Get the kids in your life excited about crafting with the CTMH Kids Crafts virtual event! What is more important than spending time with your kids recording all the details of their life right now. Time is precious and fleeting, and every little moment needs to be recorded. I would love for you to join me on August 21st, for very special event, geared toward a younger audience.
Introducing…CTMH Kids Crafts!♥ This kid-focused event will be hosted by Maya Wihongi—Monica’s 9-year-old daughter—and will walk kids through each step of creating a fun mini album, just for them! Kids will love crafting along with Maya, honing their own creative skills.
This event has a dedicated bundle of products to help your little ones get the most out of this fun crafting experience!
This child-focused event♥ will walk kids through each step of creating an adorable mini album with the exclusive Born to Shine Album Kit! This kit includes a specially designed stamp set, a mini stamping block, Picture My Life™ Cards from the Summer Vibes collection, and a fun Story by Stacy™ 4″ x 4″ album. Kids will love crafting with the Born to Shine Album Kit and honing their own creative skills through the CTMH Kids Crafts event!
What if I have more than one kid?
I know the feeling – we had a small team at our house most days. If you have more than one child participating in the event, you can chose to purchase a kit for each child OR purchase the following supplies and share the stamp, stamp block, journalling pen, and ink.
This is the first time we’ve EVER offered anything like this!♥We love providing opportunities for people to get excited about crafting, and we’re excited to help the younger generation get excited about it, too! There will be a special prize drawings during the event, so be sure to mark yourself as “Going”, at least 48 hours prior to the event, so your kids can be entered to win!
The Born to Shine album is a fun, easy project for all ages! Make sure to invite your kids or grandkids or host a special watch party on August 21st.
Some of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. By clicking on those links, and making a purchase, your are helping to support my small business. This is at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.
Our Creative Design Team has a special treat for you this month. We have added a second round of videos featuring the Happiest Place collection. Once again, this group of consultants did an amazing job creating projects for you to enjoy using the papers, foil cardstock, stamps, and the digital collections from our Happiest Place collection.
For my video collab project, I chose to tackle a Disney Vacation album that has been on my to-do list for quite a few years. This album has an emotional element wrapped into it, so it took me some time to process the grief before I could create it. I am happy to say that it is almost complete after using a large amount of elements from the Happiest Place collection.
The album itself is a Story By Stacy Short Story album. When I first went into the basement to grab everything from this trip, I was brought to tears by the lack of photos we had. At this time in our lives, we were still processing the film for photos and, unfortunately, did not have as many as I had hoped.
With only thirty photos to chose from (most of which were not very good), I decided to follow Stacy’s philosophy and focus more on the story. I began pulling elements from the Short Story album kit and the Happiest Place kits, and began creating our album.
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In this video you will learn how I created three of the layouts and get a view of the entire album in the mini-album walk-though. For those who want to know more about some of the pages I have created and the stories behind them, you can keep reading.
Like I said, I started out with only thirty photos and a handful of memorabilia, so I knew that I didn’t need to create a large album. Instead, I chose to use this six-inch black checked mini-album kit along with some bits and pieces from the Happiest Place Cut-Above kit.
In my video, I show you two ways to create pages for this album – the traditional way and the “Stacy” way – so that you can see how simple each page was to make. When I first started to make this album, I was a bit resistant on the “Stacy” way, but, after trying it, I realized that it made creating pages go so much faster and allowed me to complete the whole album in two days♥.
As you view the album walk-through, you are going to see a fair amount of interactive elements on the pages. In the midst of designing this album, I happened across another envelope of photos which again brought me to tears. I decided to stick to my original mini-album plan, but knew I would need more space for photos. This is where all those flip-flaps came in handy.
When I add flip-flaps to my creations, I like to add tabs or ribbon for the viewers to use to lift the flaps. On the Happy page, I used a star tab sticker from the cut-above kit that I stamped with some black hearts.
I often use elements from other kits to add to my creations. Our Happiest Place 8½” x 11″ cut-above kit is so full of goodies, that I could help but dig through and grab elements for my album. A good deal of my pages use elements from this kit. On the page below, I combined the tags from the kit with stickers from the Happiest Place sticker sheet and tabs from the Short Story Kit.
There are pages in this book that are dedicated to each child and their vacation stories. This layout is dedicated to our daughter and her desire to ride the roller-coaster. She almost wasn’t tall enough to ride and was very hesitant to go at first, but once she rode the ride, we couldn’t get her to stop♥.
As one friend said, This book is “flip-flaps on steroids“. All throughout the album, you will find photos to lift, tags to pull out, and books to unfold. In my video, I also show you how to create this three page interactive layout with a fold-out accordion book. The light parade was one event we had plenty of photos for, but I wanted to keep them all together on one layout, so I created a six-inch flip-flap and this adorable little book decorated with an acrylic castle and checked ribbon.
