What's up at CTMH in October?

 

Craft Ahead for 2022! Discover an innovative approach to creating your own 2022 calendar with the Remember Today special, featuring easy-to-assemble Cut Above®  layout kits designed especially for creating a beautiful 12-month calendar. See it here. 'Tis the season to be spooky! Don't miss out on the fun-loving Boo Crew collection, only available through the end of this month! See it here.

October Stamp of the Month October's Stamp of the Month, Wildflower Friendship, is a must-have, featuring delightful critters and sayings to help you celebrate your most valued friendships in the best possible way—with beautiful, hand-stamped artwork! As usual, this set is available this month only, and it can be yours for just $5 when you place an order of $50 or more! See it here VIP Customers get the Stamp of the Month set FREE with their qualifying order!  Find out more here Special for VIP customers only The VIP Flower Shop Card Box comes with materials for creating and storing 15 beautiful cards. With pre-printed card bases, envelopes, an exclusive stamp set, stamping block, and mini ink pad all included, the only thing you need to add is your favorite adhesive! With a variety of interchangeable stamp sentiments, this kit makes it easy to whip up the perfect card for all kinds of occasions. Store your completed cards in the eye-catching box where they’ll be ready for you when you need them. See more here along with a video So much to enjoy this month!  -  Have fun!

NSM Slimline Celebration Blog Hop

Welcome

Glad you could join us today!  A blog hop is one big loop of crafty, fun ideas for paper crafting as you visit each of the connected blogs.  If you are coming from Haley Dyer, The Inky Scrapper, you are on the right path.  If you are starting here, just look for the link at the end of my post to Kristine Ponte's blog. You'll find similar links in successive posts to continue on the hop.

There are so many fun products that are a part of this National Stamping Month Special which you can see on my website. (These products are available through October 31 while supplies last.)  You will find three exclusive stamp + Thin Cuts sets with a variety of adorable icons and sentiments, plus two slimline card front Thin Cuts dies and a stamp set loaded with sentiments sized perfectly for a slimline card!  

I have used  two cluster thin cut sets that were offered with this special on the scrapbook layouts I am sharing with you today.

This layout uses the Star Cluster Thin Cuts from this special 

along with the Smarty Pants Paper Pack and Sticker Sheet 

from the Core Products catalog.

This layout uses the Circle Cluster Thin Cuts from this special 

along with the Smarty Pants Paper Pack and Sticker Sheet  

and Smarty Pants Stamp set from the Core Products catalog.

One of the great things about this special is that you can save 20% when you purchase the whole set in either the Slimline Celebration Product Bundle or the Slimline Celebration Workshop kit! The workshop kit also includes cardstock, sparkles, and cards and envelopes to give you supplies for creating a set of 12 slimline cards featuring these fun stamps and die-cuts.

Sale price on this 

Slimline Celebration Product Bundle

 is $132.95 (US)

Sale price on this

Slimline Celebration Cardmaking Workshop Kit

is $147.95 (US)

As a VIP customer, you have even more to gain (15% credit toward 

your next order and more!) by purchasing products from this special. 

 More information about our VIP program is available here.

All of these items are available through your Close To My Heart Maker.  If you don't have a maker, I'd be happy to help you.  Visit my website here.

Thanks for stopping by today.  

Join me as we hop on to see the creative ideas

 on  Kristine Ponte's blog using more of the 

products from this special

  

Be sure to visit the other consultants who have joined in this blog hop for lots of new product inspiration.  If for some reason you get lost along the way, you can find the entire list of participating consultants on Melinda's blog to get back on track.

Fantastic Tips for Creating, Using and Storing your own stencils

 From the Close To My Heart Blog

Tips for Using and Creating Your Own Stencils

If you have yet to dabble in the world of stencil design, this is a great place to start! Even if you are a seasoned pro, maybe we’ll share something that you haven’t thought of yet. Either way, stick with us and then share with us some of your thoughts and ideas in the comment section that follows!

A stencil is a material with a cut-out design to which you apply your choice of pigment in order to transfer the design onto a separate surface. The benefits of using a stencil range from helping those of us who struggle with drawing a straight line (  we’re all welcome here!) to those of us who like to create and duplicate intricate patterns, time and time again, quickly and with ease.

Stencils can be made of all sorts of materials and created in a myriad of ways. What we share here is just a sliver of the possibilities these multifaceted tools are capable of.

MATERIAL OPTIONS

The very first step in stencil design is determining the product you want to use for your stencil. You can purchase ready-made stencils or create your own. If you are creating your own, consider the following information about these popular materials:

• 

  (Cricut® Shape: #M40FD89)

Stencil Sheets. Our stencil sheets are made from a medium weight stencil film. They can be machine cut, die cut, or paper punched and used with wet and dry applications. The see-through quality of stencil sheets, makes stencil placement easy—this is especially useful if you are layering images. Stencil sheets are the most durable way to go if you are hoping to reuse a stencil over and over again.

