It's March - Look What's New with CTMH!

Our March promotion is here!

Get a free My Acrylix® block when you buy My Acrylix® stamps!
At Close To My Heart, we know we’ve got the best clear stamps and blocks—and we’ll prove it! Throughout March, when you buy your favorite My Acrylix® stamps, we’ll give you a free My Acrylix block. Not only will you have the best stamps on the block, you’ll have the best block, too! Just purchase $25 US / $30 CAN in stamps and you can choose from two of our most versatile block sizes: 3" × 3" (Y1006) or 2" × 6.

Have you tried clear stamps? They are so easy to use. Once you do, you will be addicted!

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Also just arriving......it's the

Here is a close up of the individual stamp images:

* earn it FREE when you spend $100 or more (before shipping and tax)

* earn it for 75% off ($5.74) when you spend $75 or more (before shipping and tax)

* earn it for 50% off ($11.74) when you spend $50 or more (before shipping and tax)

* earn it for 25% off ($17.21) when you spend $25 or more (before shipping and tax)

* purchase it for full retail price ($22.95)

Click here to enter my website and order it and so many other wonderful products.
Don't forget to check the "While Supplies Last" section for discounts up to 70% off.

If you are interested in scrapbooking or cardmaking, but don't know where to start - let me know. I am happy to help get you started.

Are you interested in coming to a card workshop? Spend a few hours having fun and making a bunch of cute cards? Sound interesting?? I'm planning on getting one going soon. Stay tuned!

Happy Saturday to you!

~Linda

www.lindaw.myctmh.com

Friday Fun!

Happy Friday everyone! At Malia's school today they had a book parade through the halls. You were suppose to dress as a character from your favorite book. The characters from her favorite book would have been way too much for me to tackle this week, so we chose a new favorite book (that we started reading last night) and went with that. It's from the Pony Pals series, which we made work with a semi-western shirt, boots, braids, and her Webkinz pony. Way better than me attempting to sew some crazy outfits involving elaborate dresses and capes. :) She seemed to be happy with it. From what I heard "Fancy Nancy" and "Eloise" were some of the popular girl characters today.

(When I picked her up from school today, the braids were gone and she had some wild Diana Ross hair going on. Oh well.)

Today I made this silk/organza/tulle flower. It was my first attempt and I need to tweak it a bit here and there. It's a little too round I think. I'm going to try to get them looking a bit more realistic- hopefully. My friend Kandi and I have just signed up for our first Spring Bazaar in a few years - so I need to get busy with some things to fill up our table. I thought something new would be fun.

If I can get to a place where I'm happy with these, I might try to turn some into pins, hair clips or ??? We'll see. I've got "crafting ADD" these days, which leads to lots of unfinished projects. Hopefully I'll remember what I was going to do with them when I get back to them all!
Hope you have a great weekend!

Linda

Around Here....

Hi!

Just thought I'd pop in and say hello. We have all been sick in one way or another, hopefully that is about over! Seems like illness has hit just about everyone we know these past few weeks.

Last month my sweet son decided to trim his own hair instead of resting (which is what I thought he was doing, as I enjoyed the "quiet"). Here is the finished product:

It could have been worse, but thankfully it wasn't. He managed to give himself a reverse mohawk - later that day Ella scratched him under the eye, and he looked pretty pathetic. I had a hard time making eye contact with people when we were out and about.......thinking they must think I was an unfit parent. lol. Of course we had a birthday party to go to the next day.

Here is Ella, playing (and picking) all at the same time!

I can't tell you how happy I was to find her quietly playing with the doll house Santa brought for Malia years ago. Malia never really had an interest in it - thankfully Santa's gift wasn't a total loss. (And...it's hard to see, but those are the new bunk beds in the background. Now they all sleep on the bottom bunk in this room. Ugh. Luckily we bought the twin over full size.)

We took our first zoo trip of the year (well 2nd actually, after zoolights on Jan 1st). We hadn't been in awhile, so it was fun. It stayed dry for almost the whole visit!

The new red ape exhibit was popular, but the highlight of the visit was this chimp:He was eating something strange & brown off the glass. {{yuk}}

And, finally, I am in love with these Moda fabrics called "Dream On". They remind me of my childhood in the 70s. I broke down and bought a charm pack - maybe I'll actually make something with it. Maybe. :)

Hope you have a fun & safe holiday weekend. Speaking of presidents...President Obama flew over our house today in the helicopter motorcade en route to Intel. I think I saw him wave at us! (okay, not really).

~Linda

Gratitude Card and the NEW Spray Pen!

Hi There!
I thought I'd share another card I made for our Close to my Heart Unit Swap (a local group of gals that are all Close to my Heart consultants - funny thing is most of us went to grade school together!).

We all received a piece of paper from the Magnifique paper pack, and were to make 8 cards to swap at the next meeting.

These are the cards the fabulous ladies in my unit created:

It's always fun to see how different they are!

Here are the cards I made for the swap:

I used the January Stamp of the Month ("Find Your Style") for the butterfly. After I embossed it with clear embossing powser, I popped it up off the paper with foam tape. The splatter background was created using Close to my Heart's NEW "Spray Pen". It was the first time I had tried it - lots of fun!! What a quick and easy way to make a coordinating background for a project.

