Card Bowl Third Challenge

Alrighty, last post of the day, I promise! For the third and final challenge of the Operation Write Home Card Bowl, we needed to use the newest sketch, released just this morning, #210 and make, once again, a masculine card suitable for sending to men or boys. I was very excited about dusting off my Posh Impressions stamps, which haven't seen much action in recent years (long story, a problem with fading ink not with the stamps). The stamps I used: tiger, sentiment, and animal print, are part of the Playful Posh Circus set. The fern backfround paper had a white background, but it competed for attention with the animal print, which I really wanted to use. Thanks to one of the many very helpful videos on the OWH YouTube channel, I got the idea to mute the background and make it more of a tone on tone look by sponging over with Peeled Paint Distress Ink. I think it works. I used Memento Tuxedo Blank ink and a multi-colored Kaleidacolor ink pad for the animal print. I stamped the tiger on pale orange cardstock, then boosted the color with a little Wild Honey Distress Ink. After fussy cutting him, I popped the tiger up with 3M foam tape, also known as "the Precious."

I hope you're having a great day! Enjoy the Super Bowl (or not). I would enjoy watching, but it will be broadcast live here, which means about 1:30 a.m. So someone out there have some yummy munchies for me, okay? 

Card Bowl Second Challenge

The second Card Bowl challenge is tied to this month's Our Daily Bread Designs challenge on the OWH Stars and Stamps blog, to use brown as a main color. I hope this qualifies! I embossed the image (Art Impressions) in white embossing powder and then painted the barn with bleach. I have no idea who made the wood grain paper, but it is as ancient as most of the rest of my paper stash. I imagine someone out there makes something similar, if not better.

Card Bowl First Challenge

In honor ot the 2014 Superbowl, OWH is having a Card Bowl, with three challenges. The first is to make a masculine card (for men or boys) that in some way reflects one of the two teams playing in the big game, the Seattle Seahawks or the Denver Broncos. While the Seahawks did eliminate my San Francisco Forty-Niners in the semi-final, I just can't bring myself to root for the Broncos. So here is my Seattle-inspired card. The orca is a sticker from a set of Seattle-related stickers that someone gave me years ago. I think the water paper is by Hot Off The Press, but I'm not sure. Sentiment is from a Hero Arts set. At first I wanted to make a card depicting the Seattle skyline, with a computer-generated sentiment that said, Long Time No... But then I decided that might be weird. What do you think?

Stripes

Trying to use up some scraps before they get out of control. I used OWH sketch #205 for this card. The image is digital, colored in with Prismacolor pencils. This also qualifies for the Our Daily Bread Designs monthly challenge to use stripes. If fifty people meet the challenge, ODBD will pay for the shipping on two boxes of cards sent by OWH to our heroes serving overseas.

Operation Penguin

I made this card for Operation Write Home after a call was sent out for penguin cards for a certain Brigagier General who happens to love the birds. The main stamps (snowy background, penguins and iceberg) are by Posh Impressions. Water is by Darcie's, speech bubble by Art Impressions. The sentiment is by Stampendous. I made the textured pink paper using the Cuttlebug my lovely and generous friend Caroline gave to me this past summer. I am having such fun with that thing!

Slanted

Back again with more cards, this time using OWH's sketch #143. On this first one, I stamped the sentiment too close to the edge and had to make the slants go in the other direction. Oops! I think it came out okay. Old papers, as usual, and the sentiment is from a clear stamp set by Hero Arts. This is for my parents.

These two slant the right way. More old papers (yawn) and -hey! - some fairly new washi tape (navy with yellow stars) that I stuck down on white paper and trimmed. Hero Arts sentiment from the same set mentioned above. One of these became an Any Hero card for OWH, the other went to my pen pal Tom of Wish of a Lifetime. By the way, I got my first letter from Tom today! What a pleasure to get a lovely, handwritten letter from a new friend. It was the highlight of my day.

This one uses some zig zag trims I got in a packet of scrapbooking stuff years ago. This is definitely not the blog to visit when you want to see all the latest papers, inks, techniques and all that. I stamped the clouds (Close to My Heart) in light blue on the blue paper so they would show but not compete with the zig zags. The sun (by Printworks, I think) was stamped onto yellow paper and cut out, then addeed to the card. Sentiment from the same set mentioned above. This one is going to Cards for Hospitalized Kids. I actually made one last card using this sketch, also for CFHK, but I haven't photographed it yet. I used a rainbow idea for that one, using a Posh Impressions border stamp and various colors of Distress Inks on a piece of glossy cardstock. I will try to share that one in my next post.

