our first bloghop!

Welcome to our stop! We are Theresa, me, & Thomas, my son who is 14 & is the IT guy for our blog. This is our first time being a stop on a hop, as we are relatively rookie bloggers. We are so excited to finally be able to do more than just look. :) I have been making cards for Operation Write Home for a little over 2 years now. I first started after a co-worker passed away very unexpectedly on the 3rd of July. He was retired Navy & his family suggested military support groups for donations instead of flowers. I wanted to do something a little more personal & looked up OWH, which was Cards for Heros then. I made 51 thinking of you cards in Dale's honor, 1 for each year of his life. And I just kept going. :)

Thomas & I make cards together and he often comes along with me to help Sandy stamp & tuck & sort when she gets over run. He is the MASTER card stamper. You can see him in action here :) We keep making cards for OWH as a way to spend time together & to help our hero's maintain that same connection with their family and friends. We always  keep the kleenex handy when we read the hero blog & then make more cards! :)

If you are just starting here, great! The beginning starts here at the OWH Stars & Stamps blog. Now for the good stuff! Our cards!

I started with cut out sheet from The Beary Patch that has been in my stash for a very long time. I'm not sure if they are even in business any more....

I cut out the elf, Santa, stocking, & reindeer parts. Added some solid cardstock that I embossed with Tim Holtz snow flurries folder. Pierced and pen stitched white cardstock & mounted both the embossed & stitched pieces on solid red cardstock. I used dimensional foam tape adhesive to adhere the cut outs to the stitched piece. Add some glossy accents to eyes, noses, & buttons to dress them up a bit. The end result--

Our favorite is either Santa or the Elf

 

I'm not sure what we'll do with the Christmas tree or 2 other pieces on the sheet. The tree is to big & the others don't lend themselves to cards... May just use the back for mounting since it is a nice heavy textured stock. :) It feels good to use up some of those older supplies in the stash! 

We hope you have all enjoyed hopping so far! Let us know which is your favorite card! We'll make 1 Valentine or winter love card for every comment. :)

a card by Thomas

Here's a card made by Thomas during a homework break--

patterned papers are from a winter stack. Snowman stamp by clearly wordsworth. french blue colorbox chalk ink. Love you stamp is from tpc studio.

He's now 4 cards closer to his goal of 100 for the year.... (he's now at 71 cards for the year! Go Thomas!)

more from the stash...

It's been a fairly productive few days in the scrap room. Yeah!!! Used up some more stuff from the stash & got 12 more cards made! If this keeps up I'm going to have to win big in Vegas next weekend so I can get MORE ADHESIVE to keep making cards. :)

this is the sticker sheet I started with (I had 2 of them so I made duplicates--)--

add in some solid cardstock, coordinating patterned papers, some eyelets, ribbon, & fibers and this is what is ready to be stamped & tucked!!!

I think this guy is my favorite of the group-

This started with a sketch of a card that Sandy made for Father's day. I used Susan Branch coordinating patterned papers & stickers. Added in some solid card stock, Making Memories eyelets & inked all the edges with dark brown color box chalk ink. For some finishing touchs I gave Santa some "ground" to stand on with my c-3 copic, lightened & blended with c-1. I also outlined Santa with c-1. Lastly I covered Santa with glosssy accents to help him stand out & make him shiny. :)

Now it's time to get some house "stuff " done & start to think about packing for Vegas... I leave Wednesday afternoon...

back to the paper...

ahhhh. Finally back in the scrap room after a busy weekend and hitting the ground on monday running. Who would've thought that we would be even busier chasing stuff down in the 2nd week of high school than we were in all of the past 9 years of school put together. Add in a tennis match or two & there's my week. This morning I decided it was time to reclaim what little sanity I have & play with some paper! After I found my work space, it was time to use up the paper that was sitting there....

Santa sticker & patterned paper are by Susan Branch. Green cardstock is embossed with Sizzix snow globe embossing folder. Ribbon/fiber is EK success adornments Christmas collection. All of this stuff has been aging in my collection for YEARS. It feels SO GOOD to finally use some of it!

Next up this afternoon is Thomas' tennis match & then slow cooker pot roast for dinner! No Costco dinner tonight!!! (unlike the last 3 match nights, today I planned ahead ;) ). Then maybe a little more paper play time tonight before bed.... Thank goodness tomorrow is friday. Maybe I'll finally be able to get this week caught up....

Cold Temps, Warm Heart

Welcome to the 3pm challenge! I hope everyone's mojo is flowing with all of these GREAT challenges! This one is all about winter love cards. Break out those snow flakes & snowman paper and stamps and create some love cards to fill those winter boxes!

Patterned paper is all basic grey, Jovial line. Card stock is bazzill. Stamps are also basic grey. Banner is a modified deja views template with a bit of dimensional adhesive under the middle. Sentiment was printed off my computer. Brad is from my stash. Sandy's giant roll of dimensional adhesive used to pop the snowman.

Now it's your turn! Let's see what winter love magic you can create!

EDIT-- Sorry Ladies, but I can't get the inlinkz link to work. :( Please just post to facebook so we can all see what you create.

OWH birthday bash challenge card

Yesterdays day 3 challenge was to use eyelets. Hmmmm. Do I have any eyelets? Silly question. :) I seem to have every color the Making Memories made years ago in my stash. Do they even make them any more? I even found a TON of shaped ones that I never used. In the fall container are pumpkins, turkeys, ghosts, bats (hard telling whats in the other seasons containers)..... All with a hole in the middle. Not sure that I care for that. Must be why they are still in the stash. :) Now is the perfect time to put a few of them to good use.

I used a sketch from a card on the OWH facebook, but I forgot to make note of who made the original card (it was from around father'day/4th of july if that helps anyone identify their sketch...). All pattern papers are from We R Memory Keepers Maple Grove line, (from last year maybe?). Stamps are from the same line & are heat embossed. Ribbon in from My Mind's Eye. Round eyelets are from Making Memories. Pumpkin is from the stash,  manufacture unknow. I even used my Crop-a-Dile from We R to set the eyelets. :) All edges were inked with colorbox dark brown chalk ink.

We survived the first 2 days of high school. Came home with homework on friday, so spent most of yesterday getting the "homework zone" cleaned out and set up for high school. Out went the childrens picture dictionary and in went a collegiate dictionary. Crayons left, in went colored sharpies (my good scrapbook copic markers are staying in the scrapbook room Thomas!!!!). Calendar white board went up. Added a recycle can next to the garbage can. The electric pencil sharpener gets to keep it's home in there for now... Since Thomas has switched to mechanical pencils almost exclusively, not to sure that it needs to stay... He only uses wood pencils for standardized tests now. First one this year will be the PSAT in October....


Now to get the teen out of bed so we can head south to Harbor Days & BBQ with REGULAR SNACKS!!!! :) :)