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.

I think God is trying to tell me something...

If you're new to my blog and haven't seen last year's slide show about my father, a 21 year veteran of the U.S. Army, please take some time after reading this to view it on this post. Something I just now noticed while watching it for the umpteenth time is that in the picture of him peeking his head up over the top of the dining room table if you look directly over the top of his head you'll see a picture of me from my Army days. Yes, I also served in the Army as a WAC and was honored to serve on the same base with him in Germany in the early 70's!

Ok, so what's all this got to do with God and craft rooms and scrapbooking? Well, on Veteran's Day in 1991 the condo that I lived in with my young daughter blew up from a gas explosion, killing the neighbor boy and severely burning his older brother. My daughter and I escaped the burning building from the 3rd floor apartment and lost almost all of our belongings. My scrapbook from those Army days was tucked in the back of a huge walk-in closet situated right next to my waterbed and against an outside wall not exposed to the heat. Let me show you what my albums look like today. Now friends, when I say scrapbook please keep in mind that we're not talking about the elaborate one-picture-per-page full of embellishments that we do these days. We're talking plain cover, black pages full of pictures with some writing (who ever heard of journaling back then? Wasn't that for teenagers with diaries locked up and tucked under the mattress?) The first picture shows where the albums landed during recovery efforts and where they have remained to this day. Yes I've had them out a couple of times, but I guess the memories of that day have been too painful to want to actually DO anything with these albums. One I didn't photograph is from my year in California when I went out to attend LIFE Bible College, so it needs a whole album to itself.

The next two show the front my two albums from right before and during my 3 years in the army.

Miraculously none of the pictures appear to be damaged even after 20 years in that bag! *knocking on wood here at my desk!* The page edges are singed like the covers, but the pictures are fine as you'll see in the next picture. You'll be able to see a pic of me and my dad (I'm the one with the dark shorts on) with my Drill Sergeant. Yes I even got my hair cut and frosted just like her! Oh and pay no attention to those girls fooling around in the bottom picture. Things got a little wild and crazy around the barracks every now and then.

OK, moving on.... why do I bring up the past like this??? Well today I found out that I won a prize from a great gal over at Above Rubies Studio. It was graciously donated by a new company called Uniformed Scrapbooks of America and I get my choice of albums. Well for me it's a no-brainer and that link takes you to my choice.... ARMY!!! They'll even custom embroider the name and insignia rank. Since my dad and I had the same last name during that time period it will be just perfect. I've asked if they can do two insignias, one for each of our ranks, but even if they can just to one I'll be happy. What an awesome gentle reminder from God that it's high time I got busy re-doing these precious memories!!! My niece has recently uncovered a few boxes of Dad's military memorabilia that I've already laid claim to for a memory album. Hmmm, looks like I might need more than one, huh? lol! I also have every intention to do an oral history with him and now that they have all these recordable books it seems the time is right for that too. Oh so much to do with sooooo little time!

While you're over at Megan's studio you MUST watch her videos and find out about her new exciting product that I can't wait to try out! She does some awesome tutorials that you'll want to subscribe to on YouTube so you won't miss any of them.

Operation Write Home Be my Valentine Bloghop Today!

Welcome to my little contribution to the Operation Write Home Be My Valentine Blog Hop! I’m so glad that you made it over here and hope that I am able to provide you with some fun and inspiration so you too can create some Valentine’s cards to send over to soldiers serving our country. If you didn’t come here from Susie at SA Scrapping Gal, then please make sure to hop over there for a looksy at what she’s doing. When you’re done on my blog please hop over to Jamie’s site Glitter, Paper, Stamps, Oh My! There are over 100 blogs participating in this awesome event today so please visit as many as possible and leave some shout-outs. If you come across a link that doesn't work you can get to the beginning page at OWH here. I know the rest of the folks love comments as much as I do *hint, hint*.

Now before proceeding with my contribution today, here are some formalities:

The reason this is called “Be My Valentine” blog hop is because we want you all to start making Valentine cards to send overseas to our soldiers. The deadline for getting those to your shipper is January 7, 2011. It’s never too early to start planning. Contact your friends and family and maybe even set up a little get-together so others can join in on the fun. I did my first group card-making session for the Christmas holiday cards and I tell ya, it was a barrel of laughs and so rewarding! With each card that I made I whispered a little prayer for the soldier who would hold it in his or her hands and so lovingly write their personal message to send home to family or friends. There are tons of suggestions, tutorials and card galleries on the OWH site. They even have a page that tells you how to get a card-making party set up. It’s on their Event’s tab. If you haven’t heard yet, I am the daughter of a career Army dad and also served with him in the Army for three years; so I know firsthand how much OWH means to our soldiers! Oh yes, the deadline for mailing Christmas cards has already passed, but you can always start planning for next year.

