No sentiment floral cards

This week's Midweek Throwdown is to make cards without sentiments.  This is SO hard for me!  I love my sentiment stamps and I never feel like a card is totally finished until it has a sentiment.  It is, however, important to leave our heroes plenty of options when they write home.  The cards below could be used for any occasion- birthday, thinking of you, thanks, sympathy, love, wedding, etc, so they're absolutely perfect for OWH.  When I spotted these Martha Stewart stickers today, I thought they would work well as focal points on sentiment-free cards.

I made six cards from the pack of stickers, half with yellow and the other half with orange cardstock scraps from the heap on my desk that needs to be wrangled!

  

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Cards shipped to OWH in 2013: 340 blank and 140 AnyHero (as of 1/7/13)
Cards shipped to OWH in 2012: 1284 blank and 218 AnyHero
Cards shipped to OWH in 2011: 1695

Check out OWH at www.operationwritehome.org to learn more about its mission and how to get involved.

B-day card for a little man

In the past two years, my family has experienced a baby explosion!   The cousins on my dad's side of the family now have 8, soon to be 9 (this week!) children and we're not done quite yet.  I wanted to do something for their birthdays but presents seemed a little over the top, especially since I won't get to see any of them on their birthdays due to geographic constraints.  The kids will, however, be getting cards! 

This is for a little man who's turning 6 on Friday.  Life's been busy lately for this little guy.  He welcomed a new little brother last week and started Kindergarten this week.  I heard he had a rough time on the bus because it was "overwhelming and loud."  What an articulate child! Hopefully this super hero will put that endearing grin I love to see on his face. 

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Cards shipped to OWH in 2012: 928 blank and 215 AnyHero (as of 6/26)
Cards shipped to OWH in 2011: 1695

Check out OWH at www.operationwritehome.org to learn more about its mission and how to get involved.

Flying Fruit Fantasy

The title of this post is the name of a smoothie shop I loved as a young kid.  The strawberry smoothie was wonderful.  I have no idea if they're still around, but I made a bunch of fruity cards today and had a smoothie for breakfast, so I thought it was a fitting title. 

I spotted these cheerful fruit stickers at Target this weekend.  My students are always begging for scratch and sniff stickers, so that was the original reason I picked them up.  Then, I decided they would be so cute on cards that my students could live without them!  We all have to make sacrifices for our heroes.  :)  There were 42 stickers on the sheet, and I've made cards for all but the lemons, pears, and a few of the strawberries. 

Featuring MS border punch and unknown checked paper from stash.  Sentiment computer generated.

Apple features Fiskars border punch, Making Memories brads, checked paper and sentiment computer generated.

Orange with computer generated sentiment, ribbons by SU and Offray, and Cuttlebug embossing

Cherries featuring Studio G sentiment stamp and unknown checked paper. 

The cherries are my favorite.  :)  Now I want to make another smoothie to combat the hot weather we're having this weekend! 

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Cards shipped to OWH in 2012: 620 blank and 200 AnyHero (as of 4/24)
Cards shipped to OWH in 2011: 1695
Check out OWH at www.operationwritehome.org to learn more about its mission and how to get involved.

Tutorial Part 2: Repurposed Stickers

Yesterday, I shared a technique to repurpose epoxy stickers using a Sharpie marker. 

 

Today, I want to take that tutorial one step further.  You'll need:

• epoxy stickers
• black Sharpie
• Versamark
• embossing powder (opaque color)
• heat tool
• protected work surface

We're going to make these: 

1. Color your epoxy dot stickers with the Sharpie and let them dry.  I also tried this without coloring the dots and it produced a lighter finished product with the original color showing through.  Experiment! 
2. Gently stamp the dots into the Versamark.  If your Versamark pad is new and clean, you might notice some ink rub off and stain the pad.  Avoid excessive pressure when inking the dots to reduce ink transfer.  (Ask me how I know.  ;)  Thankfully, my Versamark pad is 7 or so years old, so this wasn't its first small stain.)
3. Coat the dots in embossing powder.  I used a color called "hematite" by Stampendous that produces an interesting metallic look.  
4. Use your heat tool to melt the embossing powder.  
5. If you have ragged edges on your finished product, they will likely come off easily with your fingers, or you can use a small sanding block to gently remove excess embossing powder trails.  

The finished product on a couple of cards:

 This one is lighter because I didn't color the dot first.  The dot was pink before it was embossed. 

I hope you try these dots on your cards and let me know what you think!


Cards shipped to OWH in 2012: none thus far, but my box is filling up nicely! Cards shipped to OWH in 2011: 1695

I love bargains and a little CANDY!

