Video showing retiring products and never before seen projects

Today on the blog is a video to show more retiring products and a project or two. I sound sad and I am. It you looked at my post yesterday,  you can see that lots of wonderful products are retiring.  Tomorrow I will focus on the 3 cricut collections retiring.  Thank you for stopping by.

Watercolor card featuring wavy blossoms and hostess stamp funny birthday

I took a simple watercolor gradiention(dark to start, but then more and more water so the color fades out) then literally threw some watercolor on top, trimmed the water to fit the card base and added two stamps and some sequins.  So much fun!! I made a video to show the two stamp sets used. They retire July 31 and I think they are must have in any stamp collection.  I have colored the wavy blossom stamped images with shinhan makers too and they do great with this design. Comment below, if you are interested in having a party thru fb, catalog, or , at your home, or thru my online website.  shop my website www.frommtheheart.ctmh.com  Thank you for stopping by!!

Watercolor flower card

Today I am sharing fun with watercolors. This background was made over the 4th of July weekend. I made several and let my 8 year old twin cousins make the rest. They went thru 30 sheets of watercolor paper. Since I knew that would probably happen, I brought a cheap watercolor paper pack from Walmart. CTMH carries amazing watercolor paper, but I didn't want any to be wasted should water get spilled. I will share the video I made to show step by step how a background like this was made in a future post. I did several videos but had a super busy week and weekend with no time to edit and post.

The main stamp set I used is Blossoming Expressions

I stamped a bunch of these detailed only flowers on watercolor paper with black memento ink . Then I lightly painted one coat of my CTMH watercolor using little paint and a very wet brush to fill in. After it dried I went back with less water and lots of paint on a few areas to give a highlight. That is all I did. Super easy and I will make a video to show this too in another video. This stamp set is unfortunately on the retired list and I really love it. I will try to show a few more things with this stamp set before it retires 7/31/16. Get it while you can!

If you click here, it will take you to my CTMH website to see it(hopefully buy it).

Here is the card that I made after cutting out all those flowers!

The background paper is a  technique called watercolor smooshing and it has some splattering on it too. The sentiment "You are Fabulous" came from the CTMH stamp set Tickled Pink . I added one of the vellum flamingoes from the Calypso complements pack.  

For the inside I used a watercolored flower from the January past stamp of the month that is now retired. I like the finishing touch it gives without taking up room for greeting.



Here's the links to all other CTMH products used

white daisy card base with envelopes

CTMH Watercolors

paint brushes

Not shown but used is a ziplock bag to smoosh. I will be getting the step by step video up soon. Get your watercolor set ordered with other supplies listed and you will be all set to make these fun projects with me! Thank you for stopping by. Please contact me with any questions or comments. I will be quick to reply and happy to help. I'd love for you to recreate these at home. It is fun with or without kids and I did this outside on a hot day and it was a blast!!! Visit my CTMH website to shop anytime: www.frommtheheart.ctmh.com 

I'd love to have you on my team! On my CTMH website, Click What we do, then click be a consultant to join or click here!

Check out this amazing consultant kit

Here's the perk for joining in July:

Early Bird Sign-Up Special

Get new products FREE by signing up as a Consultant!

Pick either collection of the new Whimsy, Adventure, or Enchantment paper pack (will release in August) and get the complements too, all free just for July.

Want to join? Click here!

What I've been doing.

