September CTMH SOTM Blog Hop

Welcome to the September Close to My Heart Consultant Blog Hop featuring the September Stamp of the Month: Treasures.  This set of 13 stamps definately fits in with the lately treads in scrapbooking!

I normally don’t have much to say in my posts (I am a look-at-the-pictures kind of girl) but there is a lot of info here and if you take the time to read through you just might learn something.

Boy oh boy, let me tell you – I really hit left field with this one.  I will admit that this is just not my kind of stamp set.  I’m more of a daisy girl.  Then for some reason I got this idea of fireworks in my head and I had fireworks pictures that needed to be scrapped.  I really thought it was a good idea, but it was harder than I thought to actually put it to paper.  For one thing I these are Disney photos and the traditional Disney colors did not fit with them.  Neither did a red/white/blue theme.  So I decided to go for it and match the colors in my photos.  Another obstacle I faced was fireworks on a white background.  It just doesn’t seem right but I wanted them to be colorful.  This just had to wait until the end when everything came together.  I really didn’t know if I would like it until then.  Another bump in the road was that I didn’t have any yellow cardstock!  SO…my solution was to use my brayer to apply yellow ink to white cardstock strips.  I could have made them a solid color but this worked out better in the end because I like to have some sort of patterned paper on my layouts and this solved that dilemma as well.  After putting my layout together I needed to add some embellishing.

Did you know that you can cut your acrylic stamps?  I suggest using a sharp scissors to make sure that they do not tear.  If you have a stamp that you would use more often as two pieces then don’t be afraid to do this.  I cut the Make a Wish…… stamp.  This one was a bit tricky because the stamped parts were so close together (normally I wouldn’t cut one this close and would just ink the part I want to use) but because I was planning to stamp a lot it was easier for me to cut it.  When I want to stamp them as one again I can simply piece them together on my block and stamp no problem!  Another thing I love about acrylic stamps that you may not know is you can bend or straighten the image to suit your needs.  You can see how I did this with the Make a Wish for my border.  Yet another trick to acrylic stamps that I like is when creating a title.  To make a word straight (or exactly how I want it) I will lay out the letters directly onto my layout.  When I have them in place THEN I press down on top of them with my block to pick them up.  They are in place and ready to stamp.  I usually ink and stamp on a scrap paper to see if it’s how I want it and move any letters if necessary.  Often times the CTMH alphabet stamp sets will come with multiples of the same letter.  This is so you can ink a word that has two of the same letter at one time (like the a in my Magical).  However, that was not the case for the stamp set I used but it is still simple because you can see through the letters to place the exactly where you want.  What I did in this case was pressed the word “Magic” on my block.  Then I removed the letter “A” (leaving the space) and moved it to the second position and added the L.  I stamped the word Magical missing the first A and when I went back with just that letter to fill it in there was a spot where it fit perfectly.  Sparkles were the perfect finishing touch to this Magical layout!

Now if you want another unusual idea for a stamp in this set….take a look at the smallest dandelion with the stem pointing up….looks like a spider hanging down if you ask me!

(click image for a closeup view)

Products used are all CTMH: Treasures stamp set, The Works Alphabet stamp set, Journaling Jots stamp set, Cherish, Sparkles, Hollyhock Organdy ribbon (retired) and Watermelon, Sunny Yellow, and Star Spangled Blue ink/cardstock.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Fall Product Sneak Peak featuring a variety of new papers, stamps, and other products from the new Fall/Winter Idea Book.

Now hop on over to Beth’s Blog to see what she has created.  We have nearly 70 participants this month so it may take awhile to get through the entire blog hop but it will be worth it!

If you get lost along the way go to this post for a list of all the participants.

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