Big Help

This past week was the second time I used my system of randomly selecting a card sketch (I use the fabulous collection of sketches at Operation Write Home) and then spending the week making cards based on the sketch. As you can see, I was able to get a lot of cards made this week! It was so easy to just dive in, since the design was already decided. And the more cards I made, the more ideas I got. First of all, the random number generator selected 175, so that's the sketch on which I based all of these cards. The first card is for my new pen pal, Tom B., with whom I was matched with the help of the Wish of a Lifetime organization. The patterned paper and stamps are very old Close to My Heart items. The most interesting thing about this card is that I used a trick I found online (probably on Pinterest) of painting plain brads with nail polish. It works great. I just stuck the brads in a dry kitchen sponge while I "painted" them.

This next card will go to Cards for Hospitalized Kids. I used my Cuttlebug (a million thanks to Caroline, the most generous person I know!) to make the dotted background. The snowman and little house are stamps from Darcies, and the sentiment is part of an OWH fundraiser set from Stampers Best.

This will be an Any Hero card for Operation Write Home. It uses more ancient CTMH paper, plus the fabulous set by Stampers Best. You can see I began deviating even further from the sketch when I didn't combine four small squares to make the larger square here.

These two Any Hero cards use very old papers from Keeping Memories Alive. Even after all of the paper purging and scrap wrangling I've done, I still have papers that are over fifteen years old. Crazy. The tree image is by Art Impressions. I sponged the backgrounds behind the trees with Distress inks.

One of these is a card for Sandy, the founder of OWH, and the other ... Well, it turned out so Spring-like, I thought I'd better save it for, you know, Spring. Card on the left uses more KMA papers, the one on the right uses purple CTMH; I'm not sure about the yellow and white. Sentiment is by Posh Impressions.

This last card is for the postal workers where Sandy takes her dozens upon dozens of OWH boxes to be mailed. I hope they'll get a kick out of the Israeli postage stamps. Patterned paper by Hot Off the Press, sentiment stamp by Posh Impressions.

And there you have it! I am so pleased with the way this system is working for me. I've got a new sketch number and am raring to start on a new week's worth of cards! 

And in case you're wondering...yes I am still knitting. Every day, in fact. I am almost finished with a big - and I do mean BIG - project, which I will share next month after it has been gifted. It has been a pleasure, but after a month and a half of working on only one project, I am more than ready to get some more diversity going.

Have a wonderful weekend!

On a Sketch and a Plan

I have been trying to come up with a plan that will help me make more cards with less angst and agonizing. I realized that it is easier for me to pick a sketch and build the card around that, rather than pick a stamped image to use and then find a sketch that will work with it. I will be using a random number generator every Friday to help me pick one of the (as of today) 196+ sketches available on the Operation Write Home website.

Last weekend I got sketch #67. In some cases I modified the sketch a bit, but having that layout in mind really made the cards come together for me a lot faster and more easily. The first card is for my father's birthday and uses very old patterned paper from a Hot Off the Press booklet, some ribbon, and a stamp by Fiskars. The card directly above will be going in a packet of cards for Cards For Hospitalized Kids. I used some fun metallic corrugated cardstock and a dimensional sticker I found at my local arts and crafts store, and a ribbon that probably came on a gift. The sentiment is by Close to My Heart.

And this card is going to a friend. Here I used some very old Keeping Memories Alive patterned paper and stamps by Close to My Heart. I actually made a couple of other cards this past week, including the Any Hero card shown in my last post, which also used sketch #67. Now it is the weekend again, and I have a new sketch to follow and am nearly done with my first card of the week! I think this system may just be what I needed to spark my creativity and get me busy making cards...

Any Hero Card

I haven't posted in months, but I wanted to quickly share this Any Hero card I made for Operation Write Home. I used washi tape on a card for the first time! And my new Fiskars star punch (with little gold star stickers in the center of each). Tag was made using an old Close to my Heart template. I used OWH Sketch #67. Big thanks sentiment is by Printworks, small thank you by CTMH.

Still Using Scraps, and...

This blue plaid paper was actually already in the recycling box, but I rescued it yesterday (and its twin) and made two of these cards. The paper is by Keeping Memories Alive, the bird stickers are by Paper House Productions, the pine bough (just a teeny piece of a larger stamp) is by PSX, and the sentiment is Hero Arts. I used the Operation Write Home sketch #151. The circles were colored a bit with Distress Inks in the Frayed Burlap color. One card will go to OWH, and the other will go to a cousin of mine.

