Two Variations of CTMH's Share the Joy Promotion.

Well...the last part of my craft room is now unpacked: the light box for photographing my cards. And the best part??? I don't have to lie on the floor to take the shot. Whew!! I'm getting just a little old for that action.

Today's card uses one of this month's Close To My Heart promotions - Share the Joy. This promo comes with multiple options. I purchased the full set with the die cut (shown below), but you can purchase each part individually.

Here's a picture of some artwork made by the talented artists at CTMH. As you can see, the images are designed to fill the circle cut outs in the die cut.

But I - as per usual - wanted to use the die cut and stamp images differently to show you other options.

I started by die cutting the background, flowers, and leaves from paper in the Into the Wild paper suite with the flower centers cut from Sugarplum. I love how the cardstock now comes in two tones. The flowers were cut with the Stitched Flowers Thin Cuts. I held off purchasing these but have seen way, way, WAY too many adorable projects (both cards and scrapbook pages) to keep them out of my last shopping cart. I love how they coordinate perfectly with the sentiment from the Share the Joy stamp set.

Because I wanted to mount my background with foam tape, I cut a second one with plain White Daisy cardstock and glued it to the back of the gray patterned paper for added strength. Then I used a leftover circle from that second cut for this card...

I have an entire file of card ideas using small stamps. Just because they fit in the circles from the die cut in this set doesn't mean they have to be used that way. You can, as I did with the sentiment, or you can trim them out and cluster them together, as I did with the little envelopes and hearts. And trust me, you really want Micro-tip Scissors for this work. It makes getting into the tiniest places easy.

The background square of paper is also from the Into the Wild paper suite, but here I paired it with Candy Apple. I finished off the card with Sapphire Crochet Thread.

My house is almost put together. We still have to decide which paintings are going on the walls and which are going back into boxes to save for possible use in the next house. Yes...I know. We just got here and I'm already planning the next move. That's army wife life for ya. But today? Today I'm going to spend the entire afternoon in my newly re-assembled craft area playing like I haven't touched paper, stamps, and ink for a month...because I haven't.

Until next time,
Becca