Favorite Friday-Journaling Pen-Giveaway!

Thursday was a crazy day at my house, my oldest turned 8 so I spent most of the day celebrating with her and the rest of the family. So I thought I would share just one little thing that has become my favorite thing.

This is the Marvy® Uchida® LePen™ Journaling Pen (Z1979). I use it ALL the time, since I got it I have used it on cards, layouts, the My Crush, EVERYTHING that I have made. It is so nice to write with and glides easily on every surface I have written on. I LOVE it!

Guess what, I have one to give away! So to enter I need you to write a comment telling me what things you would like to see on my blog AND what Close to My Heart product is your favorite. You have until next Friday to leave a comment and then I will have one of my kiddos pick a number/name from a hat and the winner will get the pen. Super fun!

What to do?

Sometimes when I am scrap booking I get everything I have planned down and yet the layout does not feel finished. I am sure that I am not the only one this happens to. That is what happened to me yesterday as I was trying to finish a layout. I am still not feeling it yet with this layout, but thought that I would share anyway.

Usually I love white space in a layout, but this one just leaves me wanting and I am really not quite sure what to do.  So the best thing to do is let it sit and come back to it another day. So I will see you tomorrow and we will both see if I change anything or keep letting it percolate. 

PS: from now on I make no promises with my pictures. I live in Washington and we have entered the rainy season as I like to call it. This means it may or may not (most likely not) be sunny when I am ready to take a photo. Just in case you were wondering about the awful photos in this post and the ones to come.😊

Oh and a big Happy 8th Birthday to my oldest! Love her!

What's New Wednesday-Base and Bling

Close to My Heart came out with the Base and Bling line a couple of Idea Books ago, but with the Annual Inspirations they really streamlined it and added a lot of fun options. Though I will say that when I first saw it all I was a little confused as to what I needed to finish a necklace and how to go about it. So today I am going to walk you through the process and let you know what the final price is for one necklace.
First you will start with a chain and you have two options Faux Antiqued Silver (Z1940) OR Faux Antiqued Gold (Z1954). You can also make a cuff bracelet that also comes in either the Faux Antiqued Silver or Gold.

If you choose the necklace you will now need to choose which shape of pendant you want: oval, rectangle, square, or circle. Keep in mind that these do come in packs of 3 and they will be all the same shape. The pendants will come in either Faux Antiqued Silver or Faux Antiqued Gold and it will be the same finish in each pack.

After you have picked out your pendant shape you will also need to get Glass Covers that are the same shape as the pendant that you choose. If you choose the cuff you will need to get the oval Glass Covers. These also come in packs of 3. Here is what the circle Glass Covers look like:

Next comes the really fun part, you get to choose which Style sheet you want:

These come in the rectangle shape, to get them into the shape that you want you just have to trace around the glass cover that you picked (circle, oval, or square). These are stickers so they are really easy to just cut out and stick to your pendant. Then to finish your necklace just put a little liquid glass down on the sticker and place your Glass Cover on top. Close to My Heart has also given you a few options for adding some fun bling to your necklace:

Also what you see in these pictures is what you will get, 6 charms 3 in each of the 2 finishes, silver or gold. These are easy to just add to your necklace, all you do is open the jump ring a little, place onto a loop in the chain and then close the jump ring. As you can see these are really easy and fun to make and personlize. Also you can also see that it is also going to be easy to make these in multiples of three. If you do this each necklace will be $13.75, and that is with one of the bling accents, if you don't add the bling it would be $13 a piece. If you choose to make a cuff it will be $8. It would be so fun to do a Jewelry buffet. Just order a bunch of the chains, one Style Sheet, a couple packages of the pendants and the glass covers. If you are local and are wanting me to help with throwing one of these just let me know because it would be so fun for you and your friends. Just let me know if you are interested.

Tool Tuesday-Punches

Close to My Heart has added so many punches with this last Idea Book and they are super fun.

This is a corner rounder (Z1912) and I use mine to not only round corners, but to also do a scallop edge since I don't own the scallop border punch.

Here is the Scallop Border Punch (Z1851), an item I don't have. I have chosen not to get this punch or the other two border punches because I have a Cricut Expression that I use when I want a funky and fun border. If you don't have a Cricut and you aren't planning on getting one any time soon, then this border punch and the other two are probably perfect for you. Here are the other two border punches:

This is the Chevron Border Punch (Z1998).

