Baby You A Song...Cruise Meets Artbooking for Heart 2 Heart Challenges

Welcome back to another Heart 2 Heart Challenge for the month of August!  My kiddos head back to school today, and I am torn between pushing them out the door and hanging on to them for dear life.  Sigh.  Anyone feel me there?

Anyhow, this new challenge is an amazing one!  We are calling it With a Song in My Heart.  What is the song in YOUR heart right now?  We want you to be inspired by it for this challenge and use that song, along with your Close to My Heart products, to create a project of your own!

MY song is one that I have heard two versions of over and over and over, and over, do you catch my drift here???  It is called Cruise, and my country heart prefers the original version by Florida Georgia Line.  My teenager, on the other hand, is rockin' out to the remix featuring Nelly, lol.  I have grown accustomed to both this summer, and it has sort of become our theme song around here.  :)  If you haven't heard it before, take a peek HERE (G country version) and HERE (PG remix.) 

Anyhow, let me tell you about the PROJECT now!  My teen finally got her driver's licsense (am I the ONLY one who misspells that word every time I write it???) license this summer.  To celebrate the fact that she gets to drive to school instead of riding the bus, I made her a little folder to hold her insurance card and registration papers in her car!  :)

I used the new Close to My Heart Artbooking Cartridge to simply cut out the folder shape on page 43 of the handbook with my Laughing Lola Paper Packet.  This is what it looked like before and after simply folding along the score lines and applying a bit of adhesive.

This is my daughter's little white Toyota!  :)  It is a cute little car stamped in White Daisy Pigment Ink from the Fast and Furious My Acrylix.  I know she doesn't drive with the music too loud, so it is a bit of an exaggeration, lol.  I could not find any musical embellishments, so I made my own with these little black sequins from the Mini Medley Accents Black collection.  I just drew the lines on with a black marker.  :)  The puffs of dust behind her car are so cute with these Striped Slate Twist Ties!

I love this little word bubble stamp from the Laughing Lola Workshop on the Go Scrapbooking Kit.

I blinged it up with some tiny sparkles of all colors present and past.  The large black swoosh of sparkles is from the Sparkles Flourishes Black.  The purple bow on the paper clip is from the Laughing Lola Assortment--isn't that brilliant!  Little fish-tail flags from the zip strip and tan glitter paper finish it off.

Inside the folder, I added some cute details as well with the Lola workshop My Acrylix and All the Details.

The adorable file folder is on page 42 of the Artbooking handbook.  I cut it out of Laughing Lola Gold...it has a bit more of a greenish tinge than the pictures show...ah, lighting how you taunt me!  ;)
The cute stoplight is from the Cricut Artiste Cartridge, and the keys are from the Cricut Art Philosophy Collection (I didn't want them to feel left out!)  ;)

Can you guess the three kinds of glittery products I used in this stoplight?  :)  I'll reveal it at the bottom of my post, so hang with me a sec!

Well, the folder was an absolute hit, complete with squeals of glee, so I am one happy Momma right now!

You know the drill by now, right?  It is YOUR turn to listen to the song in YOUR heart to join in our fun!  Come and link up with us over at Heart 2 Heart Challenge Blog and you could be the top chick this month!  I can't wait to see you sparkle and shine!  Hey, is there a song about that???  :)

Speaking of sparkle....those three kinds of sparkle I used on the stop light are RED shimmer trim, green glitter paper, and tan glitter paper!  You just can't have too much glitter! 

Color Dare #56 An Analogus Lesson

Happy Color Dare!  It is Friday finally, and you know what that means around here--a new challenge over at the Color My Heart Color Dare!!!  This week we have an analogous color challenge using the Close to My Heart Colors Buttercup, Pear, and Lagoon.

According to Wikipedia, "Analogous colors are groups of colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel." These colors tend to be pleasing to the eye when grouped together.

For my sample project on the Color My Heart Design Team, I decided to make a little gift box that I haven't been able to try yet from the Close to My Heart Cricut Artiste Cartridge. 

You can find the nesting sides of this little box on page 74 of the Artiste Handbook, on the Mother's Day Key.  I cut it out at 1 inch on a B&T Pattern from the Chantilly Paper Packet with my Cricut Expression 2 cutting machine.  There is a perfectly adorable shape to use for the top and bottom of the box, but I decided to use a different one that is found on page 53 of the Art Philosophy Cartridge instead.  I cut it out of White Daisy CS at 3 inches.  See how versatile this little box can be?  So many possibilities!  :)

The sentiment is one of our brand new size M My Acrylix stamps called Heartfelt Birthday Wish.  I stamped in Pear Pigment Mini from the Adventure Pigment Inks Mini Tower.  Then I dusted it with Clear embossing powder and gave it a shot of my heating tool to turn it into a shiny, raised outline.  It was perfect for coloring in with my Pear Alcohol Ink Marker now!  I just used layers of strokes to create an ombre effect in no time!  :)  A tiny little Lagoon colored Aqua Dot finishes off the "i" nicely.

