November Cards for a Cause

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Yes I know it's a day late, but I've been on the road and also very busy trying to finish up cards to send out for the Splitcoaststampers November Cards for a Cause. Here is a sampling of the 120 cards that are boxed up and ready to go. This month I finally used up most of the saved card fronts that I've kept around for a few years. I also finally stamped a bunch of card fronts using a custom made ink pad. That was fun and easy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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OWH Sketch Challenge #199

Hi again everyone! I know that my posts are few and far between these days so I figured I'd better show you what I've been up to. No it's not organizing my craft room, more like messing it up more and more each day, but hey, at least I'm getting things done. In the midst of making 100+ cards for Operation Write Home I saw a post from them about Sketch Challenge #199 and decided to play along. I had recently purchased some cute little dies from Stampin Up and thought they'd be perfect for this sketch.

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More cards for a cause

Yesterday I packed up 148 cards and homemade envelopes to be sent out on Saturday to a group called Send Love Today. They will use these cards to send to people who have brain tumors and cancer ass a way to cheer them up. I must say that I surprised myself when I saw how many actually got done because I've been floating around in a daze for the past month or so and can barely keep my eyes open most of the time. I'm assuming this is just a symptom of my fibromyalgia, but have never had it this bad before. I take what I refer to as my "awake pill" every morning for narcolepsy, but that usually wears off before noon, sometimes even before 9:30 and I don't like taking another one because then I don't sleep as well that night. This week I started taking something for adrenal fatigue and hope to see some results soon. In the meantime I'll keep knocking out these cards to help stay awake before bedtime! Oh if anyone reads this and has some suggestions I'd love to hear them!

Here are some shots of stacks of cards before packing.

 

 

 

 

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Happy 100th Birthday Kansas State Fair!

Today I had a wonderful time with Mr H at the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson! We couldn't have asked for more perfect weather and believe it or not, the crowds weren't too bad. Kansas has some incredibly talented 3-H'rs and I wanted to share two of their works of art with you. First is an awesome blue ribbon cake celebrating the event.

The quilt below I have decided is my soulmate. Have you ever seen anything that just takes your breath away? Well this quilt is one of those things that just reached out to me in a very unexpected way and I couldn't stop staring at it and ooohing and ahhhhing over the intricate details of small bits of fabric so lovingly sewed together, much of it appliqued by hand. Then to see the incredible machine quilting in every section was beyond my understanding. The colors are so bright, crisp and cheerful that it really spoke to me and made my heart go pitter patter. Yes folks, I'm in love with a quilt! So where's the preacher? Marry me today!!! Just kidding, but I must say that I wouldn't mind sharing my bed with this lovely thing! So what will I do? Try to copy it? No way Jose! Try to create some greeting cards based on the colors and designs? You betcha! Gotta wait until I get home though and that's not till tomorrow, so stay tuned!

 

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OWH Birthday Bash 2013

I made the card below for the Operation Write Home Birthday Bash 2013. They have great instructional videos, pdf files and other information that will enhance your cardmaking skills. You can join the fun too by clicking on the link on the sidebar ---------->>>>

Products used to make this card:
Stamps from My Favorite Things Monkey Business (part of the OWH Birthday Bash 2013 kit)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin Up! Classic Close to Cocoa, Versamark (the watermark bananas on the blue circle)
Prismacolor and Staedtler watercolor pencils
Stampin Up! blender pen
Fiskars 2" circle punch
EK Success 2 1/4" scalloped circle punch
Bella! Ribbonz (part of the OWH Birthday Bash 2013 kit)
Paper and cardstock from my stash

A couple of cards for Send Love Today, a SCS Cards for a Cause

I've been holed up in my craft room all weekend and evenings for a few days making cards for the Split Coast Stampers Cards for a Cause challenge. I haven't taken many pictures yet, but here's a couple of the cards. The group for this month is called Send Love Today. It's a group that sends cards and small gifts to individuals with brain tumors. As I've been making these cards I tried to design some that would be good for sending to men and think the two below would be good for that.

OWH VCMP Card #9 and the end of the party!

Wow can you believe that we've come to the end of the two-day Virtual Card Making Party? Me neither! It's been fun and has given me loads of new ideas and inspiration.

OWH VCMP Card #9 challenge is to make a card using the negative of a die or punch. I used a large Stampin Up flower punch on the front of the card, then adhered white card stock to the inside of the card with a dragonfly stamped on it. When making cards using dark card stock we always adhere white or light colored paper to the inside so the heroes have something to write on, keeping in mind that some only have a pencil and that wouldn't show up at all on dark paper. You can visit the host of this challenge here and see cards made by other partiers.

OWH VCMP Card #8

OWH VCMP Card #8 challenge is to make a card with an image of a bee and a sentiment that plays on the word bee. When I was working on the 6th challenge I noticed a cute bee in the stamp set which shall go unnamed because quite honestly, well there isn't a manufacturer's name anywhere on the acrylic stamp sheet. Anyway, there was also some matching sentiments and the one I picked was just perfect! You can visit the host of this challenge here and see cards made by other partiers.

