Hello crafty friends!
I finally got my hands on the Close To My Heart/Cricut Artbooking cartridge and oh my goodness. I seriously think this is one of the best cartridges that Provo Craft has ever put out. It has a great font, a ton of pre-welded titles, pre-made mini books (or LOs) where everything is designed for you already, basic shapes, banners, accents, backgrounds... I could go on and on but I'd rather show you!
Here is just one LO I made (click on the picture to enlarge).
This uses the "Teen Layout" pre-made, pre-figured-out layout on page 81 of the
Artbooking handbook. I used my own colors and made the page about my 10 y/o,
of course. No teens here yet, thankfully! :)
Left-sided page:
Right-sided page:
Now, originally I made my Cricut cuts and was going to leave it all as is, just add an embellishment or two. But the boring cardstock just about demanded (LOL) that I stamp on it, distress it, something, to make it less boring. So I did stamp on it. Normally I draw dashed lines around the perimeter of photo mats or the 12x12 paper, but I found a stamp and used that instead. See the sun rays above with all those lovely dashed lines? Yup. That's a stamp, and the circle part with the chevron pattern is another stamp.
Here are a few accents. This banner with "about you" was cut from the Art Philosophy cartridge. The alpha is CTMH's Keyboard Kraft Alpha. The wooden piece is from the wooden Mini-Medley Accents. And there's bling too- Opaques Mocha adhesive gems. On this banner I did the stitching with a marker, by hand.
This stamped border is from the set called Love Life. It really
brightened up that boring corner of my background cardstock. I also used my pen to outline the whole title. There wasn't a shadow of the shape to be cut and I can't just leave it like that... when there's no shadow I always outline the cutout for just a bit more depth. You can see towards the bottom of the "1" where my marker became possessed and I messed up. I will ignore my OCD and leave it as is.... :)
Another shot of the accent pieces and bling.
This twine is also part of the wooden mini-medley accents.
The cool part about the frames on the LO above is that I still have
these two mats left over for another project. :)
Here's the sun part on the left-sided page. I stamped from the same Love Life set and added bling, more wood, and the twine.
Here's a view of what I used; click on each name to go to my CTMH website for ordering purposes.
-- Love Life stamp set
So, I had that Love Life stamp set out and decided to make a card with it. It's a fantastic stamp set. Here's a picture of it along with the paper I wanted to possibly use.
These are all the stamped and cut elements of my card. I used the three-circle
thingie as a background on my Topiary cardstock, using Topiary ink
too for a tone-on-tone effect. The orange flowers are stamped with Sunset.
I decided not to use the rose flower side of the patterned paper, only the green dots.
My completed card. Except for the small flowers, I inked the edges
of everything in either Topiary or Sunset, and I added some bling too.
Don't forget to stamp the inside! I made two of this card and on the right one
I didn't ink my stamp properly so I had to do damage control by adding another
stamp... I like the only on the left better, the one where I inked the green swirly
stamp correctly. My sister likes the haphazard-looking swirlies on the right card... go
figure. I used the Topiary ink and the stars and hearts are stamped with Sunset ink.
Detail shot:
That was my Artbooking adventure for today. Stay tuned for
more as I explore this cartridge even further! Until then,
stay crafty, my friends. LOLOL
Topiary ink pad can be purchased HERE
Sunset ink pad can be purchased HERE