2.       Did you know that Operation Write Home was a finalist in the JoAnn’s Craft for a Cause? Well, in fact, we are one of three finalists and we NEED YOUR HELP to win the $50,000 Grand Prize! You can vote once during every 24 hour period, so please go vote and then bookmark the site so you can vote every day!

Ok, so now ladies and gentlemen, let’s get On with the Shee-ohhh (if you’re not old enough to know what that means, just ask your parents or grandparents and they’ll have lots of funny stories to share!) Here are a few of the cards I made to send to OWH for Valentine’s Day. I wanted to show you that cards can be very simple or very ornate, most of mine fall in the simple category. My camera was not cooperating with me, so I’ve just put three pics below and made a slide show of some of the others. The first card below is a sheet of paper from the DCWV stack cut to fit the front of the card, then a sticker and some ribbon from my stash to bling it up a bit. (I'm giving away one of those Love and Wedding stacks in my blog candy at the end of this message.)

The card below is a mosaic made out of paint chip samples. Fun and something your kids would love doing!

To make the card below I inked up the brayer to create my own background, then stamped words on top.

I just took a sneak peek at one of the other participants at Creations by Christie and am so happy to see that she posted a video tutorial of one of the techniques I used on a couple of the cards in the slide show below. (PHEW, got me off the hook!) You've GOT to go watch it and learn how to use your Cuttlebug embossing folder to ink up your card while embossing it at the same time! The one below that uses that technique is the one with the 1/4 inch red ribbon bow over the heart. Since I'm all about using up what I have and couldn't bear to part with the ink left on my brayer I slipped a piece of onion skin paper over the embossing folder and brayered over it, leaving a faint design on the paper. Then I cut a rectangle in the front of the card and glued that paper on as a window to what was inside. It's the one with the red sequins in each corner. If you have any questions about any of the techniques please ask and I'll prepare a tutorial. So far I haven't gotten brave enough to attempt a video tutorial, but with a little prompting maybe I'll try!

Card components:

Paper:  DCWV Love and Wedding, StampinUp Ruby Red

Ink:  SU Ruby Red classic

Sentiments:  Making Memories Express It

Embellishments:  ribbon from stash, stickers by Special Moments

Cuttlebug and Sizzix embossing folders
Stickles and Studio G Glitter Writer

I've got some candy for one lucky winner and it's full of stuff you can use to make tons more Valentine's Day cards for our soldiers. Please leave a comment with your email address and become a follower, then I'll draw the winner randomly on Monday. Thank you so much for participating today!

Now, please please hop over to Jamie’s site Glitter, Paper, Stamps, Oh My!

Let the Voting Begin for Operation Write Home!

It's time to vote! OWH is now in the finalists round in the JoAnns Craft for a Cause contest - we are SO excited! We made it into this round because of all of our wonderful crafters who entered. Thank you for doing such a great job!

For this round, we're up against two wonderful organizations - the American Cancer Society and Project Linus. Now, while we LOVE other folks who do such great work....we need to win this one for our heroes!  Voting is open NOW - November 7 at midnight, and ending December 4th - see the link below for the rules.

OWH is the small fish swimming in the big pond, so we need your help in taking this on. There's only one vote per email per day - and we need you all to vote daily, get your friends and family to vote, and remind folks regularly to go do so! I'll be sending you a weekly reminder/update as the voting wears on. We'll have the link all over our Facebook page too, if you forget where to go!

I recommend you first bookmark the link below on you computers at home and work....set a time in your mind each day to vote. Maybe when you sit down to check email in the morning, or as you check your facebook account during lunch, or after the kids go to bed. Whatever it takes to remember every day! Please post a reminder to your facebook, blog, or twitter account every couple days for your friends and family; start a thread on a discussion board you take part in; don't bother people so often that they don't pay attention to you. But INSPIRE them. Post a photo of a hero from our Flickr album. Republish a favorite hero letter. Tell them why YOU support our heroes - and invite them to do the same with the click of a mouse!

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!