Stamp of the Month Blog Hop: July's Sweet Life

Welcome to the Sweet Life blog hop featuring Close To My Heart's July 2013 stamp of the month!  This set has really grown on me as I've used it.  If you'd like to get incredible inspiration of all this set has to offer, then head to Vickie Price's blog next. (If you've already started the hop, then you should have arrived from Georgia's blog.)

For my card set, I decided to use the For Always paper pack and accent the fruit with Ruby, Sunset, and Topiary.  Each of my card sketches came from the Make It From Your Heart how-to book.  I used Opaque Pearls and our beautiful black striped grosgrain ribbon to accent the cards.  Since I do not love to color, I tried to recreate a toile effect with this set using only black ink.  The sentiment piece was cut with the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge.  I like how it turned out, although for future cards in this style, I will try stamping the sentiment in a bright color.

For the rest of the cards, I used the waterbrush to color the images.  First I colored all my images with Topiary on the leaves and stems.  Then, I used Sunset ink to color the peaches.

 Ruby is one of the colors in the For Always paper pack.  Can you see the sentiment "Love you to the core"?

 To make my B&T paper match my image more, I water brushed Ruby ink in the centers of each medallion. It really helped to pull all the pieces together.

Thanks for enjoying a bit of the Sweet Life with me today!  Go check out Vickie's project next!