If you are viewing this prior to January 20th, we are setting up our links and everything might not be working yet.  Just come back on the 20th!  Welcome to the first Tour de Freaks blog hop of the new year!  I just LOVE being a ‘freak’ and this month our hop…well, it’s all about LOVE!  If you are going forward through the hop you have arrived here from my friend Lisa Martz at Get Your Stamp On!.  Her projects were simple delightful!

I did three projects this time and the first one is this super simple candy heart butterfly!  I recently saw this idea out on the net and decided to embellish on it a bit.  I used the butterfly die and did the largest butterfly (it’s the folded one) in Basic Black and then the next largest one in Poppy Parade.  I ran the Poppy Parade on through the Striped Embossing Folder.  I punched out a silver glimmer (yes, you can STILL order this paper…YIPPEE!!) word window piece, cut it in half and then added those pieces between the black and poppy butterflies for the antenna.  I added an ‘extra creamy Hershey heart’ as the body of the butterfly!  So sweet!  This is one of my mnts (in different colors though) for my January events.

You know how I LOVE mostly white cards and that is what this one is…mostly white with a little black. a little poppy and a little BLING!  The base of the card is Whisper White.  I took another piece of Whisper White, ran it through the Striped Embossing Folder, wrapped some Linen Thread around it, and added to the card base using dimensionals.  I stamped the greeting in Basic Black and Poppy Parade on Whisper White and added it to the card front using dimensionals.  I stamped the {XO} again on Whisper White using Poppy Parade, cut out and added using a dimensional.  To make the heart I used the polka dotted Poppy Parade paper from the Incolor dsp paper pack and used the two smallest Heart Framelits (at the same time) to make the cut out heart…COOL!!!  I added a mini clothespin, some Basic Rhinestones and added to the card front using dimensionals.  I finished it off with a couple more of the Basic Rhinestones.

My last project has to be my favorite!  I was tooling around Michael’s one day and saw this little earring tree.  I thought how fun it would look with hearts and bows and then thought what a fun project it would be for the Tour de Freaks blog hop.  I made my ‘bows’ using White Organza Ribbon and the Everyday Enchantment Brads and those were added into the some of the earring holes.  I did my ‘treats’ by layering an ‘extra creamy Hershey heart’ onto a Scalloped Heart in Poppy Parade.  I put a piece of the Whisper White Bakers twine between the scallop heart and the chocolate heart so they could be ‘hung’ from the tree.  I stamped the Candy Conversation stamp using Poppy Parade onto Shimmer White, punched with the small heart punch and added to the centers.  The banner was made by stamped in the banner from Take it to Heart in Versamark and embossing in Pewter Embossing Powder (yes…that is still available too!) and stamped the greeting from P.S. I Love You in Basic Black.  The polka dotted heart was the cut out from the card, then the striped embossed heart from the Fashionable Heart Embosslit and then silver glimmer heart from the 3 heart punch.  The other polka dotted heart is from the 3 heart punch with another of the black embossed hearts.  The banner is added using glue dots.  The last thing I used to decorate my little tree was the medium heart (from the the 3 heart punch) in silver glimmer and the littlest heart from that punch in Poppy Parade.

Well I hope you enjoyed my little collection ‘from the heart’.  Now it’s time to head over to Deb Currier’s ARTfelt Impressions blog.  Oh she has some EXCELLENT projects for you!  Her style is so simply wonderful!

Until next time…HAPPY STAMPIN’!