Wedding or Anniversary cards with CTMH For Always Paper Packet

I could use these as wedding or anniversary cards.  I added Prima flowers and some stickers to CTMH For Always Paper Packet.  The black has a lovely lace doily pattern in it, very pretty.  Of course, I used my We Are Memories corner chomper to give the cards some corner styling.  I use those chompers on nearly every card because they are heavy duty to cut through more than one layer of card stock and give my cards such a nice professional touch.

<^..^> Lori

Valentine tea light packaging

Well I decided to give the altered Valentine tea lights to my CTMH consultant, Brenda.  It seemed a shame to cover up the CTMH logo on the side of the ribbon round container because of the recipient.  I just punched out a scallop from some Valentine paper scraps and put it on the top with a pop dot.  I could not fit 5 candles in the ribbon round container and get the top on so I used 4 tea lights and put a little pink tissue paper in between each tea light.  I think Brenda will love it.

Not so Idle Hands - tea light candle idea

I found a new blog that I love a couple of months ago.  It is Not So Idle Hands.  Love the ideas and one in particular spoke to me about customizing some tea lights.  I had that thought...you know the one that comes to you every time you see a neat craft idea...I could do that!  Well, I did do it this past Saturday.  I think it took me all of an hour at best to complete it.  I stamped them with a Valentine theme to give as gifts.

I bought a 24 pack of tea lights from Michael's in Fresh linen scent.  I really wanted vanilla scented candles but Hobby Lobby and Michael's were out of them.  My second choice was unscented and those were gone too. 

I used white tissue paper and punched it out with a 1 3/8 inch circle punch from SU!  The tissue wanted to tear when I punched it so I laid it on top of scrap card stock and punched through both layers.  Worked just fine. 

I used my Crop-A-Dile to punch a hole in the center of the 1 3/8 inch circles.  I found that I could stack many of them and punch the center at one time instead of doing them individually.  This hole is the for wick.

Next I used the small heart stamp from CTMH Tender Tags and a CTMH Holiday red ink pad to stamp the hearts all around the edge of the 1 3/8 inch circle.  If they did not come out evenly, I masked part of the circle and stamped a partial heart.  It looked ok and better than leaving a big gap of nothing. 

Then I put one stamped circle on each tea light.  I put the wick through the center hole. 

One at a time I heated the tea light with a SU! heat gun to melt the wax enough that the tissue would stick in the wax.  It took about 20 seconds per candle once the heat gun was hot.  I held the tissue in place with my tweezers but you could use a wooden skewer or something similar.  Otherwise the tissue wanted to blow off the candle.

I was thinking about how to package it.  I was going to use clear bags.  Not so Idle Hands used a pretzel bag.  I don't have that size.  But today I had a great idea on the packaging.  I have some plastic sleeves that CTMH ribbon rounds came in and they are the perfect size for tea lights!  Woohoo I get to repurpose them! Not So Idle Hands is really good at repurposing things.  It is so hard to throw things like those CTMH ribbon round tubes into the trash. 

Now I need to figure out how to decorate those sleeves.  I will post pictures of what I have done so far and post another picture when I get the sleeves decorated. 

October is Pastor Appreciation Month

Hannah and I baked white chocolate macadamia nut cookies last night. Honestly it was not all that hard...we used frozen dough that I buy from Market Day at the grade school. It helps support the school and gives me a shortcut when I am in a pinch for time. They are delicious cookies! Anyway we put 4 cookies in a baggie and put them in these cute Chinese boxes that I got on clearance after Halloween last year.

Recipe:

Ribbon: CTMH Designer Rounds Autumn, PaperTrey Dark Chocolate

CS: Bazzill textured

In: Versamark on the leaves, CTMH Chocolate for the sentiment

Misc: Michael's Chinese boxes

Stamps: CTMH Summer's Wave A1090

Take time to give your pastor(s) a note or a gift so they know that you appreciate them!

May God bless you today,

Shots from Stamp Club this weekend

No, my camera is still not fixed. I have an older camera that I gave the kids when we got our Elixim. It is an Olympus camera that is probably 15 years old but it still works.

We made 2 cards this weekend. I really like them. If I had to pick a favorite, I would be in trouble. Brenda comes up with some great ideas.

Recipe Mountain Scene:

Ink: CTMH Cocoa and Ponderosa Pine

Stamp: CTMH Catch of the Day C1277

Recipe Catch of the Day:

Ink: CTMH Garden Green, Chocolate, Black

Misc: Liquid Glass, sponge

Stamps: Beautiful Things D1298

The catch of the day used a technique featured on SCS by Beate Johns called Retiform. She is really good at techniques.

Cards made from CTMH BFF scraps after Sept Stamp Club

Well, here are the cards I made from the scraps from Brenda's purse project.

Recipe:

Paper: CTMH Best Friends Forever

Stickers: sparkle heart, words, and small blossoms-K&Company; Love-Michael's Bride page marker

Other: crystal-Stickels; circle cutter-Martha Stewart; Boho punch-SU!

September Stamp Club made a purse

The September Stamp Club met at my house this month. We made a cute purse using CTMH products. Brenda's sister was so sweet to give Brenda the project as a present. She knew Brenda was swamped with wedding plans this month. Brenda's son got married 9/13/08. Congratulations to the Mr. and Mrs.!
We got to choose our papers from 3 different CTMH packs. I chose Best Friends Forever to make my purse. The envelopes are used to make the outside pockets. I will add photos and journaling later. Brenda challenged us to have the project completed by the next Stamp Club. I got all of the stamping and embellishments completed. Now is the hard part for me anyway...choosing the photos and doing the journaling. Do you ever stumble there?

Papers: CTMH (2) 12x12 B&T papers and (1) 12x12 solid colored cardstock and (2) 8 1/2 x 11 white cardstock
Stamps: CTMH Delight in Everything
Ink: Garden Green, Gold Rush, Twilight, Holly Hock

Ribbon: 12-14 inch CTMH

Other: (2) adhesive velcro button, Tombow perm adhesive, Stickels-crystal, (2) A2 envelopes

I had scraps left over and I made 4 cards from them. One of them turned out really awful so I trashed it. I will post the others later as I cannot figure out how to put the pictures below this paragraph. All the photos I insert end up at the top of the post. I sure have a lot to learn about blogging! LOL