CTMH's Seasonal Expressions I 2017 Release

Oh the things inside this little beauty.....

I'm so excited to announce that the first Seasonal Expressions of 2017 is now available and full of beautiful items. Through the next couple of months I will feature some of the items in here on the blog so be on the look out for the New Product Highlights. As well as details about a giveaway where you can win some free NEW product and get your FREE copy of the SE1 2017 in your hot little hands.

More will be reveled soon...

January 2017 CTMH's Stamp of the Month

Close to My Heart's

Adore You, Set of 12- $17.95 S1701 

Each month you can purchase a new D-size Stamp set, available for that month only, for just $5! When you place an order of $50 or more in Close to My Heart products, you qualify for this special Stamp of the Month pricing. This set is only available January 1-31, 2017

Recommended Blocks: 1" x 1" (Y1000), 2" x 2" (Y1003), 3" x 3" (Y1006) and 2" x 3 1/2" (Y1009)

Supply List

• S1701 Adore You, January 2017 Stamp of the Month
• X254 White Card & Envelope Value Pack
• X7216B hello lovely Paper Pack (SE1~2017)
• Z2164 Sorbet Ink pad
• Z3316 Gold Shimmer Brush (SE1~2017)
• Z2163 White Daisy Ink pad
• Z3218 Rose Gold Foil Tape
• Z2060  3D Foam Tape
• 1282 New England Ivy Cardstock
• Vellum

Here are some more samples of using Adore You:

Created by Sundi Hendrix

Happy National Paper Crafting Month

Every January, we celebrate National Paper crafting month as a way of acknowledging the pure joy of playing with paper! Because isn't playing with paper just the best? We scrapbook with it, we make cards with it, I make mixed media canvases with it, we decorate with it in many forms, we craft with it! So this January we are celebrating the joys of paper crafting with a beautiful "Welcome Home" home decor wreath kit.    

This kit comes with pre-cut pieces you can simply pop out and attach to the sturdy chipboard wreath base, making a welcoming decor piece for your home. The wreath kit can be yours for just $18.95, or you can get it FREE with a qualifying $60 purchase. 

The Welcome Home wreath kit is an all-inclusive project kit, meaning it includes everything you need to create a beautiful home decor piece - - all you need to add is a quilling tool or the CTMH tweezers and adhesive! Featuring paper succulents, rustic wood-grain paper and gold foil lettering, this trendy wreath is sure to make a beautiful accent anywhere in your home. The kit contains seven sheets of die-cut shapes, two sheets of stickers, one thick chipboard wreath base and instructions with simple assembly tips!

Item number #CC1210 ~ Pop on over to the Nina's Art Spot CTMH website and order yours today! 

This kit is available Jan 1, 2017 - Jan 31, 2017 while supplies last.

I'm am going to review some of the basic's of putting together your wreath. Bookmark this page now so when your's comes in you can refer back to this information. I'm sure it will be quite helpful, especially if you have never put together die cut flowers before.

Here is a list of the extra items not part of the kit that I used to put mine together.

• Z679 Liquid Glass
• Z726 Sponge Daubers
• Z2835 New England Ivy Ink Pad
• Z2850 Fern Ink Pad
• Z1795 Quilling tool or
• Z1382 Tweezers 
• Z3316 Gold Shimmer Brush (NEW)

To start out with I choose to daub a bit of contrast onto the tips of my succulents. I only did the grey/green colored succulents to add a bit of variety to my final wreath.

I suggest you daub them before punching them out of the carrier sheets. It saves you time and a lot of ink waste on your fingers. 😊 I used New England Ivy for the darker succulent leaves and Fern for the lighter. 

Here is a short video demonstrating how to put the succulents together.

Here is a video demonstrating how to put the white flowers together.

Wala ~ Here is my final version. I actually spaced my succulents out further and thus did not have room for the final one. 

Chris Lothian from Christine's Creative Caper's is so creative. She took the inside piece from the wreath form and created this Home Decor piece. 

It is my hopes that this has made putting together your Welcome Home Wreath a bit easier and less hassle free.

Exciting Announcement

I'm so EXCITED to post this. It has been really hard to keep it a secret from you all. 😘 Introducing "The Traveler's Box" 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 Do you love all things traveler's notebooks, planners and/or journals???? Well we do, and we know you are going to love the first ever "Traveler's Box" Each box is filled with 100% usable, coordinated themed goodies designed by me and Erika at Chaotic Blessing from: 

* designer paper
* decor
* stickers
* artistic elements and tools
* faith inspired items
* and so much more!

All items can be used for any size TN, planner or journal. Patterned paper is 9.25x 6.75, perfect to make dashboards and more. When a TN insert is included it will be in personal size. 

February's theme is: Victorian Love

LIMITED QUANTITIES are available so PRE-Order yours today. Pre-order closes Jan 20 and boxes will begin to ship Monday, February 6.
Want to see sneak peaks of this month's goodies....be on the look out on our Instagram accounts. Guest designer this month is Little Miss Alaska. She has such beautiful talent and graciously agreed to help us in the debut of the Traveler's Box. Check out her IG!!!! Sneak peak of her exclusive charms for this kit are on the website🤗

Direct any questions to info@chaoticblessing.com

Boxing Day Sale

We're celebrating Boxing Week with four days of different deals where you'll save 50% on select items. The fun starts at 3:00 pm (MST) on Monday, December 26, with a selection of deals that will last until 2:59 pm (MST) on Tuesday, December 27. Then, a whole new set of deals will begin!