In the photo above, my husband is trying to console our daughter. She spent two days looking for Snow White and hadn’t found her, yet. She had refused to have any other character sign her little autograph book until she had found Snow White.
In the layout below, I tell the story of how she possibly offended Minnie Mouse. Each time her brothers would get a signature, we tried to convince her to get one, too. We even tried to hand her book to Minnie for her, and she took it back and wouldn’t allow Minnie to sign her book. She wanted Snow White’s to be the first.
This set of pages is all about character autographs. There are pull out tabs with autographs that I created using our Tags & Tabs Thin Cuts, a little book of flip-flaps, and the story of how happy our daughter was to finally see Snow White.
Our album is full of stories of our children’s Disney adventures – from the sobbing children in the airport, to the matching red sweatshirts, the rainy day ride we rode WAY too many times, and the child with a single autograph. This is what scrapbooking is all about. It isn’t about the number of photos you have or the stickers on the page – it’s about telling the story. After my husband flipped through the album, he thanked me for creating it (again I cried).
I plan on showing another video showcasing this project in the near future. The front cover is going to be decorated with the Happiest Place digital images and HTV iron-on and I want to make sure you see how I do that. If this is something that interests you, make sure to subscribe to my channel so that you are notified when the video is added.
Make sure to also check out all of the other creations made by the Creative Design Team and grab yourself a few of the Happiest Place products while they are on sale. These bundles are 20% off throughout the month of July & August, and are available while supplies last, so make sure you grab yourself a few bundles so that you can create a project that you were inspired by in our video collab.
Some of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. By clicking on those links, and making a purchase, your are helping to support my small business. This is at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.
Our talented technique blog hop team team is at it again creating projects just for you using a variety of Close to My Heart products. This month, we are showing you some lovely Paper Piecing techniques. If you have come here from Cat Nowak’s Blog, you are on the right path! When you are finished taking a look at my Sweet Summer Bunch layout, you can click on the link at the end to move to the next blog. This blog hop is simple, fun, and full of ideas. If you get lost along the way, you’ll find the complete list of participating consultants on Melissa’s Blog.
Normally, I have some how-to photos or a short video to view for these technique hops, but right now my craft space looks like a paper factory blew up as I balance crafting with a huge renovation project in the front yard, so, today we are going to keep it simple as I show you a few of the techniques I used on my Sweet Summer Bunch layout and give you a few tips for Paper Piecing stamped images.
I chose to make this layout as bright and as colorful and as lively as the children in the photos – my little summer bunch. In the year 2000, our children were 1, 3, 5, and 6 which made each day quite the adventure.
To match the vivid, childish, “bunch” theme, I chose to use the little girl image from the July stamp of the month. She is so sweet and full of color and perfect for paper piecing.♥
After stamping the entire image onto White Daisy cardstock, I stamped the dress portion onto some pink plaid Blue Skies paper and the flowers onto some vellum which was heat-embossed. I shaded the flowers using matching Tri-Blend markers then got to work on paper piecing.
When you are cutting images out for paper piecing, you will want cut outside the stamped line (most of the time). By cutting outside the line, your stamped image appears continuous. Now, I did say “most of the time” because, on this image, I also cut inside the black line around the stems of the flowers. This allowed the stamped portion of the stems to pop through and look three-dimensional.
When you look at the image up-close, you can see where I cut the pattern paper and the vellum. Layering those papers onto this stamped image gives it such a unique look. I like how to vellum softens the darker tones of the flowers to match the soft tones of the Mix-In papers I used in the background.
The remaining portions of my layout were created using a variety of products I had on hand. My goal this year is to “use what I have” as I create my scrapbook pages. You will probably see one or two little retired items, but almost everything on this layout is current – just not all from the same paper suite.
The title was created using some stickers that I had leftover from a Story By Stacy mini-album, a Cricut cut from the Summer Vibes collection, and letters stamped using the Chronicle Type stamp set. I embellished the title with a vellum flower cut from Stitched Together which I dry embossed with polka-dots.
All three flowers have polka-dots and wooden buttons in the center. I love the whimsical look they create.
The photo was embellished with leftover tags, another Story By Stacy item, and some Summer Vibes paper and stickers. Mixing and matching various paper suites is easy to do when you stick to the same color scheme and add a few basics to balance the clusters.
I hope you enjoyed today’s Paper Piecing project and you were inspired to try something new. Now ‘Hop” on over to Lauren Moore’s Blog to see her work! Be sure to visit all the Consultants at their blogs to get some great crafting tips and other fun ideas for using Paper Piecing on your projects.
Don’t forget, the July Stamp of the Month is only available through July 31st. If you wish to recreate this design, stop by my website and find out how you can get it for only $5.00.
Some of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. By clicking on those links, and making a purchase, your are helping to support my small business. This is at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support.
This month, we are showing you some lovely Paper Piecing techniques.
