May is National Scrapbooking Month

In celebration of National Scrapbooking Month, Close To My Heart is offering an exclusive promotion...It's a Miracle. This kit is available starting 15 April, while supplies last, to give ample time for you to order it to use during May. This kit features beautiful Spring inspired colors and papers, "miraculously" coordinated and easily transformed by you into stunning layouts or other creations.

A brochure is included which provides step-by-step instructions for completing two double-page layouts, with sufficient supplies left over, for card making or embellishments, making this kit a wonderful value!

The Miracle kit contains supplies in the exclusive CTMH colors of Sweet Leaf, Crystal Blue, Bamboo and Olive and the nuetral is Colonial White. This kit is an AMAZING value and includes: 1 Bamboo Cardstock

5 Colonial White Cardstock

1 Striped B&T

1 Floral B&T

1 Crystal Blue Die Cut

1 Sweet Leaf Die Cut

1 6" x 12" Stickease Assortment

1 6" x 9" Chipboard Assortment

12" Colonial White Waxy Flax

1 Colonial White Mini Medley Collection

3 Flip Flaps

2 Sponge Wedges

1 Brochure

Did I mention great value yet?? And this color combination works well with any other accent color you would want to highlight or bring out of your photos.

This sweet kit is available "miraculously" at discount, great discount or even absolutely free. Between 15 April and 31 May:

1. You can purchase the kit at $19.95 each.
2. Purchase $40.00 in product (before shipping and handling) and purchase the kit for $10.00
3. Purchase $60.00 in product (before shipping and handling) and purchase the kit for $5.00
4. Host a Home Gathering with sales above $300.00 and earn a kit for free!
5. Sign up as a new Consultant between 1 and 31 May and CTMH will include this kit free with your Consultant kit!

This kit can be the start to your National Scrapbooking Month crafting and celebrating.

Contact me if you have any questions. Peachy Heart Hugs, Debbie

Blog Difficulties...well, actually User Difficulties

As you know or can tell by my blog, my blogging abilities are pretty limited. I have been trying (truly) for 3 months to put our Stamp of the Month (SOTM) on my sidebar. I am just not making it happen. I have read, googled, searched, asked, edited, without results. So on my sidebar is only the title for the Apr SOTM and the link does not work. Soooo...here is the Stamp Set (SS) and info, via text. This set is great for scrapbooking and card making. And here is some artwork created with it. This artwork was made up by our corporate artists. Pretty huh? The papers and colors are from the Caboodle collection. If you have any questions about earning the SOTM at a reduced rate, or free; about the Caboodle papers or about CTMH or scrapping in general, just let me know. I would be pleased to share an answer or more! Happy Scrapping! Peachy Heart Hugs, Debbie

Caboodle Artwork

Happy Friday. Hope you have some fun activities planned for this weekend. My daughter Amanda, niece, Brianna and I will be headed over to the Air Museum in the morning to help do some grounds upkeep. Then, our reward will be to go the opposite direction, out to Lane's and get some Peach Ice Cream and probably pick some strawberries. Sounds like fun huh? Hope your plans are fun too. Here is more artwork created by our fabulously talented artists at CTMH Corporate. Don't you love it? The papers used are called Caboodle. They were brand new in our Spring 2010 Idea Book. The colors include Buttercup, Crystal Blue, Sorbet and Sweet Leaf. The two new complimentary stamp sets in this artwork are C1386, Boys at Play and C1387 Playin' Hard. If you have any questions about this artwork, or would like to see the stamp sets in person and you live local to me, contact me, I'd be glad to show them to you, as well as some artwork I have created with these stamps and papers. Have fun creating! Peachy Heart Hugs, Debbie

Amanda's 12.5 Birthday Party

Well, we missed Amanda's birthday in August, so I decided to plan her a SURPRISE 12 and a half birthday party. And boy was I succesful.

She did not believe it was for her. All the guests met beforehand at the Country Inn Suites and we were ready for her. She was so surprised!!

She had 8 guests spend the night...we made mini scrapbook albums, rag flip flops, had pedicures, went to Stevi B's for dinner and had a fabulous time.

Happy Birthday Amanda. We all love you! Peachy Heart Hugs, Momma

You Rock LO Two - "Gone Fishing"

This LO was made using the CTMH pp "You Rock" and the stamp set, C12356, Hook Line and Sinker.

