Upcoming Be My Valentine Bloghop for Operation Write Home

Thank you Christie from Creations by Christie for inviting me to participate in the Operation Write Home Valentine Bloghop on November 13th! This is an exciting event that will connect you with multiple very talented bloggers who will be sharing their talent with you and challenging you to participate in this very worthy cause. 

As many of you already know, I am the daughter of a career Army soldier and also served alongside him in Germany as a WAC in the early 70's. I won't go in to it now, but promise to have some wonderful stories and hopefully a tape of him talking about a very exciting thing that happened while he was serving in Vietnam. This will certainly inspire you to do your part to provide cards for this project!

Just a quick reminder that the deadline for mailing Christmas cards to your OWH shipper is October 30th, so if you haven't already done that please hop to it! OH! To join in on the bloghop just click on the picture above or go directly to the Homefront Blog. I hope to see you all there!

Cottage in the woods card for my first challenge!

I found a challenge on the OWH Stars and Stamps blog that was asking for masculine cards. I've never entered a challenge before, but I just love this group of crafters so decided to throw one in along with all the others. Well what guy doesn't dream of a cabin in the woods? This card was made with a really, really old cottage stamp along with some chalk, watercolor pencils, a Rollagraph stamp called "clouds" with "sky" embossing powder.

Go see what I made today!

Since it's not related to my craft room, but is something I made this apron is posted on my other blog, Chronicles of Adolpha. Please go take a looksie and let me know what you think. It's for my daughter who is finally having her belated housewarming open house next Saturday.

Soldier Thank You Card for Operation Write Home

So I stayed home with a touch of who-knows-what today and decided to post something really quickly before heading back to bed. The card below is going in the box of cards being sent to OWH for soldiers. They encourage senders to include a card with handwritten sentiment for a soldier and I thought this Soldier stamp was absolutely perfect. It is from Paper Inspirations dated 2005.  The Thank You stamp is from Stampabilities. Sorry about the picture being sideways, but no matter how many times I saved it in my picture program turned the other way it kept uploading this way, so please just tilt your head a bit to read the sentiment after zooming in. :-)

More cards for Operation Write Home

What an amazingly talented group of gals that helped make cards yesterday for Operation Write Home! Of course with my daughter being one of them I'm just a tad bit prejudiced, but the other two are awesome artists too. It was so much fun and as I made each card I couldn't help but think of how the soldier who held it in his or her hands would feel about it. I wondered what they would be writing to their family and friends and it brought sorrow to my heart knowing they would be apart for Christmas. The overwhelming pride that came to my heart as I pictured them soon overtook the feelings of sorrow. If any of you reading this are soldiers or have friends or family serving in the military please know that with each card came a special prayer for their safety and thanksgiving for their service to help keep us free!

WOOHOO we made our goal of 100 cards for OWH!!!

What a fun day I had today with my daughter and two friends making Christmas cards for Operation Write Home. Our goal was 100 and we made it with time to spare! I started out with 25 cards, but I think 75 cards in a few hours was pretty good considering all the talking laughing, trip in to town for lunch and shopping (just HAD to take advantage of Michaels 50% off Martha Stewart coupon!). I got this fantastic snowflake punch/stamp combo and what's so cool about that is I was just saying this morning that my Cricut didn't do such a good job cutting my snowflakes out of the shiny textured card stock. Anyway, it makes some awesome snowflakes that I'll show you tomorrow after I take more pictures of the cards. Right now I am absolutely 100% taken over by fatigue and must go sit on my recliner with my feet up. Of course I'll have my new Martha Stewart score board and a pile of 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 card stock to score for more cards.

Oh exciting news!!! Emily and I have decided to venture out to the crafting world by running a booth at a November event here in town! She is crocheting her necklaces like wildfire and I'll get a bunch more cards made. I guess one never knows until they try, huh? Wish us luck!

More cards for Operation Write Home

If you close the advertising box, then hover mouse over the slide it will stop and show my captions. There are a few at the beginning without captions.

Cards for Operation Write Home

So call me scatter-brained, but I accidentally posted this on my other blog and rather than delete it and start over, how about a link to my Christmas cards that were supposed to be for Christie's challenge until I realized that I wasn't supposed to stamp a sentiment inside. OOPS!!! So back to the drawing board.... er card-making desk...

Operation Write Home Card Challenge

One of the most awesome card-making gals I've "met" so far is Christie over at Creations by Christie. This woman must have super powers or something because she just keeps on creating new things at a super power pace! Anyway, she's got a challenge going on this week for a cause very near to my heart and I'd absolutely LOVE it if you'd join in and make a few cards. The details are all on her site, so please hop over and take a look, then put something together to send to her. If you do join in please leave me a comment so I know who my competition is (tee hee hee!) Here's the direct link to her post about the competition:

http://creationsbychristie.blogspot.com/2010/10/operation-write-home-holiday-card.html


Here's one of the cards I'll be sending. I made a bunch but they have sentiments inside and I discovered after re-reading the challenge that we're supposed to leave them blank. Oops!

New lever card and pumpkin leaf cut out of soda can with my Cricut

Here's a few pics of a card I made for a friend's Birthday. I used a kit from SVG Cuts called Breezy Backyard Lever Cards SVG kit in my Sure Cuts A Lot software to cut on my Cricut Expression. What a fun card to put together! The really awesome twist is that I was able to cut the fan blades out of a flattened soda can!!! How cool is that!?!?! It is my first attempt to make a lever card. It would have helped if I'd had two coordinating pieces of double-sided card stock, but I managed to sort of color the white side with my spritzer and markers (see first picture below). The only paper that I can identify by name is the outer flowered with reverse side purple which is Bo Bunny Marrakesh Vines. The rest is just miscellaneous card stock that I don't keep classified by manufacturer.

Now comes the REALLY fun project! I was looking around for ideas for Fall decorations that I could cut with my Cricut and found the perfect project on The Little Purple Pansie blog. She's got some awesome svg files for sale and also, like this one, some that are generously provided free! It scared the bejeebers out of me to cut metal with my precious Expression and I had tons of questions for her which she promptly and graciously answered. Below is the result of my first attempt at cutting, then embossing a pumpkin leaf cut out of a soda can. The coloring was done using some Tim Holtz alcohol inks. You've GOT to go look at what she did with hers!

Sadness and Martha Stewart Coupon

I've already posted about the loss of our Wire Fox Terrier on my other blog and also posted a memorial slide show on his blog, but thought I should mention it here too. Tucker lost his battle with cancer Friday morning and we buried him in the back yard in the evening with the help of our daughter and son-in-law. We are thankful that he appeared go go very peacefully and quickly.

Now about the coupon. I caught the end of the Oprah show this afternoon with Martha Stewart (no silly, I wasn't with her, she was on Oprah!) and they mentioned a 50% Michaels coupon for Martha's products. It's available on Oprah's site at http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Martha-Stewarts-Craft-Kit-Essentials until 11:59 PM EST tomorrow, October 6th and is only good until October 16th. Have fun~