I joked to my mom yesterday that my bargain shopping paid for the upgrade to leather seats in my new car.   It's probably more true than a joke- I am a major bargain hunter and rarely pay full retail for anything.  I said this as we were entering a junky liquidation shop to poke around and satisfy my sense of curiosity since I hadn't been there before.  Mom assured me it was worthless, but I had to see for myself.  We were both pleasantly surprised to discover they'd gotten an entire shipment of cardmaking and scrapbooking supplies in that were selling for $1 each or 12 for $9.   I came home with a haul worth about $200 retail that I got for $9.54 with tax.


Here's what I got:
100 A2 scallop rectangles in confetti white
100 sheets of dark gray 6x9 cardstock (to be used for layering)
40 sheets of red 8.5 by 11 (sold in packs at big box craft stores)
40 sheets of burgundy 8.5 by 11
25 sheets of yellow 8.5 by 11 (sold individually at big box craft stores for 59 cents each)
25 sheets of brown textured 8.5 by 11
25 sheets of evergreen textured 12 by 12
25 sheets of cream textured 12 by 12
25 sheets of white and grey diamond print 12 by 12
25 sheets of brown 12 by 12
25 sheets of pale blue 12 by 12
1 roll of about 25 sheets of Karen Neuburger flower stickers (meant to be sold individually at an LSS)


The cards below use some of the stickers.  I made a dozen of these cards and used up four sheets of the stickers. The cards also make use of bargain cardstock from Tuesday Morning.  I figured that this set of 12 cards cost 60 cents to make, or 5 cents per card.  

I used a modification of a technique that OWH shared last year.  The technique was to stamp a branch, glue paper flowers to it, and emboss the whole thing.  Instead, I stamped a sentiment, used stickers all over the card front, embossed it, and layered it with coordinating cardstock.

I'm pointing out the bargains I found not to make you jealous, but to encourage you to use your resources well and not be discouraged if you've seen your crafty budget shrink in recent years.  With the advent of digi stamps and numerous websites offering freebies, there's almost an unlimited supply of images and sentiments available to anyone with a printer.  With careful shopping, you can find papers to compliment your projects.  If you have any friends who also enjoy paper crafting, you may be able to get them to split packages with you to lower your cost and offer more variety.

Now, for the CANDY!  I doubt I'll be able to finish off all these stickers, so I'll be happy to send a few sheets and some card front-sized coordinating colors of cardstock to one lucky reader who leaves a comment on this post with a tip for saving money while crafting.  Comments must be submitted by Wednesday at 3:00pm EST (noon for West Coast peeps).  US addresses, only, please. Followers will get two entries! 

Don't forget about the Mother's Day challenge for OWH.  Boxes with half Mother's Day/Mom and half general themes are due by March 20th.  See my sidebar for a blinkie with more info.

Cards shipped to OWH in 2012: none thus far, but my box is filling up nicely!
Cards shipped to OWH in 2011: 1695

Here's a hero card I made today.  It was simple to make and I wanted to share it in case any of you are looking for hero cards that are easy to mass produce for card signings.

I cut a 4 x 5.25 inch piece of kraft.  Next, I used stickers to spell "hero" and used a white gel pen to outline the letters.  Then I punched a star and glued it to the cardstock.  Finally, I passed the whole thing through an embossing folder before attaching it to a white card base.  

Cards shipped to OWH in 2012: none thus far, but my box is filling up nicely!
Cards shipped to OWH in 2011: 1695

VCMP #8- Jungle Animal

Tonight's second challenge is to make a card featuring a jungle animal.  I got some Creative Imaginations epoxy stickers recently and was excited to open the package and make a card with one.  I used assorted cardstock, a CB embossing folder and a Fiskars crimper to build the card base.  There are Colorbok square brads as an accent. 

This is one of the "art" cards that Sandy said aren't in high demand, so I won't make very many with this type of sentiment.  I just liked the sticker.

Cards shipped to OWH in 2012: none thus far, but my box is filling up nicely! Cards shipped to OWH in 2011: 1695

Kid cards

While on vacation, my mom and I were shopping. What a surprise. ;) At a dollar store, Mom noticed some Cars stickers she thought I could use for OWH and I loved them. They're puffy and have a hologram sparkle effect. She also spotted some basketball hologram stickers that change images when you tilt them. I've been working through these packs recently and that's created a kid card trend around here.

The stickers.



Some Cars cards. Aren't the stickers cute?



Some basketball cards. I used some grunge-style number stamps to make the backgrounds. I bought the stamps at Big Lots and never managed to get the entire set of ten. (Anybody have 0, 1, 3, 5, 8, 9 that they want to part with?) Since they're aren't that many numbers I can make, I thought of using them as a background. I've noticed other people stamping their backgrounds and I realized that I never do that, so I thought I'd try it out.


Last night, I made these 5 cards in two hours. All use some kind of sticker- hologram Cars, felt ice cream, and regular with clear backing dino and truck. Check out the tire brads on the truck. I <3 them!