I wanted to make another special birthday card for a friend and knew I wanted to use the pinecones again! My friend, Tammy, lives on a beautiful acreage filled with lots of trees and has a barn filled with chopped wood for the winter. She inspires me often with cardmaking and scrapbooking! I decided to use the layout from Freshly Made Sketches this week.

 I have a couple of crafty friends who I wanted to send some love to this week and I knew just the set to start with from Lawn Fawn. 

I am SO excited to share my first slider card! It took some trial and error and more learning but it finally came together smoothly! We happen to have a couple of little guys in our lives with birthdays coming up in August who have firefighter daddies. When I saw this Village Heroes set from Lawn Fawn I knew it would be perfect and was so happy I could get it in Canada through Papercrafters Workshop. 

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've been hanging onto these vintage toy papers from Carta Bella for awhile and finally had the perfect opportunity to bust into them - two kid birthdays! These papers definitely bring up feelings of nostalgia for all of these classic toys...monkeys in a barrel, wind-up toys, toy soldiers, viewmasters, spinning tops, wooden blocks, and more! It does make me wonder...will our children feel the same way about their toys? Or are we so overrun with crazy amounts of toys that we do not build the same connections to them? Do toys nowadays stand up as long as toys used to last?

To put together these cards I decided to use the classic sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches. They are celebrating their 400th sketch by doing some throwbacks and this week it's back to sketch 200, which I just so happen to have played along with 4 years ago! I added my original card at the bottom of this post. For these cards, I paired a few papers together for each card, die cut the corresponding birthday number along with a happy birthday line border, and used some antique linen distress ink around the edges to add to the retro feel.




Here is my original card created with this sketch 4 years ago on August 21, 2015:

Wanting to shop local and handmade for my friend's daughter's birthday I found this sweet sloth stuffie (which happens to be her favourite animal!) by EvilKaneedle. This Mountain Misfit is handmade in Kimberley, about half an hour from where we live! I knew right away that I wanted to use the Lawn Fawn sloth to make a birthday card to go along with the gift. Freshly Made Sketches is celebrating their 400th sketch by using their original sketch #1 this week and I am so happy that I could play along too!

Here are two baby cards I created using Freshly Made Sketches. A friend asked me to make up some gender neutral baby cards for her to have on hand after seeing this card I made awhile ago. I really wanted to use this paper that I got in a Simon Says Stamp kit quite awhile ago, and although it does contain some rose gold and pink shades, I still find it to be gender neutral (plus I hope we're moving more away from the whole pink=girl, blue=boy stereotype!) ! At first I thought about overlapping my stars but I really wanted to showcase this sweet sentiment so I used a stitched circle to (hopefully) convey the moon with the stars. I am playing along with #MarchMeetTheMaker by Joanne Hawker on Instagram this month. Be sure to check it out - lots of great inspiration!

I needed a baby card for a friend this week and I knew just the paper collection I wanted to use. Our new Close To My Heart paper collection, Feels Like Home, is beautiful and perfect for many different occasions. Using Freshly Made Sketches again I set to work with this beautiful saying from Papertrey Ink.

It's my birthday month and Lawn Fawn sent me a free birthday gift with my order! This sweet little koala was fun to colour up with my Tombow markers and I loved using some of the other Lawn Fawn products I own to create this sweet card for my son's friend's birthday :). I used Freshly Made Sketches and am also linking up with the "Happy Little Critters" challenge over at Lawn Fawnatics.

I have been itching to get this cute Lawn Fawn set out and thought it would be perfect for my friend's birthday today who appreciates a good pun :). I was excited to do some more ink blending and was happy I still had some purple (her favourite colour) plaid left to use for the background as well as a little bit for the alpaca's scarf! I also used a tiny bit of vintage photo distress ink to give my alpaca a little dimension and colour. I used the Freshly Made Sketches layout, and am also linking up with the colour inspiration challenge over at Lawn Fawnatics and the "all that glitters is gold" challenge over at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge, who just happens to be featuring Lawn Fawn this week, too!

This card came together with the Freshly Made Sketches layout and the beautiful Grateful Heart paper collection. I love how our stitched heart dies pair so nicely with our basic heart dies.

Kraft Paper

Thin Cuts - Basic Hearts

Thin Cuts - Stitched Hearts

Grateful Heart Paper Collection

This week I set out to make a card for my friend who just moved into her new house! I thought this Art Impressions door would be great for the front and used this Irish blessing on the inside from Verve. I put it all together using Freshly Made Sketches. I am also linking up with the Art Impressions challenge of using layers.

It's my baby's 1st birthday this week! Harvey turns one on Friday and I thought it best to get his card finished earlier in the week so that I can focus on finishing up a few other things for his big day. When I started thinking about his birthday theme awhile ago, I knew I wanted to do something with mountains and woodland animals. Lawn Fawn seemed like the perfect company that carried what I needed. To make this card, I started out with Freshly Made Sketches and decided to turn the sketch on its side. I thought it would be fun to paper piece some leaves together for my leaf pile that the fox is jumping into and I added some sparkly gold paper to be celebratory and to play along with the Lawn Fawnatics "bling it out" challenge. I am also linking up with the "animal antics" challenge over at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge.

I've been wanting to get this older Close To My Heart wreath set for awhile now this fall. When I saw the current layout over at Freshly Made Sketches, it just screamed wreath to me! Needing some sympathy cards, I felt the wreath could serve as a warm heartfelt sympathy card. I intended to add the "three" items to the wreath at the bottom like the sketch, but it just looked too busy with this wreath, so I chose to make this paper bow instead.

As I was finishing up some cards late last night in my craft room I just had to bust into some new Lawn Fawn items I just got. I couldn’t wait to play around with these mountain ranges and decided Freshly Made Sketches was the perfect layout to do so. I am also linking up to the  Lawn Fawn STAMPtember challenge over at Simon Says Stamp.

I've been itching to get into this amazing Lawn Fawn set since I got it this spring and today just seemed like the perfect day to finish it up! I used Freshly Made Sketches for my layout to keep the focus on the image and fun sentiment. I'm also linking up with the Lawn Fawn Stamptember celebration over at Simon Says Stamp. Can't wait to play around with this some more :)

 I'm hoping to take a better picture of this card later!

Finally, I have finished the second card in my latest coffee set! Although it's been a little quiet on my blog this month, I have been crafting away in my newly organized craft room! I have been prepping to sell some of my cards at a new store coming to my city and I cannot wait to share what I have been making :)

I have loved this sentiment for a long time and decided to pair it up with this to-go cup from the Tim Holtz blueprints. I used Freshly Made Sketches and am also linking up with the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge of food or drink. I cannot wait to finish the other two cards for this set!

Here is a card I put together for my Dad's birthday. He is the ultimate handyman and always seems to know how to build or fix things around the house, so I knew just the set I wanted to pull out for him. I also love these Simple Stories woodgrain papers and knew they would fit great too. I used Freshly Made Sketches and had originally intended on having a clump of tools at the top of the pegboard to coordinate with the sketch but decided I liked it better spreading them around.

I am excited to finally put this card together tonight! I've had these images coloured up and just waiting for the opportune time to turn into a card. I'm thinking I may make up a coffee set with this layout design from Freshly Made Sketches. These blueprint stamps and gold lettering seem to be my go-to right now :).

Don't you just gotta have gingham?! I am loving all the gingham right now and was stoked to pull it out for these cards. I used this week's Freshly Made Sketches and utilized leftover pieces on each card creating one with several 'happy' die cuts stacked on top of one another and creating the other with the negative space.