A Happy Hello and welcome aboard to our very special edition – Live Beautifully Australasian Close to My Heart Blog Hop.

If you have arrived here from the amazingly creative, Shaunna Richards – Passionate About Pages then you are in the right place.

If you landed here by accident, no problem, please join in by following the link at the end of this post.

May is National Scrapbooking Month and to help you celebrate the beauty of your life, Close To My Heart brings you this limited-time Live Beautifully collection. From this collection you can choose to get the Live Beautifully: Cut Above® Layout Kit, Live Beautifully Paper Packet, Live Beautifully Stamp Set or get a discount on one of the Live Beautifully Album Bundles, only available until May 31st.

Now it maybe National Scrapbooking Month, but that doesn’t mean that you have to Scrapbook with these items! I  mean I have but you can also make  cards with the Live Beautifully Stamp Set & or with the Paper Packet and for this hop I wanted to show a few ideas of a scrapbook layout & some cards.

First up is this Smile Scrapbook Layout. I wanted to show how the papers could lean more to a male than using the Flowers.

The Live Beautifully Paper Packet has some black & white stripes & geometric greys as well as a blue watercolour look designs that work nicely for a male layout. I stamped & embossed the word Smile for the title. And once I decide the photos I will most likely add some Flip Flaps for more photos on this layout.

And now for the cards I wanted to show how the paper looks with the Live Beautifully Stamp Set & a design without.

The Rose card was stamped with the Live Beautifully Stamp Set in Blossom Ink & then I water coloured over with the watercolour paints, completely covering the stamp image. This gave the rose a water coloured look. I liked the rose on the rose designed paper but I needed to tone it down so that the stamped flower wasn’t lost. So I swiped White Daisy Ink over the paper to give it a distressed shabby chic look.

Here are some close ups of the painted Rose. You can also see the difference in the paper once the White Daisy Ink has gone over it.

The next Card is this cute Panda Card

The Panda was created from a very cute Bear image from the Jack Cardmaking bundle. He is coloured in black watercolour pencil to make him look like a Panda & added to a card decorated with the Live Beautifully Paper.

Close up of the Panda.

And I’d love for you to leave a comment before you head on over to the very talented Doris Taylor – Creative Inspirations to get more wonderful ideas on how to use this this month’s Live Beautifully collection.

Enjoy the hop & thanks so much for taking the time to check out these ideas. I hope you enjoyed what I created, as much as I enjoyed creating it. Remember you only have until May 31st, to get the Live Beautifully Collection.

See you soon.
Maz