Birthday Card - With a Twist!

The time has come for another Close To My Heart stamp of the month blog hop! If you've come here from Michelle Nist's blog, you're on the right track. Once you're ready to move on from here, Kimberly Smith has your next stop on the hop.

CTMH has provided us another fun stamp set for February. Piece of Cake has 10 fun stamps perfect for birthdays and other celebrations. I chose to highlight this fun stamp set with a twist card (some people call it a flip card or swing card), in a full A2 size (that's 4.25 x 5.5). Basic instructions are below the photos, if you'd like to make your own.

Here's the front of the card: I used both paper piecing and coloring with markers for this image, then popped it up on dimensional adhesive. You'll want to use an Archival Black stamp pad when you use water-based markers to color your image. I used a My Legacy Writer to draw a border around the image area to tie in with the pattern paper (B&T paper is from the Daydream paper pack).

This is the fully opened card. The center panel has "twisted" to reveal the other side. I again used the Archival Black stamp pad to stamp my sentiments. I paper pieced my image, using markers to color in portions of the candles and cake plate edge. My image is again popped up on dimensionals, and my border is drawn with a My Legacy Writer.

Here you can see the back of the card base and the image for the front of the card. I use the portion of the center panel that "hides" behind the card front to sign my card. This little area is a handy spot for this!

Now, if you'd like a quick lesson on making the card, stick around! Otherwise, hop along to Kimberly's post.

If you'd like to make your own card, you'll cut a cardstock base sized 6.25" x 5.5". You will then cut inside the card 1" from the edge along the short sides. Do the same on the long sides, but be sure to leave the center 1" uncut. You'll make your folds along the edges of this uncut area. Make one fold a "mountain" fold, and the other a "valley" fold. The mountain fold will be on the left side facing you, and the valley on the right side. If you need more details, there's a great tutorial on Split Coast Stampers that uses a smaller card size, but the rest of the directions are the same.

If you need more help, feel free to post here, or email me. I'll be happy to help!

My Card for Kayla

Kayla is a 6yo girl with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. To make matters worse, her Daddy is also sick, with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. A fellow blogger is asking, on behalf of Kayla's family, that people take a few moments to send Kayla a card to cheer her up while she's stuck in the hospital.

I took less than 30 minutes this morning (would have been less, but my DD is home sick from school & wanted to make a card too!) and made this cute card to send to Kayla.

All of the papers are from Basic Grey's Oh Baby - Girl line, and the cat stamp is from Inkadinkadoo's clear Gemstone Cats set. I added adhesive rhinestones where the stamp indicates. The "smile" embellishment is from Making Memories.

I can't post Sarah's card for Kayla yet, as she has lots of stickles still drying! Will try to get that up later.

To read the full story on Kayla's family, and get the address to send Kayla a card, visit the My Organized Chaos blog. If you choose to participate, Thank You! I know it will make her day.

Just a quick FYI, I am still working on finishing the craft room reorganization. I've been making good progress, but it's hard to keep going when I have 3 kids who want to join me every time I go in there! Hope to be able to post results by the end of the week.

A Winner and...

Thanks to random.org, my "resolution" winner is Karen, who posted January 6, 2010 9:58 AM. Karen, please contact me with your mailing info! In the meantime, I'll be looking to see what I have that may help you with your resolution to actually USE those scrapbook supplies!

Now, for the "and": I've finally gotten the DVDs and storage shelves out of my craft room! I got some nifty goodies at Ikea to help organize what I already have, and have started putting things back in the room. I'll share the complete setup with you when it's done, but for now I wanted to share a little organizational tidbit that also looks great!

I use the Cropper Hopper vertical paper storage system for most of my papers. In the past, I've always labeled them with my handy Brother label maker, but that looks, well, boring. Thanks to another CTMH consultant (I forget who, sorry), I decided to put the current Stamp of the Month set to good use. There are different "label" looking stamps in the set, along with some sentiments about friends. I stamped the distressed looking stamp (it was the easiest to cut!) in Twilight ink on Avery sticker paper several t imes, and cut each label out leaving a thin border. I then used a small alpha stamp set to stamp my categories on the labels in Black. My stamp set is discontinued, but good current sets from CTMH are Sans Alphabet or Tiny Typewriter. Depending on how you categorize, you could use a little larger alpha as well.

Here's how mine turned out. I hope this gets you curious about how the rest of it will look when it's done!

Winner Coming Soon...

Sorry I'm late getting a winner posted! I've had an awful cold, but I promise I'll get a winner picked today. It just has to wait until I at least get some kids out of the house!

Happiness is...

an organized pantry!


Some of you know that my resolution for this year is to continue decluttering our home & ORGANIZE! In fact,if I chose a word for this year, organize would be the one. Since I can't work on the room I really want to work on, I started in the pantry.

We are somewhat blessed with a large pantry in our house. I say somewhat because I really wish it wasn't in a shared space with the laundry/mudroom. Plus, I don't care for wire shelving, but this is what the builder installed. I'm too cheap to spend money on new, so I'm working with what I have. I did not buy anything new for this project, but I did buy a few things last year and even before, some of which I'm just finally using! Here's what I have done:

• I had a sheet of plexiglass cut to size for one shelf. I put things like extra spices on this shelf. I can't stand to have things tipping over or falling through.
• I have some thinner plastic sheets that are made for this purpose across 2 shelf sections. This is where my can racks reside so the legs don't fall through the wires.
• I purchased 3 can racks last year from LTD Commodities for about $4 each. They are a little flimsy, but once I figured out how to use the extra supports that came with them, they work pretty well. I use these for items we use frequently, but don't really buy a bunch of at one time. Each section has only one type of thing in it; I even had room to separate my light red and dark red kidney beans!
• I've picked up a couple of wire baskets at a garage sale. I use these on the bottom shelf for snacks & things so the kids can help themselves and I don't have stuff dumped all over the floor.
• Hubby got a great deal on canned veggies around Thanksgiving (like 50 cents a can for name brand - I HATE generic vegetables!), so he bought an entire case of each and brought them home in the boxes - what a smart man! Nothing tips over and they slid right in on the bottom shelf.
• I separated everything by type to make it easier to find. All baking items are on one shelf, pasta & rice on another, etc. Extra cereal & stuff I don't want the kids in go on the top shelf on one side, along with the ice cream maker, coffee maker, & other stuff I rarely use on the other side.

I hope this provides you with a little inspiration! Now I just can't wait for the DVD cabinet to arrive. Then I clear them out of the craft room, remove the shelving they're on to the basement, and take a trip to Ikea for my new workstations. Then, several days of reorg later, I'll be all ready for crops again!

If you've read this far, leave a comment letting me know your resolution/goal this year. A random person will win a prize! I'm not sure what it will be yet; let's see if I have something that will work with goal of the winner! I'll choose a winner on Tuesday, January 12th.

National Papercrafting Month

Did you know that January is National Papercrafting Month? Get a whole month of daily tips and daily giveaways at the official blog site! Close To My Heart is giving away a Felicity kit every day this month. If you'd like to buy one outright, or earn one free with purchase, check out all of the details here.

Don't forget to visit the National Papercrafting Month blog daily for your chance to win!