Now I'm dreaming . . .

On Friday night after Hostess Club, my Upline (who I invited as a guest) and I stayed up late to work on some Christmas Card ideas for upcoming Gatherings and Classes etc.  We focussed on working with the "Wonderland" paper pack.

For whatever reason neither of us felt like our ideas were coming together the way we wanted.  It's not easy to design a smaller item like a card that uses a combination of accessories, new techniques, new products, new paper etc.  Anyway, after two hours we each had only one "not perfect" sample.  We had plans to perfect them, but were bagged, so we packed up.

That night I dreamed about a card design.  I guess I was overthinking the using new products thing.  Here's a pic of the card I dreamed about . . . maybe it should have stayed in my dreams, because it's far from perfect.

Anyway, this prooves that sometimes you can have too much of a good thing (even though it looks a little blah to me), I was trying to encorporate the Art Philosophy cricut, the new ruler (used to pierce perfect holes for threading), Stamp of the Month, new paper pack and the Foundry pin clips I love so much.  back to the drawing board . . . And maybe I'll lay off the evening caffiene for a while too!

Thanks Roxie & CTMH!

So, every time a new CTMH Idea Book comes out, I like to challenge myself.  I pick one of the new paper pack designs that my initial impression is "That's Not for me".  As the mother of THREE BOYS, this is usually one of the more flowery and pink packs that I just can't envision using.  Anyway, I buy that pattern first!  Then I design something - often my Hostess Club project -  around it, making sure I can make it work for my family.
This is how I ensure that I end up genuinely loving and using every pattern.
For the Autumn/Winter 2011 Idea book the pattern was Roxie.
I have to be honest . . . it's mid October and I've been looking at the Roxie paper pack I bought since early August.  then I won another one at the recent CTMH regional convention.  No more excuses . . . so, feeling a little un-inspired I went to the CTMH consultant online Bulletin board to see what others were doing with this paper pack.  Lots of great layouts . . . but I had cards stuck on my mind.
Truth be told, I need several "thank you" cards to tuck in the orders I received at the recent Crop for Kids event. 
So, I came up with this little card:

I used the Roxie paper pack, with Smoothie card stock.  I made sure to incorporate the "Zip Strip" found at the top of all our new heavier weight pattern papers, I used the new foundry clips, I used Waxy Flax and used the Art Philosphy Cricut Cartridge to cut the Butterfly. 

Yeah, Yeah. . . I still have to make a page layout with the paper pack, but I'm loving the  cards and I'm feeling inspired.

Now off to prep for tonights Hostess Club!!

Regional Celebration and my dirty little secret. . .

At the end of last month Close to My Heart held one of their many Regional Celebrations right here in Vancouver!  How could I NOT sign up?  Over the years there have been a few I've thought about, Calgary, Toronto, Seattle . . but the expense of travel deterred me.  
when I learned they were coming toVancouver, I was so excited.  My upline was even more excited because she knew my dirty little secret.  I had never taken a scrapbook / papercrafting class before.  Yeah, I know I'm a consultant. I TEACH classes. I GUESS it's about time I took one. 
Oh the things I saw, Oh the things I learned, Oh the things I wanted to IMMEDIATELY order and Oh the goodies I WON!  I came home with over $300 in free CTMH product.  Hello!
One item that really caught my eye (and I snapped a pic with my iphone) was an autumn layout using the "Wicked" August Stamp of the Month.  I had had a customer ask me about the honeycomb stamp shape and what I would use it for.  The autumn layout was a perfect example.  It was a silent auction item . . that I tried to so hard to win, but Alberta Consultant, Nancy Klein, beat me to it at the last minute! 
Anyway, with last weekends Crop for Kids 2011 complete and my house back in order I sat down to re-create this layout.

I love it so much we are going to make it for my October Hostess Club project.

I was able to use a few of my favorite products, show that the "Mischeif" paper pack is not JUST for Halloween and do some fun random stamping with that Honeycomb shape we didn't know what to do with.

Thanks for reading my FIRST CTMH Blog post.  Hope to bring you more as they come.

Karen