OWH Birthday Bash!

Whoo hoo! We had our Operation Write Home Birthday Bash card making party today and it was a blast! Both girls are at home today because it is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. We all agreed that we'd definitely be starting the new year off right by making cards for American heroes serving overseas. Above you can see (click the photo to make it larger) the makings for kits for three different cards, two of which use sketches from OWH's vast collection.

 Meital (age 15, on the left) and Liat (age 20 and a sergeant in the IDF) enjoyed making the cards, as did I. They both expressed interest in writing Any Hero cards, too, so we'll have to get those done and ready to go in the package I hope to be mailing out before the end of the month.

Unfortunately, it soon got very hot in my stamping room (no air conditioning in there...yet) so after a while we needed to stop (I was afraid the sweat dripping off my nose would land on the cards!). We did get 17 cards done, and there are only four more card kits to finish up. When I actually get the box in the mail I will let you know how many cards we've sent altogether, including Any Hero mail.

It was fun to spend the time crafting with my girls, and a great way to start off the new year.

Art Impressions Rainbow Challenge

Over on the Art Impressions blog, they've issued a challenge to use rainbow colors in a card. This was fun for me because I especially love bright colors! The image of course is by Ai, one of the first stamps I bought when I got started with this enjoyable craft. I colored it with watercolor pencils and a Dove Blender pen. The strips of colorful paper are from my scrap stash. Not sure you can see it, but I thought the red was too plain so I stamped some stripes on it using VersaMark ink. If you click on the photo you might be able to see it better.

Oldies But Goodies

With Autumn (supposedly) approaching, I've started thinking about all the things I love about this season - especially Halloween. I stamped up this scene as a Halloween card but it's really too big to be a card and also...I can't part with it! I stamped this a long time ago, and don't remember exactly but I am pretty sure I used close to 20 stamps for this scene, every one of them by the fabulous stamp company, Art Impressions.  I even used Ai stamps (inked selectively) to add the text. When I first started stamping scenes I stocked up on loads of Ai stamps, and I still love them! I used them all the time on my scenic stamping website, where I put up a bunch of tutorials - all featuring these great stamps. Unfortunately, that site is long gone, unless it can be found via the Wayback Machine.

And this of course is a very sarcastic Valentine. Click on the photo to see a larger version. Not all of these are Ai stamps, but the couple on the bench and the fence behind them are.

I gave up stamping scenes several years ago, because while it is a lot of fun it is also time-consuming and challenging. Now that our translation business keeps us so busy, usually what I want when I have free time is to do something relatively easy and quick. But the beauty of the Ai stamps is that you can create a simple scene quickly with just a few images and not too much calculating, masking, etc. Of course, then I don't really have a good reason to add any snarkiness, but you can't have everything!

More Challenge Cards

Today I have two more cards in response to the Operation Write Home Virtual Cardmaking Party challenges. This first card is for the challenge to make a sports themed card. I just bought a package of these cute basketball stickers this summer, so I was happy to get the chance to use them so soon! Patterned papers are very, very old Close to My Heart scrapbook papers. I used the OWH card sketch #11 for inspiration.

And this card is in response to the final challenge of the VCMP, to make a card that reflects your home state or country. I hoard postage stamps just so that I can use them on cards and I had a lot of fun sifting through my stash and finding stamps that reflected different aspects of Israel. I used one of the un-numbered OWH Bonus Sketches for this card. Click on the photo to enlarge if you wish. I may well make another few of these, perhaps some reflecting the state where I grew up, gorgeous California! I will use these cards to write Any Hero mail, and they will be given to heroes who don't get a lot of mail or who need their spirits lifted.

Thanks to everyone at Operation Write Home for the fun and inspiration! Now back to preparing kits for our little Birthday Bash card making party.

Snowflakes but not Christmas

Here's another card for the Operation Write Home Virtual Cardmaking Party. This challenge was to make a non-Christmas card featuring snowflakes. Perhaps my coloring is a bit Christmas-y, but I like the contrast of the red and green with that strong blue background paper (by Hot Off the Press). This is actually NEW paper (gasp!) that I bought last summer.  What? Only one year old is like brand-new for me... The snowman image is another stamp from Darcie's Country Folk, and the sentiment comes from a Hero Arts set. You might not be able to see it, but the gray paper is torn along one edge, and the snowman is popped up. I used BIC markers to color the image. This is actually the prototype for a card kit I'm preparing for our OWH Birthday Bash later this month. So far I've got three kits, one is ready and the other two are in progress. :)

Is That a Challenge?*

Over at Operation Write Home they had a Virtual Cardmaking Party over the Labor Day weekend. Sadly, I had my usual one day weekend, but I am trying to meet at least a few of the ten challenges.  They're all very different and, well, challenging. The first one I managed to get done was the Western themed challenge.

I haven't used this stamp by Darcie's Country Folk in ages, so I was happy to dust it off and put it into action. The western border is from a small piece of notepaper I got somehow...maybe a gift or as part of a grab bag, many moons ago. I colored the cowboy in with ZIG and BIC markers, and the red patterned paper is from Keeping Memories Alive, also very old. Still working my way through leftover scraps.

I hope I'll have more cards to show you soon!

*Can anyone guess which Disney movie this comes from?

Let's Catch Up

Well, technically summer is over here in Israel (would someone please tell the weather that?) and Meital is back in school (tenth grade, gadzooks!) We had a fantastic trip to the U.S. to see family and friends; the only bad thing (and it was a biggie) was that at the last minute - and I mean just a few hours before we needed to leave for the airport - the IDF informed Liat that she would not be allowed to leave the country. We were really bummed and spent most of the trip thinking of her, taking photos of things so she could pick what she wanted us to buy for her, and feeling cheated. Still, now that she's twenty I suppose we need to get used to the fact that she won't necessarily be coming along with us on trips any  more.

When we got back from our month away, we were swamped with work (good timing because I really would rather not have to work on my vacation!) and then there was the whole Olympics insanity, back-to-school nuttiness and just general craziness.  So that's my excuse for not blogging in August, and I'm sticking to it.

I've been busy knitting and stamping, too, and I will - I hope, if time and my &^%$%#$# printer permit - be posting more often again....starting very shortly.  I hope all of you had a wonderful summer.