I copied this idea from a card I saw on Pinterest. It is very similar to a card design on OWH, not a challenge sketch I don't think, but an idea for using up scraps from the tutorial about Scrap Wrangling. Aside from the paper scraps, I used the leftover smiley flowers I used in a card a few days ago for the "bows" on the presents. Now that I get a good look at this card, I see I need to touch up the yellow ink around the sentiment before this goes in the OWH box.

And just in case my knitting friends were thinking I had abandoned my needles, I present two of my socks-in-progress. The blue one is the second of a pair for Meital, the grey is for someone very special.

I keep getting more and more inquiries about doing work for the Yizkor Book project. I have mentioned these before but it was a while ago. After the Holocaust, many of the survivors moved to Israel or America and began recording the story of their hometowns and the people in them. There is often a good deal of pre-WWII history in these books, along with accounts of the suffering endured by the townspeople during the Holocaust. There are descriptions of the town itself and of various events that took place there, character sketches of various people from the town, and so on. These are truly memorial books for places and people who are no more. Sometimes the chapters are full of funny stories, sometimes they are horrifying and tragic, and sometimes they are poetic. The Hebrew is almost always very elegant and lyrical, full of old fashioned terms and references from the Bible. Interesting and challenging work to be sure.

So I'm pretty busy on what is likely a four day weekend for most of you. I hope you're having fun!

Card Sketches

As you know, I most often use sketches from the collection at Operation Write Home for my card inspiration. I don't always follow them exactly, but they are not only a huge help but they also encourage me to think in new ways and try new things. But the card above is not (knowingly) based on an OWH sketch. I was wandering around YouTube the other day and watched a video by Paper Trey Ink called Make it Monday #69: Inspiration Into Unique Sketch. It was very interesting. The idea is to look at things you see in your everyday life and see if you can find inspiration for a card design. I have a much easier time following someone else's great idea than I do coming up with ideas on my own. This card is pretty much a CASE (copy and steal everything) of the card the gal on the video made.

I am happy to say that I used up even more scraps in the making of this card. The monkey is by Posh Impressions, and the saying was typed up in Word using the Kristen font. The monkey comes in a set that includes a cute vertically-oriented sentiment "I'm wild about you" but I thought this was more kid friendly. Too bad I don't have a stamp of a banana!

Only three days left until the New Year's Eve Paper Purging Party - I can't wait! Every time I leave my crafts room I think I should just go dump all of those tiny scraps now instead of waiting. But then I walk in there and decide I really should try to use just a few more scraps. I've got another scrap card in the works right now, in fact.

More Than Cookies

I really had fun with this card! I wanted to use the scraps of this fun chocolate chip cookie paper, and I decided that the Operation Write Home sketch #152 would work perfectly. But what to put in the circle? I got the idea for the sentiment first (typed up in Word using the Kristen font), then I thought of Cookie Monster. The blue and black papers are also scraps, whoo hoo! Clearly I am still on a kid-friendly cards trend here. I have another idea that I hope to try out today; I got the inspiration from a video I saw on YouTube, but I want to chase down the link for you before I post. Oh, and I guess actually making the card would be a good idea, too.

Missing You and Kids

The Midweek Throwdown Challenge this week at the Operation Write Home blog, Stars and Stamps, is to make a Missing You card. Using (bet you already guessed) scraps I couldn't bear to part with, I made this card using OWH sketch #129. The sentiment was done in Word and printed out. I'm not sure which font it was. The pale paper was a gift and I am guessing the design on it was made with the shaving cream technique. The purple strip I did with alcohol inks (this piece was left over after I made those purple ornaments for the Christmas cards).

 Another scrap card, made in response to OWH president Sandy Allnock's challenge for us to make more kid-friendly cards for our heroes to send home to their children. The bear is by Darcie's, the sentiment is Hero Arts. I used a fun trick I learned on-line. The stamp is on clear acrylic, so I put my circle of cardstock on the table, put my clear acrylic block over that, then curved the stamp to fit inside the circle. This is the first time I've done this (at least, as far as I can recall...and please note my motto: "If I can't remember, it didn't happen!") Patterned paper is well-aged Frances Meyer brand. This uses OWH sketch #152.

Here is another card I think is kid-friendly. I love this little flower stamp with the smiley face by Close to My Heart. More scraps were given new life in the making of this card. Sentiment by Hero Arts. The blue paper is also CTMH, the yellow (which was also used to mat the circle in the card above this one) came in a packet of travel-themed scrapbook papers. I think I bought it in 2004 in Salt Lake City but I could be wrong about that (big shock, I know. Please see my motto in the paragraph above...). I based this layout on a card I saw linked in the OWH tutorial about using up your scraps of paper.

