January 2010 Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Happy New Year!!!  I am amazed that 2009 has come and gone so quickly.  We have arrived at the first blog hop for 2010.  If you just arrived from Antoinette's blog, you are on the right path.  This month there are over 50 Close To My Heart consultants participating in our blog hop.  We are featuring the January 2010 Stamp of the Month True Friends, a set of 11 stamps.  This set consists of cute frames, brackets and sentiments, and will be fantastic for making cards for friends.

I decided to use this set to make an anniversary card for my husband.  I followed the sketch from Mojo Monday Week 119.  Something I tried for the first time was using re-inker and rubbing alcohol to dye the crocheted flower to match the card (the Vineyard Berry flower, while lighter than the paper, matches much better in person.  It just didn't photograph well).  I mixed 15 drops of re-inker with about a capful of alcohol, mixed and then dipped the flower in the mixture.  I set the flower on paper towels and squeezed most of the liquid out, and then finished drying it with my heat gun.  You can adjust the color by using more or less re-inker.  I used alcohol instead of water simply because it dries faster.

Papers: CTMH Colonial White and Sweet Leaf cardstock, CTMH Emporium
Inks: CTMH Sweet Leaf, Cocoa, and Vineyard Berry

Embellishments:  CTMH Crochet Flowers, CTMH Twilight Corduroy brad

Tools and Techniques: Nestabilities Classic Scalloped Rectangles Small, 3-D Mounting Foam, Re-inker dying of Crochet Flower
Stamp Sets: True Friends and From Me to You



Now hop on over to Barbra's blog to see what she has created.

If you find any broken links along the way, Jena has the complete list of participants on her blog.

She calibrates. She shoots. She runs. She...

...crochets. This is the second baby blanket I made this year. I made it for my friend Chris, whose adorable son was born in January (yes, I'm a little slow). I FINALLY got it finished, and in the mail. Okay, I finished it several weeks ago, but that whole getting to the post office, and knowing WHICH post office I am going to ship from (I regularly deal with post offices in four different zip codes) thing tends to be a problem. I actually bought the yarn back in November, then decided to wait to start the blanket until after the baby was born (since she chose to be surprised instead of finding out the gender ahead of time). I was worried that it might be too much blue for a girl. I realize that brown in a baby blanket is somewhat odd, but she liked the most adorable bedding set, and I was hoping that this would coordinate well with it. I'm not sure if you can make it out, but the pattern has raised lines crocheted, running the opposite direction of the solid blue stripes.