Check every day from Monday through Thursday at 3:00 pm (MST) to get a jump start on each day's sale ! These deals are only available at www.NinasArtSpot.Closetomyheart.com and click on the promotions tab. This sale is while supplies last, so be sure to shop early!

Easel Card FREE Printable

Interested in learning how to make this Easel Card? Click on the image below to download the FREE Instructional Printable.

The Easel card is an easy fun way to make an interactive displayable card. Once you get the base instructions down you can whip out a multitude of them. I created 150 cards this year using this method and it was probably the fastest easiest card I've made to date. Be patient with yourself the first time as the scores and folds can be hard to understand at first. Make yourself a mock up to play with then come up with your own card front color's and design. 

To Do or not To Do...List that is!

...and, YES another resource. I tell you I'm full of them! Its one thing to go without any ideas and yet another to have an abundance....because there is no such thing as to many resources. 

Now I know I'm dating myself when I say this but back in the late 80's when I was in college I was a list composer. Yes, I made list's upon list's. List's to get things done in my day. List of books I wanted to read. List of media I wanted to learn to use. I listed anything and everything, any topic even anything I thought about. I was also a brain dumper...but my brain dumps looked more like outlines or....like lists. A list with a purpose. 

I was told by a counselor during that period in my life, that I needed to stop making lists. That lists were a set up to negative self talk when you did't get things on the list done and that there was more to life than crossing things of my to do list. At the time I though "She's the professional what do I know anyway"? Well that counselor had no idea what she was talking about. 

1.) I didn't just list what I needed to get done. 
2.) I listed for the sake of seeing things more completely. For the complete satisfaction I felt when I looked at the list(s) afterwards.
3.) For a compartmentalized individual a list is total nirvana....and I don't mean the Buddist version of nirvana. I mean it is a perfect state of happiness.

Well I had completely given up on lists except maybe a grocery list (not very satisfying I might add) Then last year I discovered The Reset Girl, Cori Spieker. I read her About Me page and was pulled in by the those things I felt I had in common with her. The biggest thing about Cori that caught my attention was her Listers Gotta List or LGL. She puts out a list of prompts, one for each day of the month to get you reflecting on your life. Its not about being perfect and making sure you get them each done all though the month. Its about self discover and it is completely what this repressed lister needed.  I was in nirvana because here was an opportunity to take my list making smash it into my artistic-ness coupled with my need to tell my story for my kids and make scrapertunities. It was the "real deal" and of course another resource providing lots of scrapertunities to reflect on when needed was yet another opportunity to share with you all. Actually the LGL is nearly a scrapbook in itself depending on how you construct yours.

Some people use those refrigerator grocery list pads to compile their LGL each month, some use planners and yet others might paint theirs in watercolor or hand letter them. I use my Travelers Notebook for my LGL. 

Left to Right: Pocket Sized I use for my journaling and Bible studies. Center is a Personal Sized I use for my listing. I do a Journaling prompt insert and my LGL in it. Finally this is my Christmas TN, it is a Cashier Size and I use it to plan and track all things Christmas. *Not shown here is my Mixed Media Journal which is also a Cashier Size.

Here is a sample of Cori's LGL Prompt Download Sheet for November 2016. She creates these and posts them monthly as a FREE download.

I simply cut out the Prompt List and adhere it into my TN Insert (TN=Travelers Notebook) as shown below.

This is the Front cover of my October LGL TN Insert

This is the back of the cover page and the first page in my Oct LGL TN Insert

As you can see in this close up I like to layer my Prompt number and have printed out the Prompts on clear labels so they all look relatively the same. Generally I do mine two up on a page so I have room and those I know I have lots to write about or a photo I want to include I save the whole page.

Cori, The Reset Girl also sells LGL Kits. She offers an Essentials Kit as well as a Deluxe Kit. I purchased the Essentials kit for November in the Grateful Heart. 

Here are some of my pages using this kit. I also pre-ordered the December Essentials kit in A Very Classy Christmas. 

This is the cover page in my Nov LGL TN Insert

This is the back of the cover page and the first page in my Nov LGL TN Insert

These list generate a lot of ideas that can be turned into Scrapertunities. For example the #2 prompt for November was "Words to describe this season of my life". I can see a few ways to turn this into a scrapbook page using both photo's of myself in the roles I listed above or using textural words (via embellishments etc.) running through the page. What a way to leave a legacy for your family about how you see yourself at this stage in life. It might be nice to add the date and age to the journaling block as well. (food for thought)

Another thing Cori has recently started is her Self Care Photo Challenges. She started this for October with the following prompt list.

So all during the month of October I posted a photo to my Instagram account based on the appropriate prompt. It was very much a challenge and I was not completely successful at it but it was super fun. Guess what else it did? ....... it created a Scrapertunity! 😲 Go Figure! So Here is an example of one of my posts.

and here are the final scrapbook pages I did of this process. They are 10, 9" x 9" pages and were super simple in the layout. I even just followed the same color scheme that Cori used in her Challenge image. I did them in the 9" x 9" because my Book of Me I've been working on for my kids is already in that size. I barely used any journaling because in my Instagram posts I had already done "mostly" a journaling block already.