I also got a jump on my New Year's Eve Paper Purging Party yesterday. Sometimes I am just in the mood, you know? I put a fair sized stack of paper into the recycling box, then I went ahead and reorganized my embossing powder stash. A bunch went into the trash because of the high glitter content (plus, I never use them). Cards made for OWH and also for children in hospitals (which is something I want to start doing again) should not have glitter on them, because it can flake off and either stick to uniforms, thereby making the wearer easier to spot with night vision goggles, or it can get into wounds or stuck on skin or get in the eyes...Just not a good thing to put on cards for the most part.

Most of the rest of the embossing powder was poured into little plastic storage boxes. Usually ep (as it is called) comes in tiny jars. When you use it, you stamp an image and while the ink is still wet, you pour the ep over the image. The powder sticks to the wet ink, and the rest of the powder gets shaken off. You need to pour back what you don't use into the tiny jar. This equals a huge mess everywhere, at least in my case. For years I have seen people using plastic containers to hold their ep. This makes returning the excess so much easier! (The stamped and powdered image is then set with a heat tool, which melts the powder and creates a nice effect).

Just to make a long post even longer, I will tell you that I am making good progress on sock #2 of the pair of socks I started for Meital. I hope to have some knitting to show you soon.

Making Spirits Bright

Happy Christmas Eve! Above you see the other card design that I made more than once. I just love the images of the snowy rooftops and Santa (both by Art Impressions). They are colored in using Prismacolor pencils. I used the Operation Write Home sketch #148 for this card. I wonder if I will ever get through all of their great sketches? Especially since they add a new one every week! The snowflake paper was purchased in the summer of 2011. I wish I had bought more than two sheets. Oh well, I understand that the paper companies put out new designs every year, so I am looking forward to treating myself to new paper again this summer. Turns out I had a couple of these left over, so I have filed them under Winter in my OWH box.

Remember, you can click on the photos to make them larger.

Here are three of the four Wrap Me Up Puppies I made for some adorable children I know. The fourth puppy also had a pink blanket. I gave away one puppy before the elves managed to finish the fourth one, so there is no photo of the entire group. The pattern is in the book Itty Bitty Knits by Susan B. Anderson. She has many wonderful patterns available, some for free, others in books and leaflets.

From all indications the children love their puppies, and that definitely makes my spirits bright.

Pinwheel Card

This card uses up more of my scraps from the big messy pile on my table. The design is from the Pinwheel II tutorial on the Operation Write Home website. Since this card is a Thinking of You card and uses punches, I suppose it also qualifies for the Midweek Throwdown, but I'm not sure if it's kosher to post more than one card. I will have to check! I really love the colors in this card, and am so glad I was able to find a design that would use up the scraps I had.

Today I am working on finishing up some knitted Christmas gifts, but I am still thinking about card designs to make. Maybe if I make enough progress today I will take the time to make some cards tomorrow.

MWT Thinking of You

This card was inspired by the Operation Write Home Midweek Throwdown Challenge (a new one is posted every Wednesday). The theme for this challenge was to make a Hello or Thinking of You card, with the added challenge of using a punch or die cut. Anyone recognize this tulip paper? It features prominently in my post about scrap wrangling. I'm afraid I don't know who made the butterfly punch I used, but I bought it so long ago I would suspect it isn't even made anymore. The design for the card is loosely based on card sketch #122 over at OWH's Stars and Stamps blog. The sentiment stamp is by Printworks.

Scrappy Background

Here is the card I made using those strips you saw in an earlier post of my leftover paper scraps. I followed the tutorial for the Scrappy Background, using strips .25" wide. The paper is by Hot Off the Press.I love the look of this technique as well as the way it eats up small scraps, but I found this width to be a bit too fiddly for my taste. I will probably made more cards with the scrappy background, but they will have wider strips, possibly even strips of different sizes.

The image I used is by the talented and generous Paula of Handmade By Paula. If you are a cardmaker, you should definitely check out her blog for inspiration as well as a ton of fabulous free digital images.

I don't know if you can see it, but the lavender colored paper has a faint shimmer to it. I used the trick of cutting out the circular mat for the image from the middle of the larger piece, before I added the scrappy background to it.

In Honor of Caro's Birthday

In honor of Caro's birthday, folks are making birthday cards to send to Operation Write Home. As soon as I saw this card (sorry, I don't have a direct link to the cardmaker's blog post with this card on it) I knew I wanted to use it as the basis for a card using up some of my scraps. So that's what I did! The sentiment is probably by Darcie's, paper by Close to My Heart. The decoration on the hats was made using an EK Success flower punch, and the bling was a gift.

