Happy New Year! Are you on Cloud 9?

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope everyone has had a safe and enjoyable one. I can't believe it's January already.  Not only is it the first month of the year, but it's National Papercrafting Month.  To celebrate, Close to My Heart is offering a Cloud 9 card kit for only $15 with a qualifying purchase of only $35.  Consultants got to get theirs early of course, so I got to make mine today.  They say what you do on New Year's day is what you do all year long.  I hope that's right. I made a point not to do laundry or clean too much, but I did make a point to make cards! Lol.

The kit comes with enough supplies to make ten cards, two each of five designs.  Per usual, I didn't follow instructions on most of the cards, so mine are a little different. The one I did make per instruction was the one below.

The gold polka dotted washi tape and the teal shimmer trim are new products that will be in the Spring/Summer Idea Book that goes live on Feburary 1.  Both of these are really neat.  Also included in the kit are cutouts for the stamps.  This moustache was stamped with Lagoon pigment ink.  I couldn't seem to get the opaque coverage I wanted with the dye ink, but when I switched to the pigment ink it was perfect.

I pretty much followed the instructions on the card below.  It does look how it was intended, but I switched out the Honey cardstock for the piece of Sunset behind the clouds.  I also inked all my edges including the clouds.  I thought it added a little more of a finished edge.  I used 3d foam tape to give it all a little more depth.

The cards below were close to the instructions, well, one was. The one on the right was made with the stamp from the set.  The sentiment on the left is from the Joyful Birthday stamp set.  

I inked all my edges in both cards.  I also inked my stars in the card on the right in Lagoon.  I didn't use the teal shimmer trim in there either, but I made up for it with the one on the left :) 

The cards below also kept the same design and are done mostly by the instructions.  I just changed the color around a little bit. 

Instead of using the polka washi tape I used the reverse side of the paper.  I reversed the inks between the two cards as well.  The hearts on the left are the cutouts that came with the kit.  I simply covered them with the teal shimmer trim and then trimmed around them. 

The last card I did was actually the second card listed on the instruction sheet.  I really love the colors of the paper in this kit.   The stamps are different from what I usually prefer, but still very interesting.  The "Thanks" stamp in the set just did not strike me as going with this paper.  I really don't know why, but sometimes things just have a certain feel.  I decided to switch it up for what I thought it 'felt' like. 

This suits me a little better.  The arrow design is from our stamp set One Way Borders.  I stamped the Thanks stamp from the Cloud 9 set in Versafine ink. I used our alcohol markers in Lagoon to get the faded coloring on the letters. I trimmed all the excess around the stamp and used my black Copic to give it a finished edge.  I added a strip of our black shimmer trim and a strip of Lagoon cardstock.  I popped the 'Thanks' up on some 3d foam tape and added the silver triangle studs from the kit.  Those really are silver, they just happen to be reflecting the lighting in the room making them look gold.  I think this one turned out to be my favorite. 

If you would like to have a Cloud 9 kit of your own, be sure to make an order this month of $35 or more and it can be yours for only $15.  You can visit me, here, for more details, or drop me a line if you have any questions.  

That's it for me tonight.  Thanks for stopping by!  Happy New Year!