Here's a little sneak peek at some Close To My Heart goodies coming your way this holiday season! The sketch this past week over at Freshly Made Sketches was perfect to make up some simple holiday cards to add to my Christmas stash. I started out wanting to use the oval shape but then it just made more sense to use these stitched rectangle frames. I'm hoping I will find some time to make up some more with this awesome layout and use up some of my Christmas paper stash :).

I love playing along with the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge when I can and this week I was very inspired by Mandy Stacey's gorgeous card design using kraft, white embossing, and some bling! I set to work with this older Close To My Heart set.

I finally got the chance to finish up these painted wood tags! I am lucky to have some crafty parents who cut these up, sanded and drilled each tag for me, and then I get to paint them and stamp them and turn them into tags! I love how these turned out and look forward to making some more :).

I've been wanting to create this card for awhile...I painted up these poinsettias a little over a month ago and finally had some time to cut them out and arrange them on a card! The red was difficult to capture on picture even in natural light! It really pops on this dark chocolate cardstock in real life! I am linking up with the STAMPtember Studio Katia linkup over at Simon Says Stamp.

Wanting to start building up my Christmas tag stash I pulled out the fantastic Holiday Tag Along kit that I got from Papertrey Ink a couple of years ago. I decided to go with the colour combo of Fog cardstock with Iced Spruce distress oxide ink and love how it turned out with the punched out snowflakes. Can't wait to create some more with this kit! I was so stoked to finally get some natural light for this photo :).

I have been itching to ink up this stamp set since I got it and thought it would be perfect on a wine bottle tag! I was playing around with the spotlight effect in portrait mode on my phone and love how this turned out with the wine bottles!

This stamp set was one of my absolute favourites when it debuted at The Greetery. I hadn't seen anything quite like it before and couldn't wait to get it to create some CAS cards. I decided to keep it simple for my first time using it and use only a few of the stamp layers to create this flat card. Of course, I had to pair it with some actual cotton sprigs from our awesome local floral shoppe, MJ's Florals!

I came across this half-painted image in my craft room that I started over 4 years ago in 2015 during a trip to see my Auntie in Ontario! I love this fall scene and thought the pumpkins and grapes fit in with the circle theme over on the Art Impressions Blog! I really enjoy colouring with my Tombow markers and using a watercolour technique. I am also linking up with the STAMPtember Art Impressions linkup over on the Simon Says Stamp Blog.

I came across these beautiful squash at Kootenay Farm to Folk today and just HAD to put them in my picture along with these lovely pine cones I picked up on a neighbourhood walk.

This cute little car and present bundle was so fun to colour up this weekend! This definitely tested my patience as I had to wait for each part of the image to dry before colouring the next colour, but I am so glad that I did! On the car I played around with using some different colours but finally settled on red (and did a couple green too). I used a very light blue for the windows and loved the colour I got from the Tombow N25 marker for the wheels. On the presents I wanted some fun colours and then when they were dry I added some little details with my white gelly pen. I am linking up again with the STAMPtember Lawn Fawn contest.

I finally started on my Christmas card stash today! I just love this Lawn Fawn stamp set and thought it would be perfect to create a fun card. These little gingerbread were great to paint. I paired them with some cozy papers and a couple of lacy dies from Papertrey Ink. It felt a bit weird taking out some Christmas decorations for my photo but I am happy to start my stash. I made two of this design! I am linking up to the Lawn Fawn STAMPtember challenge over at Simon Says Stamp!

It is my dream and goal to one day paint my front door turquoise. I think it is such a beautiful and calming colour and would love seeing it on my front door. For now, I'll settle seeing it on this beautiful wooden door from Art Impressions! I love painting this door. The original stamp is a snowy scene but I omitted some elements to make it an everyday door. I did one of the doors in a more turquoise tone and the other more blue. I can get frustrated, at times, while watercolouring with my markers thinking things aren't turning out the way I want them to, however, oftentimes when it finally fully dries (hours later) I am in love with the results! I wanted to keep the cards clean and simple and played around with the sentiment placement. I am linking up with the current watercolour challenge over on the Art Impressions Blog!

The cooler rainy weather has me looking towards fall so I put together this fall words card the other day. Using a stamp from an older Close To My Heart set (thanks, Auntie Karen!) I kept it simple so that I could play around with some more texture paste and stencils in the background. I also attached a couple of leaves and pumpkins at the bottom to add a little more interest and a pop of colour! I found some cotton sprigs at our local florist and I am in love with them - they may be in all of my next photos :)!

A fall birthday card for an upcoming family birthday. I know it's not exactly fall yet; however, as I painted these leaves and pumpkins at the lake a few days ago several little ones curled up close by to watch intently what I was doing (scroll down to the bottom of the post to see a lake picture). One of them has a birthday next week so I am interested to see if she recognizes the images on the card. I wanted to use the awesome simple sketch from Mojo Monday this week and set to work to create a textured background using one of the Knit Wits stencils from The Greetery. This is my first time playing around with textured paste so I look forward to trying it out some more. I wanted to create some scattered leaves with the tall rectangle feature of the sketch and then placed my pumpkins and sentiment on top.