Home Is Where The Heart Is

One of the very cool things about being a Close To My Heart consultant is having access to the Stamp of the Month sets and some of the new papers and accessories earlier than the rest of the world at each new Idea Book release (the next one is September 1. Be watching the side of my blog that day for the link!).

When I saw this sketch at Card Patterns (#29) I knew exactly what stamp I wanted to use for the main image. It's part of the November Stamp of the Month set, "Around the Block." There is the cute little house outline and then several choices of doors, windows, window boxes, chimneys, roofs, shutters, sentiments, etc. to mix and match to make your home look just like you want. This set is available to order, earn at a discount, or even earn free during the month of November. I decided to use primary colors on this card because to me they felt happy and went with the "Home is where the heart is" saying. I also wanted to use this cute polka dot ribbon I just found and that way it matched (ribbon by Offray). I even covered my dimensional element heart with the ribbon and just cut around it. I like the way it turned out.

I decided to stamp my images in black and then color in with water color pencils, blend with a waterbrush and shade around edges with our grey flannel marker. Water color pencil tip: don't color in the whole area you want colored. Just use your pencil to color the parts you want darkest (like around the inside edges or just on one side) and use your waterbrush to pull the color from there into the rest of the area.

Close To My Heart products used: Around the Block (avail. 11/1-11/30, D1377), Sweet Home Level 2 Paper Pack (avail. 9/1, X7116B), Colonial White Cardstock (1388), Watercolor Pencils (3505), Waterbrush (1771), Dimensional Elements Fresh Shapes (Z1019), Black Stamp Pad (Z2105), Essential Brad Assortment (Z1219), Grey Flannel Marker (Z2324).

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