Taking a Card Class

Most of my crafting friends in my community have gone North for the summer.  Really miss those folks!  So to fill the void, I decided to take a card making class at She Scrapbooks in The Villages.   You can see her blog at: http://www.she-scrapbooks.blogspot.com/.  The class was about making masculine cards.  Since Operation Write Home is always asking for Masculine cards, I thought this would be just the thing to do.  Here's the results:

 

To make the cards, we used embossed backgrounds, distressed and inked them.  Then chipboard accents were added.  They were inked with two colors of distress inks and then clear embossed.  It's been a long time since I have embossed but it was fun to get back to using it.  I think they came out very well and I'm sure I'll use this on other cards. 

On a trip to Michael's, I found the cutest ever sock monkey magnets in the clearance section.  I thought they would make perfect cards for kids. 

 

Each one had accessories to go with them and I had just the right papers in my stash to go with them.  I really like the chef monkey.  The background was perfect for his outfit. The camo monkey just needed to be in the forest.  The background I used there was a scrap I had left over from as 12X12 sheet.  Unfortunately it had a big chunk out of it.  So I had to get creative in the placement of the monkey to cover that part up.  I think the card works ok.   I still have a Sheriff and Rock Star monkey left.  I'll have to mull those over before I come up with the right backgrounds for those two.  These were just so much fun to work with. 

 

All of these cards have found their way to Operation Write Home.  Hope all my friends are having a crafty summer and will be back in the fall ready for some more fun.  Keep cool.  It's been hot, muggy, and very wet here.



Fourth of July!

I had hoped to do a better job of keeping up with a blog but time has gotten away from me again.  It's been a good month of card making even though many of my crafty friends have gone North for the summer.  With the heat waves across the country though, I doubt they are fairing much better than we are in Florida. 

One of my favorite completed cards is made from Graphic 45, one of their steampunk lines.  I love the look of this Victorian lady and thought that just the paper with some small embellishments was enough.

 

 

I've been having a great time this month learning new techniques from the Operation Write Home website as well as various items on YouTube.  There are so many things out there to explore!  It's just amazing.   I purchased the Close To My Heart Artiste cricut cartridge.  This cartridge has so many things on it, it will take ages to go through it all.  I had purchased some robot paper at Tuesday Morning a while back and thought the robot from this cartridge would be perfect to go with it.  What I like about the CTMH cartridges is they have stamps to coordinate with the cuts on the cricut as well as information about what size to cut.  I thought a general robot card would be great to send to a little boy for any occasion.  So here is how that card came out when I finished it:

 

I'll be experimenting more with the Artiste cartridge and coordinating stamps.  Hope you're having a great Fourth of July!





Happy Memorial Day

After spending all day Saturday and part of Sunday going through the Operation Write Home blog hop, It's time to make some cards.  There were so many wonderful ideas on the hop.  I'm sure I will be reviewing some of them for months to come.  I bookmarked a lot of pages for reference later.

It also seems like a good day for AnyHero mail.  Today is the anniversary of my late husband and my wedding.  Well actually we got married on Memorial Day when it was May 30th so we would always remember what day we got married.  Then they changed Memorial Day to the last Monday of May.  So there are many years we have 2 anniversaries, the holiday and the date.  He was a Marine before we were married and I still have many of the letters he wrote while he was away.

One of the blog hop features I liked was the assembly line cards.  So thanks to the Efficient Crafter's wonderful guide, I decided to try it out.  I used some of the 8-1/2 X 11 cardstock I have on hand, an old Stampin Up set and a new sentiment from My Favorite Things.  Here are the results:

 

The stamped images are very subtle in white on some and gold on others.  It was fun to do these.

 

I had a lot of help making cards for OWH with the wonderful crafters at Pennbrooke.  Marge helped put kits together for the group so a bunch of the cards were her design.  Here is a link to some of the cards we made together: Operation Write Home cards.

 

 

More cards for OWH

Well all of the snowbirds have headed north.  So there are less crafty ladies here to join forces for making cards for OWH.  So this is my time to make individual cards instead of making kits.  Thought it was time to show some more of the wonderful cards the gracious folks here have helped me make.

I cut the circle with my cricut using the Cricut Craft Room.  That made it easier to line up the circle on the printed saying.  The Graphic 45 image was stamped in brown ink and gives her a dreamy look.  Three brads were added in the corner for a decorative touch.

These were all cut using the cricut Creative Cards cartridge.  The center card's background is Graphic 45 Steampunk.   The other papers are from my stash so I don't know if they are available anymore.  The stamps are from Stampers Best and My Favorite Things.

Well that's a look at a few of the cards for now.  More later.  Happy card making!

Cards made for Operation Write Home

I've just recently discovered Operation Write Home.  This is a terrific way to craft for a purpose.  I can use my time crafting things I love and hopefully make someone else happy with the results.  So this blog will showcase some of the results of my efforts.

These were some of the first cards I sent.  I used the Cricut Creative Cards cartridge and some of the free images from the Cricut Craft Room.