Hello! I have been taking some time off to rest my carpals since my wrists had been hurting and found crocheting actually helps those with problems! Knitting bothered it, but crocheting does not. I learned to crochet at long last back in May of this year. I was shown by my great grandmother when I was 6 , but I could only ever do a chain stitch. I learned knitting several years ago in less than 30 minutes. I do not know why I struggled with crochet. It is not hard. I was fortunate to spend 8 years with my great grandmother before she died at age 93. I have vivid memories of her crocheting up a storm these beautiful zig zag (chevon)blankets and I have a few of them. My first project is crocheting plastic bags to make a rug for a homeless person. I joined a craft group that meets weekly and they taught me to crochet in one short night. It has been interesting learning something new. I twisted and turned my stitches and my first project is far from perfect. I will show pictures and give the details of how to do it, if anyone is interested. 
 My retired friend from work is a member of this craft group. It is thru her church and these ladies are clever and talented. For Mother's Day they made these pocket cards that involved folding thin 12x12 paper and making a cut to make the card. It is a great way to use up thin scrapbook paper and it makes the card have a pattern on both sides.  They put flower seeds in the pocket cards and gave them to every mother for Mother's Day at their chirch. I recreated 35 of those cards to give out at work for spirit week. The guys received more masculine print cards and herb seeds. That went over well and it was a super cheap project. It felt good to use so much paper too. For Father's day gifts, we made more of these pocket cards, and a girl made crosses out of washers she super glued together. We also worked on vacation bible school projects their church didnot have the budget for the theme other vbs where doing(submerged), so they came up with their own theme of weird animals and we made all the prep for the kid's projects. We collected green plastic 20 oz bottles and cut the bottom off. The bottom of the bottle flipped over became a shell for turtles the kids were making. We cut probably 100 bottles and recycled the rest. The kids where also hot gluing wooden clothes pins together in the shape of a cross. The kids got the fun parts of assembling and keeping their creations. That is what I have been doing for the most part other than gardening and yoga. I currently have lots of cherry tomatos in my garden and blackberries in my flower bed. I plan to make blackberry freezer jam this week.  I enjoy blogging.  It is just hard for me to do from my phone. I am getting a new computer by the end of this month and it will be so much easier to share my projects with you. I wanted to share the great CTMH incentive this month first before I shared what I have been doing because it is an amazing deal. It really is. I want to get my business to not just be a hobby anymore. I want to get over my fear of putting myself out there and share the experience with others. CTMH has been a positive outlet in my life and the people I have met and work with are amazing. I have a great team that, if you join me, you would also be a part of. I am commited to helping people.  I have been doing it all my life. I really care about helping you succeed. I know I have just been a hobbyist, but I do know how to help others have the business they want to have.  I know lots of people in other direct sales businesses that are only about getting what they want. They would promote something even if it was not great. I just can't do that.  I stopped my Jamberry website because I didn't like paying $10 a month for a website and getting no sales. I still like Jamberry and can order, but truely my passion is card making and paper. I love that CTMH gives me my website for free. I wouldn't have stayed so loyal to this company,  if they were not so great to me.  I alsoa m amazed by Cricut. The company is fantastic.  I have been using the ipad app(when my ipad works) for quick projects. The computer will help me get back to doing cricut projects. My ipad just started one night jumping from different windows and so it has nade it hard to use. My laptop's screen just stopped working one day. I have had a difficult time lugging a tv around with the laptop and a bunch of cords to use the new design features Cricut released. I will get back to making cricut explore videos by next month. I  have a bunch of CTMH projects to share that I have made of the new products releasing in August, but before some amazing products retire, I want to get my projects up to show, in case anyone wants to order from me.  Someone recently said that by not keeping a blog updated,  it looks like that person doesn't care. Thus, the long winded explanation.  Thank you for reading this. I appreciate my blog followers. I am now this was super long and all over the place. Just my random thoughts I wanted to share with an update. Have a great day!

July CMTH special!!!

I'd love to have you on my team!

You can meet me virtually on this video:

Check out this amazing consultant kit! You get a medium organizer full of CTMH products and everything to start your business. (or you can be a hobbyist!)

Here's the perk for joining in July:

Early Bird Sign-Up Special

Get new products FREE by signing up as a Consultant!

Pick either collection of the new Whimsy, Adventure, or Enchantment paper pack (will release in August) and get the complements too, all free just for July. This is a lot of value for $75 plus you get $50 in Special Product Credit. It basically makes the kits $25. I have been a hobbyist for 2 years just because I love the products! But, you can work your business and make money and earn amazing incentive rewards and even earn the incentive trip to Thailand!

Want to join? Click here!

CTMH Zoe paper scrapbook layout

I made this layout for my cousins as their dog's name is Zoie and I thought they'd enjoy a layout that showed every side of the paper. My idea was to handcut banner flags, but I wasn't sure how that would look with the rest or the elements I wanted. So, I used cricut design space to map out by layout and I videoed it. While I was videoing, I got excited about thd cricut artbooking cartridge and show some of it too. If you subscribe my email, you may have to visit my blog to watch the video.

 Thank you for watching and visiting me today! CTMH liquid glass really saved the day! I will have to showcase all the liquid glass uses I have discovered sometime. 

Damask Divas Happy Times Blog hop

Hello! You should have come from Mandy Baker! Thank you for hopping with us divas today! I am happy to show off the gorgeous paper you get free from CTMH after each $60 purchase. I spent 120 so I got two packs of paper!!  Here is this gorgeous paper called Happy Times.

You can buy it for 14.95 here or get it free with qualifying purchase. This paper pack has gold foil in some pages! That bottom pick and gold flower design is one of them. It is absolutely beautiful and only available in May as part of National Scrapbooking month! There's even a matching stamp set!

It's called the Happy Times Stamp Set and it is 17.95. I love the poppies!

One wonderful thing about being a consultant with CTMH is getting a chance to preview and purchase specials or new items in advance! So, I went on a big shopping spree and brought almost all of the new Seasonal Expressions 2 catalog items. You can too starting today! There's the cutest paper packs and goodies to coordinate with it. I had have to have this stamp set Tickled Pink and the die cuts to go with it! Here's what the stamp set looks like

Now on to the project!

I used a 6 1/2 x 5 card base. For my first card, I cut the pink and gold foil paper at 2x 6 1/2 and the white with gold foil paper at 3x6 1/2. I  stamped tickled pink in cotton candy ctmh ink and i die cut the flamengo in white daisy paper. I stamped the flamengo in pixie and the wing in cotton candy. The legs were stamped in slate and the beak in honey. 

For the second card, i wanted to show off the pretty patterned papers in this set. I cut the floral and the pink ombre papers at 2 x 6 1/2 and the polka dot at 1 x 6 inches. The green at the bottom is from a zip strip. I stamped the sentiment on the back side of ombre scrap. I put the new rose gold foil tape along the top and bottom of the sentiment piece and around one of the flamengos neck as a scarf.

Here's the two cards together. I hope you enjoy National Scrapbooking month and will make some cards from the scraps. Thank you for hoping with us today! To start the hop from the beginning go to www.damaskdivas.com