Close To My Heart ~ Year-round Crafting with Four Seasons!

Year-round Crafting with Four Seasons!

No matter what time of year you dive into the creative process, there are always plenty of memories to be captured, friendships to be celebrated, and art to be crafted. Embracing your creative side year-round can be quick and easy when you’re working with seasonal papers and stickers. Today, we’re going to give you a peek into the crafting potential offered by our Workshop Wow: Four Seasons workshop kits and showing off just how easy it is to create stunning artwork on theme! 

All the pages and cards on display today were designed using the Four Seasons paper collections in our 2022–2023 Core Products catalog. (To view these collections and all the other amazing products available in this catalog, click here!) Now, let’s get started! 

First up is our springtime cardmaking workshop, bursting with floral features and bright colors. These cards favor a variety of sentiments, from birthday wishes, to greetings, to “just because” options. One standout feature of these cards is the use of White Acrylic Hearts across all of the card designs. While the cards also share a commonality in paper patterns and sticker usage, the inclusion of the White Acrylic Hearts as a common element across all our springtime cards serves as a simple but effective way to tie them all together, working to further preserve a cohesive theme. 

For additional cohesion, these cards all pull their sentiments and stamped accents from the Seasonal Haul Stamp + Thin Cuts set and the My Acrylix® Spring Greetings stamp set. These elements, while allowing for differences from card to card, also serve to uphold the springy feel throughout the entire assortment!

This springtime theme continues with our Four Seasons—Spring scrapbooking workshop. This workshop kit includes a garden of floral patterns across the seven pages available through this kit design. Fun fact: All of our Four Seasons scrapbooking workshop kits follow a similar design pattern, making it easy to create each page from each seasonal theme! Even with the design similarities, though, the papers, stickers, and color palette used in each seasonal page set the individual pieces apart. One standout element of the spring pages is the use of Woodgrain Die-cut Flowers. Additional floral elements were added to these pages from the Smell the Flowers Stamp + Thin Cuts set.

These stamps and Thin Cuts dies are particularly prevalent in this 12” x 12” “Love You” single page.  Flowers and leaves from this set were both stamped directly on the base page and stamped on die-cuts and attached to the base page with 3-D Foam Tape, leaving a gorgeous multi-dimensional effect!

Moving on through the year, we get to our sunny summer layouts and cards! The gorgeous pieces in our summer selection feature a more vibrant color palette, making the scrapbook pages stand out in any album, and giving the cards an unforgettable foundation! 

Our scrapbook pages take on even more floral accents, courtesy of the Chasing Sunshine Stamp + Thin Cuts set.

Our 12” x 12” “Go with the Flow” layout offers a great example of how these dies can be used to create custom embellishment clusters, perfectly tailored to the Four Seasons—Summer paper patterns and stickers!

The trick to making these embellishment clusters blend in so seamlessly with the paper and sticker designs is  stamping them in complementary ink colors. 

As with the scrapbook pages, each seasonal set of cards is designed following a similar pattern. Similarities can be seen from season to season, but each set has its own unique flair. Our summer cards sport the same bright hues as the scrapbooking pages, and are embellished with a handful of White Acrylic Flowers. 

One theme that is seen throughout all of our Four Seasons cards is the usage of the truck die-cut from the Seasonal Haul Stamp + Thin Cuts. To get twice the cardmaking power, the Four Seasons—Summer cardmaking workshop kit includes two design options, both featuring the truck die-cut.

The summer truck cards have a relatively simple design, but are the perfect addition to the set, with truck beds full of acrylic flowers and an uplifting sentiment sticker! No matter which version of this card you choose to make, it’s sure to be a delight for any friend or family member you give it to! 

Another great two-for-one card design can be found in the “Live a Little” and “Go With the Flow” cards. This dual design principle can be seen in various forms throughout the Four Seasons cards, and is a great way to create multiple cards quickly.

Next up are our selection of Autumnal cards and scrapbook pages. These leafy layouts and crisp cards are perfect for all kinds of festive occasions and the preservation of all kinds of memories. One of our favorite layouts from this set is the 12” x 12” “Crisp Air, Warm Hearts” layout, which includes a fun, striped panel section along the bottom of the pages. This layout really puts the power of the Four Seasons—Autumn paper on display, along with a handful of stickers.

The paper patterns can also be seen in the array of dovetailed pennants and paper layers in the upper half of the left page. By relying on the usage of patterned paper for the majority of these pages’ decoration, it makes the creative process quicker and easier to follow! With that being said, though, this page also benefits from the inclusion of Autumn Air Stamp + Thin Cuts set, as its stamps and dies have come together throughout the page to create embellishment clusters around the title pieces and photos.

Another beautiful piece that stands out in this collection is the 12” x 12” “Autumn Leaves & Pumpkins Please” layout! This photo-packed layout includes many of the elements seen in the “Crisp Air, Warm Hearts” layout, but this example embraces a more simple, white background toward the center, giving it a classic design. By going this route, we are left with optimal focus on the photos while at the same time, elegantly preserving the autumnal theme!

Last but not least are our winter cards and scrapbook pages, and each piece is packed with frosty wintery goodness! One of our absolute favorites in this selection is the “Thinking of You This Season” card. This card makes beautiful use of the Four Seasons—Winter woodgrain paper option for a secondary base, and a total of six other patterns that have been cut into strips of varying width and arranged side by side to form a stunning background.

To finish it off, we trimmed two pieces of paper—Scarlet and Mink, respectively—dovetailed and layered them, and stamped our festive sentiment and a handful of snowflakes in Pine ink. This, along with the aforementioned patterned paper strips, and a small constellation of White Acrylic Stars, make this card a real holiday treasure! 

The final piece we’ll be looking at today is our “Winter Wishes” card, which shows off a simple but effective fold-over technique. A great feature of Close To My Heart patterned paper packs is that each page is double-sided, giving you twice the crafting capability with a single page. In this card, the base has been built out with a piece of Espresso cardstock, a white woodgrain piece on top of that, and a wintery foliage piece for the top layer. However, instead of leaving the top layer piece as-is, the top right corner has been folded down to reveal the woodgrain piece beneath it. This also shows off the plaid pattern on the back of the foliage piece, allowing both the patterns on this double-sided paper to work together at once!

This card has been finished off with stamps from both the My Acrylix® Winter Wishes stamp set and a stamp and die-cut from the Seasonal Haul Stamp + Thin Cuts set, with the title piece popped up off the base with 3-D foam tape.

This beautiful card is perfect for friends, neighbors, and family members alike, and is a delight to receive, and to make!