Cardstock. Stencils cut from cardstock have a limited use but are very economical. Placement can be tricky, however, since you can’t see through the stencil. Cardstock is great for edge stencils and positive shapes.

Vellum Paper. Vellum stencils work a lot like those cut from stencil sheets, but with one major drawback. These can only be used for dry applications and cannot be washed off. They are also not as durable as stencil sheets.

TIPS FOR USING MACHINE-CUT STENCILS

1. Get the most out of machine-cut stencils by choosing layered shapes. Always keep all of the negative pieces and store them together with the stencil. You never know when you may want to use one of these pieces for additional texture, color, or dimension in your art. 

• 

  (Cricut® Shape: #M1011BC)

2. Use the contour feature (in Cricut Design Space™) to make multiple stencils from a single image. Block out different parts of the image for each of the different stencils. This will allow you to create unique designs, but also to easily separate colors in different sections of the image if you want to use the stencils together, like we did with the two flower cards you see here.

• 

  (Cricut® Shape: #M418DFA)

3. Use basic shapes to weld images onto and to restructure shapes for easier stenciling. To create the cloud stencils, above, we welded cloud shapes (#M418DFA) onto a rectangle base. If your shapes don’t quite cover the size “base” you need or want, remember that you can easily duplicate and resize your shapes to make them work. When you are using a stencil like this one, move it around on the page as you add the color, or flip it over and use the back, to create variety from the one stencil pattern.

TIPS FOR USING DIE-CUT STENCILS

4. Just like we suggested for machine-cut stencils, keep both the positive and negative pieces that are made when you cut a stencil from a Thin Cuts die. They may be used for different looks and effects. 

5. Create stencils from stamp coordinating Thin Cuts, too! You can use these alone or to add dimension to a stamped image.

The butterfly above was sponged with color then stamped. Use these sorts of stencils directly on your projects or cut them out, like we did here. 

6. Make letter and word stencils out of stencil sheets. You want these to be as durable as possible because these generally get used a lot.

7. Keep the separate letters of favorite “words” together in a storage envelope for quick access. Make sure to keep the negative space pieces as well. Take a look at the letters “a,” “p,” and “o,” below. Easily attach these to your stencil with a small amount of adhesive tape to have ready to place and use when needed.

8. Explore different media to use with your stencils.

If you use alcohol markers, these can bleed slightly past your stencil image, as you see in the red Y. Metallic markers are another option. These work especially well on darker papers (see the Y on black cardstock). For a more textured look, consider heat embossing. Using embossing ink pens, like on the Y on the blue cardstock, you can have a more controlled inking experience, like you would with a marker. Use your stencils to create dimensional, shadow effects, too. In the case of the Y on the green cardstock above, we used the negative stencil shape to color in a black shadow with a journaling pen, then attached a die-cut paper Y on top, slightly offset.

TIPS FOR USING SPECIALTY INKS WITH STENCILS

9. Achieve a subtle shadow, watermark-type look by using embossing ink with your stencils. You can dab the VersaMark™ ink pad straight through your stencil and onto your art, or have a more controlled inking experience using embossing ink pens.

10. Use inks from our Exclusive Inks™ re-inker bottles or ink squeezed out from our shimmer brushes with a sponge or dauber. Add the ink to an all-purpose mat and pick it up with a sponge (or dauber), then pounce the sponge on a scratch piece of paper to remove some of the excess ink before adding it to your project through the stencil.

Of course, you can use a shimmer brush directly on your artwork, too, without squeezing out the ink, for a brushed on ink effect. It will look different than the pounced-with-a-sponge look. Similarly, you can also use a waterbrush to brush on the Exclusive Inks™. 

Now that we’ve given you a few tips on how to make and use stencils, let’s explore a few ideas on how to store them. In the video below, our Creative Arts Manager, Karen, shares several tips:

(Here’s the link for the Design Space file Karen mentions in the video!)

Stencils are a great way to quickly and easily add dimensional elements and general pizzazz to artwork. Do you use stencils in your artwork? Let us know in the comments below how you incorporate this versatile tool in your art!

Retiring Colors

Here are the colors that will be retiring for this year at 

the end of August.

Cardstock

Inks

Reinkers

Embellishments

Shimmer Brushes

Be sure to get anything you still want now before they're gone.

Shop my website

P.S. Looking forward to sharing the new colors and products 

with you soon.

 

Going Soon: May–June Catalog Items! There are only a few days left to shop from the May–June catalog! Make sure you've got enough of these great crafting products before they are gone! Hillside Cottage Paper Collection Stars & Sparklers Paper Collection Desserts à la Whirl Stamp + Thin Cuts Mix-in Paper Packet See more in this catalog!