Be my Valentine

Valentines?  In November?  You read that right - it's time for a blog hop at Operation Write Home.  Mark your calendars for November 13 and come hop along with us.  We've finished making Christmas and holiday cards that will be sent to deployed troops and now it's time to get their Valentine's cards ready. 

Go here for information on how to be part of this fun blog hop.  Now I'm off to put away the Christmas trees and take out the hearts.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Happy card, sad card

Hello blog land!  Today I needed an anniversary card for my Aunt and Uncle who will be married for 62 years this weekend, but I also needed a sympathy card for the family of a wonderful man who passed yesterday.  Here's what I came up with:

For the anniversary card I used cardstock from the Garden Party stack from DCWV and trimmed it with a Martha Stewart punch, then added some ribbon from Papertrey Ink and finished it with a stamp from The Stamps of Life.

I wanted to keep this sympathy card simple - I used the same DCWV paper stack and ribbon as the card above, but this time used a Stampin' Up stamp from an old set.  I like the different shades of browns and cremes.

Yesterday someone left a comment that they liked scrapbook layouts more than cards and that reminded me that I really need to get back to work on my youngest daughter's scrapbook.  I love making cards, but I really love scrapbooking. When my two oldest daughters graduated from high school, I  made them scrapbooks of their life up to that point.  I had 5 years between kid #2 and #3 to get started on the last scrapbook, and somehow I've gotten side tracked a bit.  Not only is she out of high school, she's out 2 years already.  How'd that happen?  I have only 4 pages of her book done......shame on me!  So my first goal for 2011 is to get back to Sara's scrapbook and have it done by.....soon.  Definately before I have to start making scrapbooks for my grandkids someday:)

More Christmas Cards

October has been Christmas card making season for me so far - I'm even playing Christmas CDs to keep me in the mood!  I mailed my box of cards for Operation Write Home and am now going to town on mine.  Here's a few I have finished so far:

I used a Stampin' Up stamp from the Holiday Lineup set, colored these cute reindeer with Copic markers and used some glitter stickles for that great red nose; paper is from an old DCWV Christmas mat stack and some ribbon finished off this card.

I just love these adorable little hedgehogs from Penny Black!  I water colored them with some Stampin' Up ink pads, and matted them on some DCWV cardstock and Christmas patterned paper, then added some ribbon.

Here's another of those adorable little hedgehogs.  My daughter has a hedgehog named Lola who is much cuter but we can't get her to push a sled with gifts :)



This stamp is also from the Stampin' Up Holiday Lineup set - I love these little snow people!  I colored their accessories with some Copic markers and added some snow glitter Stickles for sparkle, matted them with DCWV cardstock and patterned paper, and cut a snowflake from a Cricut cartridge.

This is the last of the trio from the Holiday Lineup stamp set from Stampin' Up - what a lineup!  Once again I used Copic markers, cardstock and patterned paper from DCWV and a cute little chipboard Christmas tree.

I colored each card differently, sometimes with matching colors and sometimes with colors you'd never think went together, but it really made these characters jump off the card.

This last set was made using a lovely stamp from Flourishes.  I just love, love, love their stamp sets.  I used some Stampin' Up ink for these along with solid blue cardstocks and ribbons, but have also made a few more with embossing powder. 

I hope you're enjoying the rest of this lovely weekend!

Time for Christmas Cards

The calendar may say it's October, but it's almost the deadline to mail my Christmas cards for Operation Write Home.  If you're like me, you may have Christmas embellishments and paper you bought after the holiday last year when they were dirt cheap.  I pulled them out and got busy - here's a few of the cards I just finished working on:

I used a Cuttlebug snowflake embossing folder for the background, precut foam snowflakes I found at Michael's and the precut sentiment from K&Co.

I used another precut sentiment from K&Co and used some small dimensional pop dots behind it.  I also added a few snowflake punch outs from a Martha Stewart punch and corner punch at the bottom.

For this red card I used more snowflake punch outs and a Cosmo Cricket border for the sentiment on the bottom.  These cute little pre-assembled felt snowmen are from Michael's - love 'em!

More pre-assembled felt Christmas trees from Michaels go with the K&Co sentiment and paper for this card.

Another K&Co sentiment and some Cosmo Cricket borders were used for this card and a felt gold dove.

This last little card isn't quite finished yet - I took the picture before I added Glossy Accents in the snow globe to make it look like water.  The little snowman was cut from a Sizzix Sizzlit and colored with a few Copic markers; the snowflakes were punched from a Martha Stewart punch and the stamps are from a new Christmas set from The Stamps of Life.

I tried to keep these cards simple without too many embellies, and absolutely NO GLITTER which against the rules for O.W.H.  The deadline to mail Christmas cards is October 31 so if you have some free time, please consider making a few cards for this wonderful organization.  Now I'm off to box 'em up and get 'em mailed!