Caro, if you're reading this, I hope you had a very happy birthday!

Scrap Wranglin'

This past Friday, while wandering around the Operation Write Home website, I discovered a tutorial about dealing with all those pesky scraps of cardstock we paper crafters tend to hoard for some unknown reason. Since this was a problem that was currently annoying me to no end, leaving me feeling irritable and unsettled (you know how I love to organize and be organized!) I decided to see what the Scrap Wrangler had to say. This is a hilariously helpful video, but if you don't have time or the privacy to watch it, the entire text is written out at that link.

The first element of wrangling your scraps is to go through and cut out card-sized (i.e. A2 or 4.25" x 5.5") pieces. That is the biggest your OWH cards for heroes to send home can be. If you're like me and send larger cards to your friends and family, you can do what I did: since most of my scraps wouldn't have been big enough for those cards (5" x 6.5"), I decided I would use whole sheets of paper and cardstock for the larger cards. Simpler that way. Anyway, above you can see my upcycled baby wipes box (which believe it or not - and if you know me at all you will surely believe it - I have saved since there was an actual baby living in my house. Note that my younger daughter is now 15. 'Nuff said!). Ahem. The box is filled with card-sized pieces of paper and cardstock that were cut from my scraps. Yes. All of that came ONLY from paper that had already been cut into and partially used!! Believe me, I still have tons of whole 8.5" x 11" and 12" x 12" paper and cardstock, too.

You can not begin to imagine how thrilled I became, watching my enormous herd of scraps become corralled and easily organized. Now I know what I have and what is more, I am using it! Since I finished filling the wipes box on Saturday evening, I have used up about 20 of these sheets of paper in the making of seven cards.

Another piece of advice from the Scrap Wrangler is to toss out whatever is left after you have completed the step mentioned above. But. I just couldn't do it. She then advises (since she knows us so well!) that we set a deadline of one week to use up whatever is left over, and then make yourself toss what's left. I am fudging on that a little; since the timing works for me, I am giving myself until 31 December 2012 to use up this pile of scraps you see in the photo above. Just as a note, the Scrap Wrangler provides many great ideas for card designs that are perfect for using up these smaller scraps. In fact, those pastel colored strips you see at the top right have already been used to make a Scrappy Background card, which I will share with you soon, probably in my next post.

Whatever does not get used up by the last day of the year will be going on a scrappy cattle drive to the recycling bin around the corner from my house (but first, we'll have a fabulously festive New Year's Eve Paper Purging party! Gotta have a party, right?).

Here is just one of the cards I have made in the last few days. It is loosely based on OWH Sketch #150 and as you can see it uses three different pieces of paper from my scraps corral. The cowboy is a stamp by Darcie's, colored with my BIC Mark Its, and I printed out the sentiment from Microsoft Word (Playbill font). Whatever bits and pieces were leftover were immediately tossed into the holding pen (uh, I mean recycling box) that sits in my crafts room. I think I'm getting the hang of this!

I really had a blast getting my scraps wrangled, and even if you don't love organizing, I can guarantee you'll enjoy having all of that paper cut and ready to use in manageable pieces. I can't believe how many cards I've made since I did this. Usually I only manage to do a couple per week. I realize now that what was slowing me down was the mess of scraps. So, thanks Scrap Wrangler!

ODBD December Challenge

This card is for the Our Daily Bread Designs December Challenge over on Stars and Stamps. The challenge was to use flowers in your cards. If enough people respond to the challenge, Our Daily Bread Designs will pay for shipment of OWH cards to our heroes overseas. I believe this stamp is from the (sadly) now-defunct Pacific Stamp Exchange (PSX). The pink paper embossed with the swirls was given to me long ago. I may well be one of the last stampers / cardmakers on the planet who does not yet own an embossing / die cut machine. I am thinking VERY seriously about buying a Cuttlebug this coming summer, though.

The sketch this card is (rather loosely) based on is the brand-new OWH Sketch #150. This is the second card I've made using this sketch, which came out today. I will show you the other one soon, possibly tomorrow.

My stamping table is fairly clean and with all of these scraps cut and ready to go, I can't seem to resist making cards!  Wonder what I'll come up with tomorrow. First, though, I promised Meital a trip to the mall, and I have about 8 dozen chocolate chip cookies to bake, for our friends on the basketball team. Tomorrow Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv plays against the team based in the town where we live. It has become a tradition for me to bring cookies for the guys to eat on the bus ride back to Tel Aviv after the game.

Hope everyone is enjoying their day!