Design Your Own Studio J Layout

Now you can design your own layouts in Studio J or add more photo wells to existing layouts. I am in seventh heaven about this!!!! This video shows you how, but you have to wait several seconds for it to start past the green title card, while the narrator is speaking. It will begin shortly. Enjoy the best new addition to Studio J. Questions? Call me!

Studio J Scrapping

Here's a quick (and I do mean quick) video on Studio J techniques. I always learn something new with each video, and this time it was a revelation about journaling across two pages. One thing I would have done differently (and there are sooooo many options) would be to leave the green boxes off the white Merry Christmas text. The white text showed up fine over the cute photo, but the green boxes eliminates too much of the photo. Of course, if there's something you want to cover up (a muddy paw print on the carpet, perhaps?) using colored text boxes and other My Stickease embellishments are a good solution.

Alcohol Marker Madness

Close To My Heart has a new collection of alcohol markers in shades coordinating with the CTMH signature colors, and two shades of each color comes in a 2-pen pack for easy color shading projects. I have a fairly large collection of Copic markers already, and find that the CTMH markers are just as easy to use when coloring stamp projects. You can color your image after stamping, or use the markers to ink up your stamp for the image. Watch this video for a demonstration, and wait for the special "spray" tip at the the end of the video.

Special Storage Makes Crafting More Tidy

Versatile Shapes with Close to My Heart Acrylic Stamps

This little video will show you how to get the most of your acrylic stamps from Close to My Heart by bending and shaping them. Enjoy!

Cute Card Holder Project using Cricut Artiste

The new Close to My Heart cartridge for Cricut includes many 3D projects. Shauna, one of our Tuesday night gathering crafters, fell in love with the card holder project on page 140 of the new Autumn/Winter Idea Book showing the September Stamp of the Month. I found this video on YouTube to show the easy steps for making the box with the new Artiste Cricut cartridge. Enjoy!

P.S. If you listen very carefully, the crafter-Mommy on the video says her little boy is watching Lion King. His name is Maverick, which is the name of Bret's bulldog. You can see a 'bobble-head' greeting card I made featuring doggy Maverick in an earlier post on this blog. I named my son Bret after Bret Maverick (James Garner was a hottie!) and Bret named his dog Maverick. Many of you may think of Maverick as Tom Cruise's call sign on Top Gun, and maybe this video's little boy was named for him. BUT "Maverick" is actually a western cowboy term for an unbranded animal or one who takes an independent stand, as in politics. Maverick was the name of a western TV show back in the day, maybe before you were even born. The main character, Bret Maverick played by a young and dashing James Garner, was a gambler who got out of scrapes by wit and charm. Those shows were great fun in black and white!

New Tuesday Night Gatherings

The second Tuesday evening of each month will be the calendar date for our monthly Workshops on the Go. In October, we will be creating four boo-tiful scrapbook pages using the Moonlight Scrapbooking Kit (page 59 in the Idea Book). We have four dedicated scrappers at our monthly crop, and room for three to four more. If you want to join the Gathering Group, contact me and let me know so I can order enough supplies to have on hand. The October gathering is 10/9/12 and the order deadline is 9/25/12.

Each Gathering includes a CTMH Workshop on the Go kit and dessert for $35 (tax and shipping included, payable in advance). The Gathering Group will choose the next month's kit at each meeting. If you'd rather work on a different kit than the group, you are welcome to do so, but will be working independently. We still love you!

The November gathering will be held on 11/13/12 and there will be no gathering in December. The second Tuesdays for the first half of 2013 are: 1/8/13, 2/12/13, 3/12/13, 4/9/13, 5/14/13 and 6/11/13. Gatherings are planned for 6:30 - 10:00 p.m, but if you can't make it until 7:00, you're still welcome to join us!

Don't forget that Workshop on the Go kits help qualify you to order the Stamp of the Month for only $5.00 instead of $17.95 (available with a $50 or more purchase). The Stamp of the Month is exclusive to the month of your order, so if you see something you just have to have in the Idea Book, be sure to place a qualifying order with me during that month. Here is an example of projects made with the November Stamp of the Month: