Operation Smile Every Bit of Wonderful Blog Hop

 Close To My Heart is proud to support Operation Smile, a charitable organization that provides cleft palate surgeries for children in need.  (You can learn more HERE.)  Did you know that you could round up your order and give your change to Operation Smile?  It only takes $240 to change a child's life!  This year, the Operation Smile stamp set is Every Bit of Wonderful, and $7 from its sales go to Operation Smile.  Join me on this blog hop to show off this pretty set.  (If you're already hopping, then you've probably arrived from Michelle's blog.  From here, you'll visit Becca's blog next.

My first card features the Lovely papers and palette (Blue Belle, Ballerina, Canary, and Sage).  I used my Hexagon Thin Cuts to cut each piece and played around with the colors and patterns until I liked the arrangement.  Notice that I used a piece of Blue Belle glitter paper, plus I stamped (tone-on-tone) on the Sage and Blue Belle cardstock.

This close up shows the fussy cutting and layering I did after stamping the floral image on the card directly with Sage, on Sage cardstock, and on Ballerina cardstock.  I grabbed my watercolor pencils (sans eau) to quickly shade in the bud.  It didn't photograph well, but I dotted the little sprig of "berries" with clear shimmer brush.  I used 3D foam tape to pop the flower and then added a Blue Belle glitter gem.

For my second card, I played with a monochromatic color scheme of Blue Belle and Sapphire.

On a 3.75"x5" White Daisy cardstock panel, I random stamped floral images in Sapphire to cover the cardstock.  I cut the sentiment brackets with my new Simple Brackets Thin Cuts and both the Blue Belle glitter paper and Sapphire cardstock layers with the Fancy Borders die cuts.  The sentiment is stamped in Sapphire.

Thanks for letting me share these two card ideas with you.  Every CTMH fan needs this stamp set in their collection!  Please leave a comment before you hop to the next blog.  You won't want to miss the beautiful project that BECCA has on her blog for you!

{Click HERE for all the hop participants and their blogs.}