Cards for our troops

I've been looking for a while to find a way to use my card making as a ministry.  I finally found a way.  In my last scrapbooking magazine, they had a small blurb about Operation Write Home.  OWH sends cards to our troops all over the world.  You can check our their website here.  I can send them cards and they will send them to our troops to use to send home to their loved ones.  You can also send what they call "Any Hero" letters.  An Any Hero letter is a note to our troops, either thanking them, or encouraging them in some way.

Last Thursday, I sent my first box of cards.  I managed to come up with 48 cards and 3 Any Hero letters to send. If you're interested in joining me in this, let me know, or you can check out the options on their website.

Joseph's Coat Inside Out

I absolutely love this technique!  I found this idea on a blog (and I'm VERY sorry that I can't remember where I found it).  I thought that this stamp was okay, but when I saw this card, I just had to borrow the stamp from my sister to try this out. It was a little labor intensive, but very rewarding as I was very happy with the end result.  This is a technique that I'll be teaching in my upcoming stamp/scrapbook classes.  I went to Jan Tink's website to find the tutorial on the technique.

Stamps used:  SU Medallion background & French Script Background (Word stamp is from CTMH)

Crafters Wanted!!!

A few years ago, I was a Stampin Up! demonstrator and had a monthly card making club.  I've really missed the research and preparation that went into the club, as well as our monthly gatherings.  So, I've decided to sign up with Stampin Up! again.  I'm looking for a handful of people who would like to join me in my new endeavor.  If you have an interest in joining a stamp and/or scrapbook club with SU supplies, please let me know.  I'm really looking forward to getting started in this again.  You can let me know by adding a comment here, or by sending me an email.

Blog Design

Please bear with me as I try to figure out why my background doesn't seem to be working. I'm not sure what I've done, but it was there and then it was gone.

Beautiful Card Boxes!

This is one of Taylor's card boxes. I was amazed at how beautiful it turned out. My sister came to stamp with me for the day and brought the samples that she was going to make. I've had these boxes sitting around waiting for a project, so I made them also. I made 2 and gave them to friends at work. They were a huge hit, so I'll be getting more soon.

Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge #86

Ok, so I've been designing and creating cards for many years, but haven't taken the time to post anything anyplace, until now. I've felt that I wanted to spend all of my spare time creating and not on the computer. Here I am anyway. Taylor's sketch challenge this week inspired me and I feel that it's time for me to come into the current age and share my work in more ways. I'm still new at this stuff and trying to figure it out as I go, so hopefully I'm doing it right.

The card above is the one that I created for this challenge. All of the supplies (except the ribbon) are from Stampin Up! I think that the Stipple Butterfly is one of my all time SU favorite stamps. I used Elegant Eggplant and Lavender Lace CS, chalks, Memento Black Ink, Versamark, a Martha Stewart Border Punch and nesties.

Apparently I'm still trying to get the hang of posting more than one photo at a time, so it looks a little strange to me. Hope you like the card anyway!

It's about time!

My, how time flies! I just realized how long it's been since I first created this blog, and I've done nothing with it yet. Most of my time at home is spent creating, and since I work in an office at a computer all day, I don't really want to mess with it when I get home. In addition to spending as much time as possible crafting, we found massive dry rot in our home and my husband has been frantically trying to get it taken care of before the rain hits for the winter. He made it by a few minutes as far as rain protection, but the rest of the renovation will take longer. I'm posting a picture here of an outside view of what our living room looked like for several days.