Cardholder for St. Louis Regional Cards

Hi there!  On Thursday, I shared the cards that I was able to make from the Close to My Heart St. Louis Regional Celebration in 2012.  If you missed it, you can see them HERE.  Today, on the anniversary of that amazing experience, I'm sharing the cardholder that I designed to coordinate!  :)

I really couldn't put this set in a box because of all the different sizes, one being a 3 x 8!  But I needed to have something since I was donating the set for an auction.  I came up with a great solution, and decorated a 3D item from the CTMH Artiste Collection to go with any kind of decor.

The retired Dakota Woodgrain pattern was such a versatile paper.  Just add Burlap Ribbon and Durables for a great decor piece that you won't want to hide in the desk!  ;)

The auction is tomorrow, and I can't wait to see how things turn out!  :)

Throwback Thursday: Meet Me in St. Louie

I am absolutely stunned that it has been almost a year since I traveled to St. Louis for the Close to My Heart Regional Celebration.  The memories are still so fresh, and it really hammered home how amazing it is to represent this fantastic company.  Maybe it is because of all the fabulous new friendships I made during the trip?  :)  What better way to celebrate, than to finally finish one of the projects we got to take part in?  Sure wish I had planned it that way!  ;)

Remember that I promised to show you some cards that mix and match patterns from different paper packets?  Cards 2 and 4 below do just that!  Here are the four cards that feature the retired Close to My Heart papers from Avonlea, Flirty, Dakota, and Scholastic.  They all use images from the Casual Expressions My Acylix and the wonderful Burlap Ribbon.

Clementine Paper Packet

Scholastic and Dakota Paper Packets

Flirty Paper Packet

Avonlea and Dakota Paper Packet

So, tell me, do YOU like to stay current with all the new products and ideas from Close to My Heart?  Do you like to be the first to get your hands on newly released items, like our amazing Cricut cartridges?  Would YOU like to travel to a Regional Celebration or even CONVENTION in Disneyland next summer?

Guess what I am doing today?  As a consultant, I am pre-ordering the FABULOUS new products in our soon to be released Holiday Gift Guide!!!!  Guess what else?  I am getting them at a discount!!!  You can do the same thing when you join my team!  Do you need to rediscover YOUR creative side?  That is just what happened to me when I signed up to be a hobbyist a year and a half ago!  Little did I know how my business would grow in the months to come!  ;)  Click HERE to find out more about joining Team Been There, Blinged That, and invest in YOURSELF. 

Aaaaaand CUT! That's A Wrap!

This entire journey to St. Louis and back has been such a whirlwind!  It is literally a week later and this is my last post, so it kind of brings the whole incredible journey to an end.  *sniff*

I do have some amazing pics of artwork from corporate to share, and I saved them for the grande finale!  I want to make so many of them!!!  Actually, you may see some of them in the new "Clearly the Best" video series being released.  Here we go!

First up are a few of the Operation Smile Silent Auction items.  I believe we raised over $800 with all of the auctions.  Way to go, St. Louis!

This fabulous memo board had magnet, cork, and chalkboard sections and came with little magnets and push-pins that were customized to match!  Amazing!

This is a dry erase board created by using a simple picture frame and dry erase markers--had no idea you could do that!

Now this one was simply too adorable--a nightlight decorated with Stella paper and our new ribbon!  How cute is that!?

A beautiful Bracket Frame in Avonlea.

Gorgeous flower on this My Creations Cube!

Alright--now I found two pictures that had disappeared when I typed up my earlier posts--well, they won the game of hide and seek earlier, but I found them!  The first one is the ONE picture I took of  the colored cards for the contest.  I think it is beautiful!

The next one is my very first project we did--a very simple card that we got to try out the new pigment inks with.  I found out quickly that I needed to be more liberal with the ink, lol.

The following pics are projects they talked about and showed some techniques to us on how to do certain parts.  I would literally be typing forever to explain it all, so if you really like something and have a question about how they did that (hee, hee) then ask away and I will help if I can!  ;)

Whew!  Thanks so very much for staying with me on my journey to St. Louis and back!  I hope you learned something from our adventure together!  Here are just a few parting pics as we close.  :)

Thank you for making my trip super-spectacular, roomies!  :)
 

Cannot wait to do it again sometime!  :)

St. Louis Regional Day 2!

I have plenty more to share with you about the Close to My Heart St. Louis Regional Celebration, so pour yourself some coffee and have a seat! 

Day two started off with one of my favorite things to talk about--the CRICUT!!!!  I have heard that there are some people who don't know what a Cricut Cutting Machine from Provocraft is, but that seriously must be a rumor.  It is one of the most amazing paper crafting tools ever!  It is essentially a machine that is designed like a printer, but instead of printing out images, it CUTS them out!  I KNOW!!!  I feel your excitement!  If you have one, want one, or want to know more about them, feel free to contact me.  The Cricut is cartridge based, and does not need a computer to operate.  I currently have two different Cricut cartridges available from Close to My Heart, Art Philosophy and Artiste.  This session at St. Louis concentrated on the Artiste Collection. 