Embellishing the side of this box was super-fun!  First, I colored my Color-Ready Seam Binding Ribbon with the Buttercup Alcohol Ink Marker.  After tying that on, I added fishtail banners of the Green Glitter Paper and one that I made with White Daisy Cardstock and my Lagoon Houndstooth Washi!  The twisty Slate Striped Twist Ties add JUST the perfect amount of fun!  LOVE it!

If you want to put one of these little boxes together, it is super-easy.  I used glue dots to attach the top and bottom like this...see how the top and bottom nest?  It is a great little box for a jewelry gift!

I showed you mine...now YOU show us YOURS!  We want to see your creations with the Close to My Heart colors Pear, Lagoon, and Buttercup.  You can add any neutrals that you like, just not other colors.  If you don't have CTMH products, feel free to substitute the colors for some that are similar.   Just link up with us at Color My Heart for your chance to win one of the coveted Color Dare gem badges.  Did you know we have FOUR now?  :)

Can't wait to see what you make!  :)

At H2H There's Water, Water Everywhere!

Hello again!  Welcome back for another week at Heart 2 Heart Challenges with Team Sunset!  This week's challenge at Heart 2 Heart is Water, Water Everywhere.  Chose a way to make your project include something to do with water.  Well, I really don't know anything that says water better than washing your hands! 

This challenge turned out to be great motivation for me to do a project re-do.  I had found this sign on Pinterest, and made one of my own a while back that you can see here.  It is almost painful to go back that far in my blogging days, lol!  If you look, you will see that my link doesn't even work!  Oy vey!  Here is my original inspiration for this saying.

And here is my re-do!

I think we have some improvements upon last time, no?  ;)  Let's get into the details!  I started by going into Cricut Craft Room to play around with the fonts on the Cricut Art Philosophy and Artiste Cartridges.  You can do all sorts of things to alter your images and cuts, so if you want to play with word art, this is the place to be!   It is totally free to use the Craft Room, you just have to own the cartridges to cut the things you design with them.  This is what it looked like on my screen...

See how I was able to resize the letters and even tilt some of them?  You do that by clicking and dragging your cursor over the words to group them.  Then you can move them anywhere or edit them as a whole word.  After I finished getting it all laid out just right (red), I copy pasted each portion to another tab (blue) so it would be spaced easily to fit all my papers on one cutting mat.  Huge time saver there, and I didn't have to cut out the entire thing for each color paper I wanted to use!  Did I mention how much I love this program?

I didn't want it to cut the letters just yet, though, so I switched out my blade housing for the Cricut black marker.  This would be the base for attaching my lettering.  Could you imagine lining up all those letters freehand?  Yikes!  I did a test run on scrap paper before actually writing it on this pattern from Close to My Heart's Surf's Up Paper Packet.

Then I laid out all the paper on my cutting mat according to which color paper I wanted each word to be and ran the cutting mat through just once!  The outline of the marker gave the perfect pop to the patterns I used and even allowed me to offset some of the letters for a great effect.  I love the dark grey glitter paper! 

I popped up some of the letters with foam tape.  See the long arrows stamped on each side of the phrase?  I used Crystal Blue Ink and a brand new Autumn stamp set called One Way Borders to add those...pointing down for hands under the water, and pointing up for prayers on the way!  ;)

Finally, the blinging could begin!  This great wave was cut right on my Cricut E2 since the NEW Artbooking Cartridge is not available in CCR yet.  Have you pre-ordered yours yet???   I also added glittery buttons and clear buttons as bubbles, and some Small Sparkle Flourishes and these great new Twist Ties (available August 1st) as some splash!

I used my paper piercing tool to give them a twist like this!  

I added a cluster of splash to the top corner too...those are blue sparkles in the buttons.  They won't be back in the next Idea Book, so get them by the end of July before they run out!

I hope you are inspired to come play along with us at Heart 2 Heart Challenges!  We would LOVE to see what you make!  Here is a quick link to the rules.

You have until the end of the month for all of the July challenges, so go get your craft on and show us YOUR sparkle!  :)