It's been a quieter crafty year for me and I look forward to putting this year behind me for so many reasons! I am proud of some of my creations though both with crafting and cooking, so instead of going month by month I think I will show some of my top picks from this year:

January Chris Turns 30 I made this Roulette board as a sign-in for guests at the surprise party I threw Chris!

March Time for Tea with the Bride-to-Be I made these invites for my sister-in-law-to-be's wedding shower

April Bolognese Ravioli in a Spicy Tomato Sauce This yummy sauce went perfectly with the ravioli I made!

June Retirement After a visit to my aunt's in May, I got hooked on watercolours! This card was made for my mom to celebrate her retirement.

June carpe diem This card is one of my absolute favourites of the year. It won me a guest designer spot on The Challenge, as well as gift certificates to Verve and Simon Says Stamp - YAY!

July Paris I love how this meaningful card turned out. I quite enjoyed experimenting with the Bokéh technique this year.

July Life is Good at the Lake This summer I got a paddle board and loved being at my favourite spot - Kootenay Lake. I made these green beans during my time at the cabin with my aunt.

July Iced London Fog London Fogs are definitely my favourite and I just had to find out how to make an iced version after having one in Nelson.

August Blueberry Mojito Jam A good friend invited me to join her in making this delicious treat.

October A Whole Latte Love Gotta love the coffee & tea stamps, and this digi release from Verve was no exception! I also love the coffee cup cut from the new CTMH cartridge.

Wishing everyone a happy new year and all the best in 2016!

This year for my Christmas gifts I had a goal and I am pleased to say I accomplished it! This season I aimed to go paperless with all my presents. Instead of wrapping paper I used crates, baskets, and material bags that I had sewn. I hope to reuse them for years to come :) 

It is bittersweet for me to say this will be my final post on the Heart2Heart Design Team. I have served 3 terms from July 2014 - December 2015! During my time I have felt so much inspiration, tried out new techniques and stretched my crafting repertoire. With the craziness of December and finishing up my first two Master's courses, I am a little late with this post. This holiday season is a tough one for me, but I feel so fortunate to be able to be around supportive family and friends. For my Christmas cards this year, I really focused on the theme of my heart and created all of my cards with the same design this year. 

CTMH Pride My first challenge on the Design Team! July 2014

Some Like It Hot July 2014

Scrapbook Your Favourite Colour Combo September 2014

Favourite Technique September 2014

Anything Goes April 2015

A big thank you to Haley and the rest of the Heart2Heart design team for a great experience!

To start the month off at Heart2Heart we are promoting items from our Holiday Expressions catalogue! Get your supplies while you can as everything in this mini-catalogue will expire at the end of this month. Stay tuned for a new Seasonal Expressions in January :).

I couldn't help but make another coffee cup card from the Artistry cartridge with our beautiful White Pines paper collection. I also used some white glitter paper from our Gold Glitter Pack.

Today over at Heart2Heart we are featuring watercolour! Whether you like to use watercolour paints or watercolour pencils, we want to see your beautiful creations. I have been playing around with my watercolour paints this fall and have been working on this effect. Here is a fall card I created.

This month at Heart2Heart our first challenge for you is with the theme of "through the window". I decided to make a tag for a gift bag. I made my gift bag using a gift bag punch board from One Crazy Stamper.

Today over at Heart2Heart we are showcasing our amazing Cricut cartridges from Close To My Heart. I chose to use our newest, Artistry, to make a coffee cup card. I am super stoked on this cut. Years ago, my aunt created a template for us to use to hand cut our own coffee cup cards - now I can just make a few cuts on my Cricut machine and have the same thing!

Come and join us over at Heart2Heart and showcase your Cricut craft!

I'm sneaking in a card for the Mojo Monday contest using the October Diva Inspiration from Verve with their fun new digi-stamps! I was inspired by this card from the Mojo DT. I loved making my cute coffee cup sparkle :).

It is my turn to post on the Heart2Heart blog this week and we have a sketch challenge to show off to you! This sketch was created by one of our talented Design Team members, Brandi!

It is the 2015 Fall Coffee Lovers Blog Hop and I am very happy to be playing along! It is always great to see some fabulous new inspiration...and to top it off, Verve released a fun new digi-stamp to celebrate! Here is my creation using a Viva la Verve sketch and drawing on some fall inspiration from the Autumn Lovelies Inspiration Challenge. I am also linking up to one of our September Heart2Heart challenges - "Splat".

This week at Heart2Heart we challenge you to doodle or create something inspired by doodling! I got an exciting package in the mail from Close To My Heart the other day, so I set to work with some of my new supplies.

I thought one of the patterned papers from the La Vie En Rose paper collection looked like doodling! I used a pocket card cut out from the Artfully Sent Cricut cartridge and set to work using some of our new colours from the Paper Fundamentals Enchantment (Eggplant, Sapphire, Saffron, Pomegranate) pack. To top it off I used a PML gold overlay.

Hope to see you in the gallery over at Heart2Heart!

To make this sympathy card I used one of the September sketches from Viva la Verve. I incorporated some of the colours from the Diva Inspirations Challenge to create a fall inspired card. I used the All Aflutter die from Verve for my butterfly so that I could play along with the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge "die crazy".

For years I have been making this "salsa" recipe with my mother-in-law and sister-in-laws. At the end of every summer, we divide up all the ingredients in this recipe, do the chopping the night before at each of our homes and then bring it all together the next day to make and can. It wasn't until recently that I realized this recipe is actually "Picante Sauce" rather than salsa. Upon further investigation, I learned that:

• Salsa = Chunky
• Picante = Less Chunky
• Pico de gallo = Chunky with heat

A few months ago I won the opportunity to be a guest designer at The Challenge by creating this card. As luck would have it, the inspiration photo I was asked to use for today's card is near and dear to my heart. I wanted to go off of the Paris theme and found this French stamp set from a few years ago that also had roses. I played and played around with watercolours for this card and finally settled on this design. Here it is :)

I am in LOVE with my new watercolour pencils from Close To My Heart and this week at Heart2Heart we are showcasing colouring! I needed some Thank You cards heading back to school this week, so I set to work with some of my new supplies and tried out a few different styles.

It's finally here! And as an added bonus, so is Holiday Expressions!
September is also National Stamping Month! To celebrate, Close To My Heart is offering 3 special stamp sets for a special price.


Stay tuned to see more of the awesome new products in our newest catalogues. Contact me if you have any questions or if you would like to place an order!