I learned quite a bit during this session, the most important fact being this:  Did you know that to get the best cuts and longest life out of your blade you should position the black arrow on your blade housing to face FORWARD?  ME EITHER!!!   Here is the way it should line up--and let me tell you, mine was not facing this way!  I adjusted it the second I got home.

Another important bit of info is the fact that on the Artiste cartridge 3D objects, the size you choose on your dial is the FINAL size of your 3D project when it is assembled.  

We talked about using the Center Point feature key on the Cricut Expression (the BIG Cricut Machine.)  This is useful for when you need to use just a certain portion of a pattern paper, or even cutting a photograph into a certain shape.  You just place the item you want to cut on your mat, load it, move the blade to the center of the area you want to cut, and push "Center Point."  Now whichever shape you choose will cut out AROUND this center point.  Pretty nifty if you ask me!  Just a tip though--always do a practice cut on scraps!  ;)

Now, I have no clue how I did not know this, but you can change your image size increments in the settings menu on your Expression machine.  This can give you smaller cuts!  Here is how to find the screen on your Expression 2:

First click on the wrench from the home screen.

Then use the arrow on the right to advance to...

This setting icon...and click.

This will show the following screen where you can change your size increments or change from cm to mm:

Have you ever wanted to make a true 12 inch border, but could not because the largest cut will not be that long?  I learned how to do it!!!  It is simply a matter of tricking your machine, lol.  Go into the settings again by clicking on the little tool icon.  Use the arrow again to find this little icon:

Click it and you will see this screen where you can choose the 12 x 24 mat size.

You can use this setting even if you DON'T have that size mat!  It will trick your machine into believing that it can actually cut a true 12" length of a border now!  They told us to set the size to 13 inches and adjust your paper accordingly to be a little farther down, but I am not sure why you can't just make it 12"?  I will have to play around with it and see.  I would have NEVER thought of this!  VERY good info for us scrapbookers!  :)

OK, now,  the changing of settings becomes important when you are decorating our Bracket Frame.  There were a couple of consultants that shared the sizes of their bracket frame cuts that they found will perfectly cover the frame at the proper size.  One said 10.9 cm was exactly right and another said to use 10 3/4 inches.  I will try it and let you know in a later post.  Feel free to experiment and let me know in the mean time!   (Use scrap paper first!!!)   ;)

The next major presentation was about how to run successful clubs.  I was very interested in this and was able to get many great ideas from the three fabulous consultants who shared their insights with us.  Sarah Paige Gruber, Brenda Rose, and Shari Froemming were a delight to listen to and are all very successful and talented at their craft.  They each go about their clubs in in very different ways so I think one of the keys here is finding YOUR niche and doing it how it works for YOU.   Nobody could have said it better than Dr. Seuss himself:

Tomorrow I will begin to share the projects we created in St. Louis!  Well, at least the ones I have finished!!!  ;)  Here is a sneak peak!

My St. Louis Regional Contest Entries

OK, so I rearranged the order of my posts juuuuust a bit.  I have been absolutely dying to share these projects with my teammates (read Diana, lol), but was keeping them under wraps until after the contests.  Well, the contests are long over!  First up is my entry to the Card contest using the new Alcohol Markers.  I have not had any training in the pretty coloring and shading that some of you are so amazing at, so I approached this one from another angle and used the markers in sort of random coloring.  I also did not take any pics of the other entries because I have no idea yet how to color like that, lol, sorry!  You will just have to take my word for it that they were amazing and ALL variations of coloring in pictures, so I was apparently clueless in this one.  No prize for this one, but I absolutely adore it.  :)

Yep, my coloring stinks, but I love the card!  I can do this one in so many different colors and plan on making some sets to sell with different sentiments.  This one will go to the next lucky couple I know getting married.  :)  I used a silver brad in the center and some bitty sparkles around the medallion edge.  This Black Tulle Ribbon is simply mahvelous, darling!

The Love Life My Acrylix stamp set provided the perfect background pattern.  Then I used Beautiful Friendship My Acrylix for the medallion shape, and the Avonlea Scrapbooking Workshop on the Go Stamp set for the sentiment.

My favorite new product (I may have mentioned that before), Shimmer Trim,  made itself at home bordering the sentiment.

I even added the flourish stamp from the background to the envelope.  SO who's getting married?!  ;)


NEXT up is my entry for the 3D object contest using the new chalkboard paper or shapes.  Again, no prize, but man you should have seen the competition!!!  Wowzers there are some super-talented consultants out there, and I had no idea how these things went.  NOW I know, lol.  Anyway, I used the chalkboard paper and my cricut to make my favorite of the 3D shapes--the Magazine File filled with cards in the same beautiful Avonlea paper.

 Slate Satin Polka-Dot Ribbon?  Check.   Shimmer Trim?  Oh you betcha!

I used an antiqued copper brad and a couple of stamps from the Avonlea Scrapbooking Workshop on the Go for this embellishment. 

Now, for some pics of some of the other entries...

The winner:

and some of my faves...

They did not post the names of the consultants who created these, so I cannot even mention the fabulous designers, sorry!

Now, back to our regular programming tomorrow!  ;)