joy tag on the lower right edge of the photo.There is also some black glitter paper to add sparkle! (thanks Jen!!)

THIS WAS FUN!

Give and Get Back : Hearts for Haiti

Buy one textured cardstock pack, get one free, and Close to my Heart will donate $2 to Operation Smile, who are working in their hospital tents in Haiti with over 50 patients.

Enough said.

Stamp! WOW!

I was looking at Tresa Black's new YouTube video on stamping for Close to my Hearts video contest.
Pretty much sums up how I feel about using our Clear stamps! plus she shows how versatile they are in a few cute techniques.
check it out here:
http://www.fabulouslyartsy.com/2010/01/stamp-wow.html
thanks Tresa for allowing us all to share this.