4 Footed Friends

This week the Operation Write Home Stars and Stamps Blog challenge was to use 4 footed friends on our cards.  And since that is one of my favorite subjects I finally did one of the challenges in time to take part...

This is one of my favorite stamps sets - Ruff Day from Stampin' Up which I colored using the Stampin' Up Water color crayons.  Cardstock is Prism, paper is ChatterBox which I've had for some time.  Ribbon is Making Memories, EK Success edge punch was used on the mat and brads where random ones from my stash.   You can't really tell but the hat is colored green to match some of the 'balls' on the paper.

Later this week I'll be posting a tutorial on taking that paper stash and making it card 'friendly'.

Loving It!!!

I ordered the 'deal of the day' last week from Unity Stamps...and I am LOVING IT!!!  

It is called So & So Loves and I think my favorite part is that it leaves a spot for you to 'carve' your initials in a tree...  Here it is stamped in Black Stazon and in the Saddle Brown Stazon.

Please keep in mind coloring has never been my strong suit.  I was going for the look of Aspens which are bascially white with dark spots.  The first image is colored using the following Prisma pens:  Warm Grey 10%, Cloud Blue, Crimson Red, and Canary Yellow.    The second image:  Cool Grey 10%, Cloud Blue, Coppenhagen Blue, and Canary Yellow.  It's a work in progress as the color isn't quite there yet.

This last photo is why I locked myself away to play with my new stamp...  My living room was totally rearranged by The Boy Who Paints Himself With Ketchup - need I say more?

We have a WINNER

A huge thank you to everyone that stopped by for a visit during Operation Write Home's blog hop.  It was nice to 'get to know' fellow card makers a little better and to see all the talent I was inspired by so many.  

Now without further ado the lucky winner is...

Result: 45 Powered by RANDOM.ORG

When I read the winners post I almost fell out of my chair...  No need to go looking for that stamp now unless it's just out to your mailbox Nancy!  I won't be able to make it in town to the post office until mid week but your package (I'll get a photo posted soon of the additions) will go out this week.

March 21, 2010 3:42 PM

Nancy Keller said...

I am always making cards with my scraps too, because I can't seem to throw them away! Your card is awesome - thanks for sharing. I see a new imaginisce stamp in your blog candy that I do not have *YIKES* I am going to have to look into that!!! :)

About Last Night

If you are here for the Operation Write Home blog hop go here. The post below...
 
Last night some friends and I got together at a local scrapping store for an evening of creating.  Some of us did some layouts (I'll share mine later) but most of us ended up doing something related to cards by the end of the evening.  I'll be the first to admit I'm frugal, some would say cheap and I'm good with that too, so when I reached into the trash bag hanging beside my friend (NOTE to the non-crop attendees this only contains paper scraps and other like items none of it wet or icky as it is a paper bag so we can keep out work areas tidy - I know funny right) and pulled out a bunch of scraps that had been tossed in while cutting 12x12 paper into the size needed for card fronts.  Yeah I'm weird but look at the cards these 'scraps' made...

I don't know which paper stack they came from but I know I have enough to make 5 or 6 more cards easily.  So if you see me out and about I might just salvage your scraps so I can get cards into the hands of another 6 or 7 soldiers - hope you're ok with that.

Operation Write Home Blog Hop - Updated

Updated look for red text...
 
Welcome to the Operation Write Home Blog Hop!  You should have arrived from Erika's blog.  If you started here you will want to go to Operation Write Home's Stars & Stripes blog so you don't miss a thing.  Please scroll to the bottom of this entry to see the next stop.

I started making cards for Operation Write Home when my friend Alex posted that she was looking for others to join her.  If a cause is good enough for her it's good enough for me and I usually stop there but having several friends and family who have or currently are serving with the military I started poking around the website and was touched by the videos and notes from the Heros for receiving something so simple as a card.  Now my husband who is a civilian employee for the State Military Division helps make cards and honestly is always asking when we are doing more so looks like I'll - no we'll be sending off cards for some time.

Now for the card I made

This card was made using scraps, which is my favorite thing to do after making a layout.  The large squares are 2 1/2 inches x 2 1/2 inches and the rectangles are 2 1/2 x 1 inch.  The pieces are then aligned so the outside edges line up which leaves a 'grid' pattern inside and surrounding the patterned paper.  The button, which has a floral design on it, was then placed onto a blue flower which I took off a stem I had purchased just to pull apart for embellishments.  This time I did not use any sentiment but this could easily be for a birthday, thinking of you, missing you, love you, hello or Mother's Day.

Speaking of Mother's Day - it is also the next holiday OWH is needing cards for and if you are interested in joining the 'fun' they need to be in the hands of the shippers by April 1 to allow sufficient time for them to get to the Heros and then back Stateside to loved ones.  You will find full guidelines on the site I linked above but I will mention the most important - NO glitter!

I am offering some blog candy to those who leave a comment, that's it just leave a comment and you will be in the drawing...  Below is the starting candy (2 stamps and 4 different ribbons) but for every 10 comments left I will be adding a little something extra - so at 10, 20, 30 etc up until midnight MST tonight, March 20.  I am extending this until Sunday at midnight!! You can thank several of my friends who I spent the evening with as they haven't had a chance to do the hop yet.  This tutorial I did earlier *might* come in handy for the winner...I'm just saying.

Next stop is the Homefront Blog.  Thanks for visiting...

Dinosaurs Rule

Well at least they did at our house last night...  While the Oscars played in the background I played with paper and my DH played, well tried too, with the new Cricut cartridge (Dinosaur Tracks) we received on Friday.  It was extremely frustrating as this is the most complicated one we have purchased so far and even though we followed the directions to the letter it was kind of a toss up what image would actually print.  I have way more layers to the dino featured on 2 of the cards than I have bases and don't get me started on the shadows...

This card has the 'fossil' feature which is popped up to give dimension.

This card has the base, layer and a shadow.  It is also popped up and is my favorite - however we couldn't get another shadow to print and could only get one more base to print.  SIGH...

The card on the left is using just a base and layer.  The one on the right is using the tag feature, which is very cool but once again we could only get the image to cut and never did get another base.  Both of these are mounted directly on the card.

All of these will go into my Operation Write Home stack once they have sentiments placed on them.  As I may have mentioned previously I had already cut all my 81/2 x 11 cardstock into half and folded most of it for card bases.  I had also cut all the patterned paper I had that I no longer LOVED or fit what I was scrapping now into card fronts to make assembly easier.  After the frustration on doing these 4 cards both of us decided to stop with cutting for the night and I went to just mounting fronts to bases.  I need to go back and put an image and/or sentiment on them all but I did get 43 to that stage.