The technique for club this month was "wet embossing". We used Olive and Outdoor Denim embossing powder to random stamp on the White Daisy Cardstock. I did not want the stamping to be too perfect, so we stamped the images lightly or tapped off any heavily stamped embossing powder. It gives the stamping a rougher or more rustic look to me. The random stamping was done on both strips of WD cardstock, however, shows up better on the left half of the LO because that strip of CS has a larger border, something to keep in mind as you place your random stamped images, hehe, not so random maybe, going for placement closer to the edges or between photo mats.

We had a lot of fun making these LOs. The fish idea was Patty's...she is after all our expert fisherman. I loved the fish on a line idea!

I really liked how this LO turned out, pretty simple and clean. It garnered me an invite to go fishing! Oh no, me...in a boat...fishing? Crazier things have happened hmm? Peachy Heart Hugs, Debbie

"You Rock"

These layouts were our club LOs for April 2010. They feature the CTMH pp "You Rock". I designed one LO highlighting the blues and greens of the kit and the other LO focuses more on petal, a more feminine color scheme.

I used the stamp sets D1403 "Star Power", D146 "You Rock" and C1388, "Rock Star" which compliment this pp perfectly. This LO was purposefly done with minimal stamping to allow my club members versatility in using the LO.

The second LO we made with this pp features a Fishing theme. I demonstrated "wet embossing" on this LO. We accomplished the wet embossing in a smudged fashion to give the designed paper a more rustic or rough look. I will post the second LO tomorrow.

My sweet friend and customer Vicki Lynn won this first LO with her purchase this month - yeah Vicki!!

Peachy Heart Hugs, Debbie

Missing In Action? No -- not...

MIA! Not really, just seems that way. Amanda and I were so busy with preparation for our cruise and the Lads to Leaders Convention that we seem to have been MIA...we were just buried under suitcases and shopping lists and puppets and speeches and scripts, and oh yeah, layouts too.

We had a fabulous time on our cruise. We went with two of my sisters and other extended family. We laughed, took pictures, ate, lounged around, took pictures, saw sites, ate, and did I say we ate? We had such a wonderful time and we came back in need of a vacation! Really!

This is one of my favorite pictures. We are in Progresso...it was not sunny that day, but still nice enough to enjoy the beach. Amanda loved playing in the sand and looking for shells. I loved WATCHING her do it! Yep, lazy ole me in a lounge chair enjoying her fun.

Believe it or not, there was TWO Scrappy events on our cruise - wahoo! You know who was the first to arrive for both sessions. This is my newest scrapping buddy, TJ, originally from South Africa. His Mom turned him on to scrapping - go Mom! He shared tips with us, cruise embellishments and some wonderful cruise LO ideas and we had a great time scrapping and sharing while on the cruise - no withdrawl pains for me -- thanks to TJ!!

Now here is my most favorite picture - not sure if you can tell it, but Amanda was so nervous. I was so proud of her though, she pushed off out into the water and by the time our session was

up, an hour and a half later, she was friends with Atlas. Unfortunately, I could not afford to buy all the pictures, only four of them...and hers was the best one. We enjoyed our time at Dolphinaris and would go again in a heart beat. If you ever get the chance to do an excursion with the Dolphins, take it...this is one excursion we will definitely do again.

We went straight from Mobile, our port, to the Lads to Leaders Convention, actually held in five different locations, but we attend the one in Atlanta. We had another wonderful year and all our kids did such an amazing job in preparing for convention. It is really humbling to see what great work and skills our children can develop for the Lord. I was very proud of the kids from our congregation and especially proud of Amanda's speech performance. I know how far she has come and she was totally awesome this year.

I was also very proud of Amanda and Ariana, who both competed in the L2L Individual Scrapbook event. Ariana competed in the 10-12th Grade Division. She earned third place for her cheerleading themed annual album.

Amanda competed with her "Hannah Montana" themed album in the 7-9th Grade Division of Winner's Circle, where she competes with other First Place (in the past) winners. She did not place this year, and she said, Mom, there were so many awesome books, I was just glad to compete with them. Makes a Mom proud. I was proud of both of my girls. Their albums were very well done and will hold memories of their year for them to always look back on.

I hope you enjoyed your spring break as much as we did and took lots of pictures. Now, I just need to scrap them, all nearly 700 of them, LOL. Peachy Heart Hugs, Debbie