OWH VCMP Card #7

OWH VCMP Card #7 challenge is to make a fall themed card without being for Thanksgiving. I've always wanted to try the emboss resist technique and when I saw the sample card by the host of this challenge here I knew exactly what I wanted to do!

OWH VCMP Card #6

The OWH VCMP Card #6 challenge is to make cards for kids using the tic-tac-toe board below. We had to choose three items in a row and I selected things with wings, stamping and using punches (the small red stars).

Now on to the next challenge!

OWH VCMP Sketch Challenge #188

Good morning everyone! I've got a busy morning today because my grandson is getting baptized and family gathers afterwards, but I had a tiny bit of time to get one card done before leaving.

This card is part of the Operation Write Home Labor Day Virtual Card Making Party (OWH VCMP) and follows Sketch #188.

See you again later!

OWH VCMP Card #5

Card #5 for the OWH VCMP is a masking tape background card. You can find many other cards for this challenge here.

I made a couple different cards, one with regular white card stock and the other with watercolor paper. Can you tell which is which? I used the Stampin Up Sprinkled Expressions stamps.

OWH VCMP Card #4

Card #4 for the OWH VCMP is a love card. You can find many other cards for this challenge here.

OWH VCMP Card #3

Card #3 for the OWH VCMP uses a triple layer technique cut from dies. I don't have the oblong dies used in the examples, so dug out what I had and came up with this card. You can find many other cards along with the original tutorial here.

OWH VCMP Card #2

Card #2 for the OWH VCMP is a challenge to use elements based on the letters OWH. My card uses Orange, Wiggles and Happy! You can go see the other entries for this challenge over at Diane's blog.

Operation Write Home Labor Day VCMP #1

I'm back after getting a yummy blended coffee from a local coffee shop up the road a bit and am ready to spend the day relaxing by making cards for our heroes. Operation Write Home is having a virtual card making party this weekend that you can read about here. The first challenge was to make a card following the sketch found at Scrap Happens and here's what I made.

Good morning! This is one of the 100 cards that I am headed out to mail today for the August Splitcoaststampers Cards for a Cause.

The cardstock is actually a very pretty dark purple from my stash. The sentiment is from Woodware. I used the Stampin Up Blossom Bouquet Triple Layer punch on the front of the card, then glued the punched flower on top of white paper adhered to the inside of the card. The little pink flower and bling are from my stash. I love how the Lace Ribbon Border punch really pops on the front of this card and hope it brings a smile to the recipients's face!

Celebrating veterans and watching airplanes fly

Today I had the pleasure of meeting some amazing WWII veterans and watching some of the airplanes that they used during WWII fly. I even got in free because I'm a veteran! Can't beat that for a good deal! I gave my husband the camera and let him capture the memories and found this picture below of my backside. I always wonder why we don't hand the camera to someone and ask them to capture the two of us standing in front of whatever it is we're there to see, but alas! I'm usually too mesmerized by the awesomeness of the attractions to think about the memory shot. Or maybe it's that I NEED a memory shot to help me remember to do that!

Before the air show I got a big stack of Halloween cards made for Operation Write Home. I need to cut the white paper to glue inside all the black cards, then get envelopes ready for them, finish using up the scraps and then move on to non-Halloween cards to fill a box and ship off before the end of August. It's nice spending time in my craft room again!

Tell me, what have YOU been up to lately?

OWH Midweek Throw-down

Happy Wednesday everyone!  Yes I know it's been forever since I last posted, but life keeps me pretty busy these days.

I've decided to make some Halloween cards for Operation Write Home and this one fits their Midweek Throw-down challenge which is to use punches. I used my Stampin Up oval and EK Success scalloped circle punches, a cute little Stampabilities stamp and some ribbon from my stash. The sentiment is from Stampin Up's Delightful Dozen set. I love the way the faux stitching turned out, especially the blanket stitch around the sentiment layer.

It's been like, well... forever!

Wow how time flies when you're having fun! Hey, you KNOW it's true, so don't even shake your head at me. I've been soooooo thoroughly enjoying this grandmahood (is that even a word? spell-check doesn't think so) and wanted to pop in to share a bit of what I've been doing lately. Yes I'm still making an occasional greeting card and have done a little scrapbooking here and there, but I've gotta tell you that this little guy has just made our lives around here so much fun! How could anyone possible look at this little face and not smile?

Oh by the way, did I tell you that my daughter is now a photographer? Yup! Well she's kind of doing it on the side now, still working full time, mommying full time and trying to slip in a photo op when she can. You can find her at Photography by Emily Baker here -

http://photographybyemilybaker.zenfolio.com/

How about another peek at the most precious little boy ever?

and back on a crafting theme, here's what I've been working on for Oliver. Just a few peeks, then the finished product will be posted when it's done.

This is my first attempt at strip piecing and really my first official quilt that will actually have some machine quilting if all goes right. Wish me luck!

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