February 2012 CTMH Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Welcome to the February 2012 CTMH Stamp of the Month Blog Hop, featuring Thoughtful Tidings, a set of 11 Stamps.  If you've just arrived here from {Katy's} blog, you are on the right track.  If you are just starting here, just jump in and enjoy our circular hop, which has 60 participants this month.  When you reach the end of a post, click on the link at the end to hop to the next post.

I'll be leaving Okinawa in a few weeks, so planning ahead is even more important yhan usual (because once the movers pick up my stuff, I won't see it again for probably two months).  This June, two of my Dragons cheerleaders will be graduating from high school, so I wanted to make cards for them.   The graduation cap card was cut with my Silhouette (I know, what's wrong with me???  I received a Cricut for Christmas and here I am using my Silhouette!).  Some paper piecing, heat embossing, and a sentiment from this month's SOTM, and I have a couple of cute graduation cards.  (Forgive the quality of the photos, my battery charger remains MIA)

Papers: CTMH Black, Topiary, and White Daisy
Inks: CTMH Black, Versamark
Tools and Techniques: Silhouette machine, CTMH Gold Embossing Powder, heat embossing
Stamp Sets: CTMH Thoughtful Tidings and Friendship Small Alphabet

Remember, Thoughtful Tidings is only available February 1-29, 2012.  Contact your consultant, or click here, to find out how to get your own.

Now hop on over to {Shirley's} blog to see what she's created.

If you find any broken links along the way, {Helen} has the complete list of hoppers listed on her blog.

For the teacher...

My friend B is at the end of her first year as a teacher, and her birthday is also this week.  So, my first scrapping project in Okinawa (this time) is a name placard shadow box for her classroom.  She loves butterflies, and the colors pink and green, so I wanted to incorporate all of those into the shadow box.  The box is 8X10, and I got it at JoAnn.

Papers: CTMH Blush cardstock, CTMH Emporium

Inks: CTMH Blush

Tools and Techniques: Sponge edge distressing, Silhouette Machine (words and butterflies), CTMH Big Pinks flower, CTMH adhesive pearls, Zva Creative crystal flourish, Karen Foster Scrapper's Floss, Making Memories button, 3-D Mounting Foam, Xyron Adhesive


The butterflies were cut out with my Silhouette machine.  I adhered one completely onto the base, and the second one was mounted using 3-D mounting foam only on the center.  The edges of the wings were rolled slightly to give it dimension.  A row of adhesive pearls defines the butterfly's body, and a piece of floss attached to the underside are his antenna.  The crystal flourish was applied before the top butterfly. 

A piece of floss was tied through the button, which was then attached to the flower with glue dots.  The flower was attached to the background using glue dots as well.  Letters and mats were cut with the Silhouette.  The mats were sponged with Blush ink around the edges.  Letters were run through the Xyron to attach to the mats, then the mats were run through the Xyron to attach to background.  The "W" was instead mounted using a double stack of 3-D Mounting Foam (two pieces stacked on top of each other--remember to remove the paper backing before sticking the pieces together) in order to raise it up enough to clear the flower.  

 

 

Shaped Birthday Card

I lovelovelove my Silhouette.  I don't use it nearly enough (but then again, I don't scrap nearly enough either).  I signed up for the membership where I get unlimited downloads of digital images, so I have a lot of really cool files that I can cut out.  This card template (both the whole card and the striped piece) is one of my Silhouette files.  So I can make a really neat shaped card with very little effort (and no scissor-frustration).

I followed a few challenges for this birthday card:  Pile It On Challenge #10 (pastel colors),  Paper Cutz Challenge #32 (anything goes), Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge #74 (also anything goes),  Treehouse Thursday Challenge #40 (clean and simple), and Cute Card Thursday Challenge #103 (Celebrations).

Papers: CTMH White Daisy cardstock, Making Memories
Inks: CTMH Breeze (retired) and Grey Wool, Copic Markers

Tools and Techniques: CTMH Rhinestone Flowers, direct-to-paper edge distressing
Stamp Sets: CTMH A Little Everything and Card Sentiments (inside), Stamping Bella

At last!!!

In December of 2008, I began working on a scrapbook for my father-in-law.  It should have been easy, as I was using the (now retired) Magic Moments Scrapbook kit.  Pre-printed layout pages, embellishments, directions, suggested photo sizes, really designed to make it easy.  Well, I kept getting hung up on selecting photos, so it went untouched for a long time.  But FINALLY, I completed the last page (which is actually the first page of the book) today [Note:  "today" was actually January 6th 2010.  It took me six more weeks to actually get the photos uploaded and the slideshow made, hence the mid-February post].   In addition to the Magic Moments kit, I put my Silhouette to use, cutting titles for several pages, and the bracketed square for the title page.  I put some extra empty page protectors in the book, so that I can make and send layouts that he can simply slide in (always a good idea to keep things simple for those who aren't scrapbookers).