And.....Here's a little "how to" video on how to use the spray pen.

Have a great day!
~Linda

www.lindaw.myctmh.com

Look What Just Arrived!

It's February 1st today! What does that mean? It means that the new 2011 Spring/Summer Close To My Heart Idea Book is now available!
If you don't have your copy yet, please contact me, or you can view it online right now, HERE.
It's full of great new products & amazing artwork!
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Here's a peak at some of the new paper packs (stamp sets & artwork too):

WINGS:

MAYBERRY:

SWEETHEART:

LUCKY:

SOPHIA:

FANFARE:

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And with this being a new month, there is a new Stamp of the Month that you can get at a discount or even FREE!*

* earn it FREE when you spend $100 or more (before shipping and tax)

* earn it for 75% off ($5.74) when you spend $75 or more (before shipping and tax)

* earn it for 50% off ($11.74) when you spend $50 or more (before shipping and tax)

* earn it for 25% off ($17.21) when you spend $25 or more (before shipping and tax)

* purchase it for full retail price ($22.95)

February SOTM - D1453 Friendship

Here is a sample of the beautiful things you can create with this stamp set:

So...which new group is your favorite? I'm loving the "Sweetheart" paper pack right now! (You can't see the cutest of the papers in the photo above - but you would LOVE IT!)

Let me know if you have any questions, want to get started on scrapbooking, cardmaking, attend a workshop, or snag your own catalog!

Have a great day~

~Linda

http://www.lindaw.myctmh.com/

"Daydream" Dress Fold Cards

Hiya! It's been awhile. :) I thought I'd share the cards I made for a recent CTMH (Close to My Heart) unit swap. One of the gals provided 1 sheet of paper from the "Daydream" paper pack, and we each made 8 cards to bring back and trade.

I decided to try this dress fold card I had seen around. It was fun. The top of the dress is made from the backside of the patterned paper, with Prisma Glitter added.

I finished them off with white grosgrain ribbon, flowers, a pretty rhinestone and then stamped "for you" on the side!

Hope you enjoyed this crafty inspiration. :)

~Linda

http://www.lindaw.myctmh.com/

Share Your Shutterfly Creations - You can earn $25!

Check out my Christmas cards! Aren't they fabulous?

You can make your own too, at www.shutterfly.com. Tons of designs to choose from. :)

Bold Bright Wishes Christmas

Create modern Christmas photo cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

It's That Time of Year

I'm getting ready for some upcoming holiday craft shows!!!

The bazaars I usually do aren't having theirs this year, so I wasn't really planning on participating - but I've now ended up in 2, possibly 3 new craft shows. :)

I figured I should get busy, so I made something new for this year...bookmarks!

They were fun, and I couldn't stop. Each is laminated, and no 2 are alike!

Thought I'd share a sneak peek. I'm off to start on another project while the kiddos are resting, and Malia is at Taekwondo.

Happy Halloween!

Wow!! It's Halloween already! Boy this month sure zoomed by. It's been a busy a month, lots of family birthdays, pumpkin patch trips, pumpkin carving, etc. Here are the pumpkins we finally carved last night: I'm always ready to carve pumpkins early in the month, but know they will be rotten by the time Halloween rolls around.

Here are a few pictures from the pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago. The weather was perfect - and there were more people there than I have EVER seen before. I heard it was a record. The kids had lots of fun on the big slides, mazes, cow car barrel rides, and the little playground. I enjoyed the kettle korn. lol.

Ella in one of the hay mazes.The kids again....

And here is a picture from the trip we took with preschool. Weather wasn't quite as nice, but it was at least dry while we were there. :)And.....one last parting shot of all the pretty fall pumpkins, squash, vegetables and dried flowers.

While we're on the Halloween theme, I thought I'd share some little pencil & treat holders I made for our CTMH swap this month. Here is the finished product:

This stripe paper was the given to use in the swap - and we were to make something for Halloween other than a card. Here's another view: Hope you all have a safe and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! We are getting ready to head out....and yes, the weather is dry!!

~Linda

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Look What I Won...

Yippee!! I know it's not a new flat screen tv, or a 7-day cruise, but I won this pretty card (above) from Deena over at BE CREATIVE. You should take a look at her blog. She lives in California and sells beautiful card kits. Hmmm. Maybe I should do that? (make card kits, not live in CA).
Anyway, here are a few samples of her kits:

August Kit:
September Kit:
I hope you are having a great Friday!! I can't wait to get my new card. :) I'm so easy to please.

Linda

Saturday Fun

The kids and I did a little shopping today for Halloween costumes and more urgently, something to wear to Malia's friend's "Hollywood" themed birthday party tomorrow.
The invitation said to wear your "Hollywood Finest". Yikes!
I think we found something perfect.....I hope to have some pictures tomorrow after the party. I'm helping do hair and make up for the 7/8 year old girls. Should be fun!

While we were out, we couldn't resist these fun masks. I couldn't pass them up for the price.

Here is Ella:

I'm thinking of wearing one when I hand out Halloween candy this year. :)

And here are Ella & Malia:

Hope you are enjoying your Saturday!

~Linda