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Hoot! Hoot! Hooray for these Beautiful Papers!

Today I want to give you a little introduction to the March collection of the month, Life’s a Hoot!

Whether crafting scrapbook pages, cards, décor, or anything else, the Life’s a Hoot product collection will infuse your projects with playful designs and lovely color combinations! Coordinating papers, stamps, die-cuts, and more take the guesswork out of the creative process!

Let’s start with the building blocks of this collection — the papers! These papers are packed with amazing background designs. In fact, even though this suite of products features adorable owls, this theme does not appear on any of the patterned papers which makes them perfect to use for a wide variety of projects.

You can get these beautiful papers with our without the coordinating sticker sheet. There is also a pack of solid cardstock that will match perfectly. This sticker sheet includes titles, borders, images and other designs with shiny gold foil accents to add extra pizazz to whatever you are making.

If you’d like more patterns, titles and journaling spots, the Picture My Life cards are perfect for adding the theme throughout your projects. I love using them both on my pages, in pockets and on cards!

This pack includes 24 cards — 12 each 4″ x 6″ and 3″ x 4″. The double-sided cards feature unique designs, sentiments, journaling space and icons. Typically one side has the design in landscape and the other in portrait, sometimes in different colors in the collection’s palette.

<Click to shop the complete collection>

Now let’s take a look at the stamp sets. There are two in this collection with the first is geared primarily for card makers and the second for scrapbookers.

One of the things I hear from scrapbookers often is that they have trouble finding stamps that with the scale and sentiments appropriate for scrapbooking. Each of our collections includes a stamp set just for memory keeping and there are lots of other scrapbooking stamp set available in our catalog and website.

This particular set is available with or without thin cuts to save you from fussy cutting out those owls! The shapes that have coordinating thin cuts are designated by the grey shading. In addition to the owls, you also get dies to cut out the flowers.

Bonus: both of these stamp sets are included in this month’s Stamptacular celebration. Get them now at the discounted prices!

If you prefer to use your Cricut or other cutting machine, there is also a Digital Collection which includes both individual images and layered projects. Once purchased, you can load these images into Cricut Design Space or other software that uses SVG files.

Finally, this suite of products has a set of lovely embellishments to help you finish your projects in style. This embellshment pack includes assorted acrylic shapes and a 6″ x 6″ sheet of Grape paperboard die-cuts.

<Click to shop the complete collection>

Now it’s time for the fun part! Check out the artwork below for inspiration from the amazing Close To My Heart art team.

This collection also includes two workshops. The Scrpbooking Workshop makes the three fun 2-page layouts shown below. The kit includes materials needed to make these projects. You just need your favorite adhesives and cutting tools to finish them. Enhance your layouts with an optional technique of added detailing using the Teal LePen journaling pen.

The Cardmaking Workshop makes 16 cards, 4 of each of the designs below. To create the projects as shown, pull out your watercolor pencils to color these beautiful butterflies. Additional supplies are listed on the website and in the included directions, which also give you lots of tips and tricks.

<Click to shop the complete collection>

Please let me know if you would like supply lists or other information about any of these projects.

Happy Creating! Rebecca

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What a Hoot – August Stamp of the Month – Just $5

Are you ready for cute? This month’s stamp of the month has owls that are ready to be dressed up and decorated. Whether you are planning a Halloween, birthday or other celebration, you can use this set to make fun cards, favors and other decorations.

The August Stamp of the Month, “What a Hoot” includes all of these stamps:



This stamp set is only available through August 31. The full retail price is $17.95, but you can get yours for just $5; that’s over 70% savings. When you place an order of $50 or more in Close To My Heart products, you qualify for this special Stamp of the Month pricing.

Just $5 with a $50 purchase!

Start shopping>>



Here are a few fun projects the creative folks at Close To My Heart dreamed up:



If you love the artwork in this picture, you will love the new Scaredy Cat Collection. Follow this LINKto check it out and all the other awesomely new stuff!

Start Shopping>>

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“Owl You Need is Love” Lollydoole Mini-Album

 If you are familiar with the Close To My Heart Cricut cartridges, you may know that Artbooking contains pages for 10 themed mini-albums. However, you may not know that the Artiste cartridge also has a couple mini-albums. One of the most overlooked pages in the Artiste handbook is page 59 and I used the images on that page to create this whimsical Lollydoodle mini-album.

Here is an excerpt from the handbook showing all the pages of this layer album. 

The back cover in the lower right corner (shift – 3D Object) is the largest piece, so I started with it and used Fit to Page to determine the maximim size for my album. The largest size that the back cover can be cut on a 12″ x 12″ paper is 4.25″, so I then turned off Fit to Page and set the size dial to 4.25 for the remaining pages. 

The back cover, which I cut from Pear cardstock, is curved on the right size to create a flap that wraps around all of the pages to the front cover (see below) which I cut from Whispter cardstock. I closed the flap with a hook & loop dot.

Next, I cut each page of the album from a different paper in the pack. Since each page is a different width, you can layer the pages with the widest at the bottom so that when you open the front cover, you see this fun layered look. 

Once I had all my pages cut out, I decorated each one with pieces from the Lollydoole Stickease and remnants of the paper pack. There was just enough stickers to decorate the pages but leaving room for some pictures and journaling. 

Here’s what I did with each of the pages:

and the back cover:

Throughout the book, I popped a few of the stickers up with 3D foam tape. For larger stickers, you will want to “destick” them before mounting so that they don’t stick to the base page on the edges and centers where there is not foam. The trick is to dust them with baby powder and shake off the excess.

Materials used:

Lollydoodle paper pack (X7183B)

Lollydoodle Stickease (X7183C)

Flamingo Dots (Z1934)

Hook & Loop Dots (Z1805)

Artiste Cricut Collection (Z1790)

Paradise Baker’s Twine (Z702)

3D Foam Tape (Z1151)

Tape Runner

I hope this inspires you to make your own mini-album. You can do the same thing with any paper pack and coordinating embellishments. By the way, the twelve sheets of paper in our of our packs is more than enough to make two of these layered mini-albums.

Keep creating,

Rebecca

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A Night Owl Birthday

For my daughter’s 12th birthday, we decided to celebrate that they were not planning to get a lot of sleep at the “slumber” party and have a NIGHT OWL theme. We had a lot of fun finding cute owl decoration ideas.

The colors and dots in the Dotty for You paper pack was perfect for these fun owl goodie gift boxes. I’d love to give credit where credit is due, but we found several versions on the internet so it is impossible to trace back to the original creator.

We cut 9″ pillow boxes using the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge (<flower4>, font layer w/shift). The “feathers” are 2″ hearts cut in half, the beak & feet are 1″ <heart1> cut from Sunflower card stock, the wings are <oval1> from Cocoa cardstock and the eyes are 1.25″ and 1.75″ circles in Cocoa and While Daisy cardstock respectively.

Food for the owl party included these Oreo Owl cupcakes which were inspired by the book Hello, Cupcake! and chocolate pretzel nests. We got the candy eggs at discount since Emily’s birthday is after Easter – SWEET!