Four Seasons

I read something recently where someone commented about how they love living in a country where there are four distinct seasons. That's something I also love about living in Australia, by the time you are getting tired of one season you know the next is just around the corner. It's currently autumn and I love that the nights are cooler after a long hot summer. We get winter rain in Australia, I enjoy the rainy days when I can stay inside and craft or read a good book. I have a tin roof patio and I really like the sound of rain on the tin roof.

I spent some time recently making cards and some were made with the lovely Happy Autumn stamp set from Close To My Heart D1550, I choose yellows an brown as my colours for the cards and I think they look quite cheery.

 

Creative Week

Here are  a few of my recent crafty projects, I enjoy looking for inspiration on blogs and pinterest.  There are so many very talented people out there who are so generously share their ideas with everyone. I find it difficult to come up with original ideas but I can happily duplicate someone's creations and sometimes I can come up with little changes to make it mine. these cards were made with last November's stamp of the month "It's The Little Things" I really like this stamp set. I sometimes like to stamp one of the images from the set on the envelope.

March Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to our Close to My Heart Stamp of the Month Australasian Blog Hop. If you have arrived here from Lauren Moore  you're in the right place. If you landed here by accident no problem, please join in by following the link at the end of this post.
 
March's Stamp of the Month "Choose Happy" S1503 is a beauty and I am sure everyone in the hop will have some wonderful ideas of how to use this stamp set.

You can get this stamp set for just $5.00 if you place an order for $75.00 with your CTMH consultant.

I love when I look at a stamp and an idea pops into my mind, when I saw this stamp set the scalloped oval frame immediately made me think of a cameo brooch.

So I had to put my thinking cap on and figure out how I could make this idea come to life. I saw a beautiful card on Clare Buswell's blog  but I wanted my card to have a vintage look so I used her card as inspiration. The female silhouette and the background behind the frame were both cut using the Artiste Cricut cartridge. I cut two silhouettes, one slightly smaller than the other. The smaller one in hollyhock and the larger in colonial white, this one I distressed with hollyhock ink. I cut a small black oval to back the silhouette. I stamped the scalloped frame with Versa Mark ink on colonial White card stock and embossed it with gold embossing powder, then fussy cut it. I used two papers from the Yuletide Carol Paper Pack to mat everything on. I thought these papers gave it the vintage look I was after. Unfortunately the ribbon to make the bow is now discontinued. I love this ribbon it's a beautiful cream colour, but you can change the colour to suit your project with different inks, it accepts colour quite readily. Finally I added a Happy Birthday sentiment but you can change the sentiment to suit your occasion.

My second card uses the floral frame, I coloured a few of the flowers with the Shin Han markers, then fussy cut it. I added three little roses from the stamp set Coming Up Roses Jeanette's Archive C1579 a butterfly from the Card Word Puzzle Occasions C1494 and the Choose Happy sentiment.

Here is another card using a different frame, they are all so cute but this one made me think a big fluffy cushion and anyone that has cats know that all cats love sleeping on a cushion.

 To continue on the hop please go and see what  Denise  has created. We all love to know what you think of our projects so please leave a comment as you hop along.