This is the Triangle Border Punch (Z1997).

This is a fun punch and I love mine! This is the 1 inch circle punch (Z1999) and even though I have a Cricut I have one of these because I love circles and cutting a whole bunch of circles with the Cricut is kind of a pain, especially trying to get all of those circles off the Cricut mat, so I use this circle punch instead. Plus I can use the circle punch to punch out things that I have already stamped, which is really hard to do with the Cricut.

My Crush tips

This weekend got really busy when my parents decided to come for a visit so I am a little late in getting this posted and I wasn't able to get my layout finished for the CTMH Halloween challenge. I did get my DisneyWorld My Crush album finished though, so I thought I would share some more layouts and some tips.

I used almost all of the Mini Assortment Flip Flaps and I love them! They helped me so much in getting all my photos together the way I wanted. I highly recommend them if you are putting together a My Crush album.

The stickers that come in the My Crush Memories Assortment are super fun to play around with and to use as titles and to label pictures. I cut a lot of them in half. I also wrote on most of them to help add journaling and information.

Don't be afraid to use one page for one picture if it is one that you love. Also using cardstock in a coordinating color is also a fun way to frame photos. I also loved using the shimmer tape and glitter paper to give some pages some sparkle.

There were a few pages that I didn't like the paper on so I just covered the whole page with photos. You can also remove those pages if you don't need them.

There are a few pages that have really fun backgrounds and I decided not to put any pictures on them because I loved them so much!

I loved the My Crush because I could put fun things on the pages like these oragomi birds from the Japanese restaurant that my children got and had to bring home. Because you too will probably be adding bulky things to your pages I do not recommend using the foam tape, it might make your album too bulky.

I included maps of all the parks with the things we did circled as well as the map of our resort. With the My Crush you can add those things and it makes your albums really fun and personalized. Also then you don't have to write it all out.

The little pockets that come in the memories assortments are super cute and handy. Here I put a few of the single rider passes that we kept.

If you can't tell I had a lot of fun putting this album together and I love the My Crush line and I am super excited to get the Christmas one to keep track of all our Christmas memories.

See you tomorrow for Tool Tuesday!

Favorite Friday

This week I thought I would share with you my favorite way to organize my stamp sets. I LOVE Close to my Heart's large organizer because I can store so many stamps in one place.

See that lovely organizer holdin my stamps? It makes me happy! (Yes I know the picture isn't that great, but what can I do, I live in rainy Washington.)

You can put 40 stamp sets in it and it comes with removable dividers. The stamps that I have in my Large Organizer (Z1834) are separated by the Tabbed Dividers (Z1839) in the following categories: Everyday Life, Nature, Cards (stamps used to make cards), and Alphabets.

These dividers come in a pack of 3 and fit inside the Large Organizer and in the My Acrylix Organizer (Z1038). Speaking of the My Acrylix Organizer, you can also see a few of those my studio space in the photo above.

These organizers are nice because they are smaller and take up less room on my shelves while still helping me to stay organized. I keep one organizer for my stamp sets that come with the Workshops on the Go, or other kits from Close to My Heart. The other organizer holds stamp sets that are perfect for journaling or have fun quotes or sayings.

Each of these organizational tools from Close to My Heart are perfect and affordable. Click here to get yours today as well as see other organizational tools from Close to My Heart.

Also you may want to check out the Close to My Heart blog for a fun Halloween challenge and giveaway, I am hoping to have time this weekend to finish my challenge and show it to you on Monday. Happy weekend everybody!

Flip Flaps meet My Crush

Here are some pictures of how I am using the Small Assortment of Flip Flaps (Z1747) in the Bluebird My Crush album (Z1856) that I have been sharing with you this week.

Flip Flaps are so easy to use. They come with a strip of white on one edge that you  just fold back. Slide in your photos. Take the strip of white off and place on your page. Tada! You have now added two more photos to your layout. If you want to add even more photos just add more Flip Flaps like I did above.

Here I just used one flip flap to add more photos of my littles on the Star Tours ride.

Lastly I was able to add another photo to this page of my oldest. These two photos were taken as a remake of ones we took of my oldest when we brought her to DisneyWorld when she was 18 months.

I am loving this project and how easy it is. I love the idea of one book for this vacation and cannot wait to finish.