CTMH - Pear and Partridge

It was love at first sight for me and this card kit in the Autumn/Winter 2012 CTMH Idea book. The kit comes with everything you need to make 5 cards of each design, including the stamps. It's the only way to get these stamps which I LOVE. I wish I had thought to make sure I own the coordinating CTMH ink. I don't, I had to substitute, so my brown isn't as crisp as I would have liked. I love the ribbon which you can't feel in a photo but is super soft and easy to tie and glue. The gems are glittery so they sparkle, you can almost see the effect on the white card. I hit a snag when the instructions said to second generation stamp the background of the white card with a teeny sentiment stamp that would have required 53 stamps per card. THAT was not going to happen, EVER! so I whooped out my Inkadinkado script background instead. Problem Solved.

WMD - Cards and More cards

Well, here they are. A box full of cards for Operation Write Home all tucked and stamped. There is a bottom layer all sorted by category, and a bulging top layer waiting to be sorted. They will be off to OWH next week to fill the measure of their creation. It's kind of exciting really.

If you have any more cards to add to this shipment, I need them this week. And if you are willing to donate dollars toward shipping that would be appreciated too.

My next box will go out late December with Valentines, St Pat's, Easter and all that is Spring related. We also need Birthday, Thank You, Missing You, Thinking of You, General and Blank cards.

Now I'm off to celebrate the Hub's Birthday. Happy B-Day darlin'. Who loves you most?

Fat Penguin...something to break the ice.

So you know that snowman I was frustrated about a couple days ago? Yeah, I ended up making my own cut file, along with the penguin and robin. I'm not in love with the robin so look at him as a work in progress. And if I make them again I'll make the penguin not as fat and tuck his feet in farther.

I used the arms from the frustrating download. The wings for both birds are flower petals, as are the penguin toes which I welded to circles for gluing. I borrowed the hat band from the Mad Hatter which is a free file over at SVGcuts.com. Everything else is just from the basic shapes file on MTC. Even the hat was easier than I expected. It's just two ovals and a trapezoid that I mashed, squashed, stretched and welded until it made me happy. It doesn't take much to make me feel accomplished.

WMD - Don't Blink

Here is something you don't see very often. You can see parts of the actual desk. It just means I'm between projects. It will be back in action the instant I finish this post. The red striped boxes at the top of my desk are chock full of cards ready to be stamped and tucked and mailed off to Operation Write Home.  From there they will be resorted and shipped to Our American Heroes in Afghanistan (or wherever) in time to make it back to the soldiers families by Christmas. They have a long road ahead.

(The Hub just walked in and said "Hey! Your desk is black!" Followed by "Have I ever seen that cutter?" To which I responded, "Not for a while." Truth is it hasn't moved from that spot since the desk was built, it is usually just buried in paper scraps. I don't think he's ever realized it's a cutter.)

Our very first Operation Write Home shipment will happen next week. Our goal was 350 cards. If you have cards to donate make sure I have them by Sept 30. I'm pretty sure we'll make our goal and have some cards that will have to wait until the next shipment scheduled for December. That makes me super happy.

I haven't made any cards in a while because I've been moving furniture in my craft room trying to find this stash of Christmas cards. These are from some swaps we did a few years ago when the Aspen Friends site was in full bloom. I love doing swaps but I never actually send cards so I knew these were in here somewhere. (If you look closely you may find a card you made.) After they were unburied I spent several days weeding out the weedy ones, shoring up the weak ones, liner-ing the dark ones and resizing the odd sized ones. That left me with about 3 dozen OWH worthy cards to add to the box. My Aspen Friends...the gift that keeps on giving.

Downloading frustration.

No I didn't need more frustration so I found some to download.

I have this winter card in my mind but it requires just the right snowman. I finally found him but I can't get him to download. All I get is his arm. REALLY? what good is just an arm? I guess I'll just have to wing it. It shouldn't be impossible since he's mostly just circles. But he wears a cute hat that maybe I can find somewhere else. And he has cute offspring, a penguin and a robin. SO this is me off to recreate the file of someone who actually knows how to make files.

You can see the ADORABLE originals here and learn why I can't use just any snowman.

http://inmy-craftroom.blogspot.com/2011/11/christmas-card-cut-files-mtc-svg.html

Card game 2.1

How did card game #2 go? Did you get all scraps into useful little cardmaking bundles? No? me neither. But I got some of them, mostly plain cardstock. I kept getting sidetracked by making cards out of the scraps I was supposed to be bundling. I suppose that's really the goal anyway so it's ok.

Card game #2.1 goes like this: Go through your little bundles of patterned paper. Find your most wintery paper (not Christmas) and make a card. You can add whatever plain cardstock or embellishments you want. The only rule is to make a winter card from your scraps. Pretty easy rules.

When I did it I found I only had ONE scrap of winter paper. It was a BoBunny paper from 2007 called Jack Frost crystals. Super perdy. I combined it with some purpley plain because I didn't want my cards to be just blue; I wanted to use some pinky metal dots I had that coordinated with the purpley. Anyway, turns out I didn't use the dots at all because it made the cards too busy. Best laid plans and all that.  :-P

The vertical card on the right was created from this sketch   http://ispysketches.blogspot.ca/2012/09/issc32-with-marie-alice.html  posted on I Spy Sketches 7 Sept 2012. 

WMD - Don't try this at home

I missed WMD last week, but I had a very good reason. You see... the girl child made me do it. A friend recommended she watch the previous seasons of Vampire Diaries. That sounds like a show that I could enjoy so I watched it with her. We watched 2 seasons last week. We couldn't help it....we just got SUCKED in!!! Bwahahah! see how I did that? Vampires...sucked in!

Yeah I know...go work on cards.

I'm astonished and a little embarrassed at how often my computer keyboard becomes my crafting workspace. I guess that's because I love svg's but I also like to look at what I'm building after I get the bits cut out. I'm absolutely positive that one day I'm going to be really, REALLY sorry I do this. Once again, another project for another day: make room on my desk for my computer AND my crafts.

I got this adorable free SVG Reindeer from DieCutGirl.blogspot.com posted April 1, 2012. The original doesn't look as angry as mine. It has to do with the placement of the eyebrows. In spite of the reindeer wearing his angry eyes, I think the cards turned out adorable.

OWH progress

Hey all you lovely card makers!

I'm just checking in with progress on our OWH box. Our goal was 350 cards by the end of this month as I recall. I have over a hundred fabulous cards sitting on my desk waiting to be "stamp and tucked". I'd love to take credit for making all of them but many of them have been donated. So, thanks everyone for that.

I'd love it if you'd post how many you have ready. And if you want to donate you can bring them to my house or Juleen's house (don't you love how I volunteer her for stuff like that?) and we'll get them in the box. And if you can't donate cards...I'd be happy to accept dollars toward shipping.  :-)

The shipping date for these to be in Washington to be sorted and mailed overseas is early October. So I thought it might be fun to have a stamp and tuck party at the end of September. Don't know what "stamp and tuck" means? Every card needs to have the words "Operation Write Home" on the back and be tucked into an envelope in a specific way. I've ordered a stamp with the OWH logo that should be here in a couple days, and I made labels for any cards that a stamp won't show up on. I also ordered 1000 envelopes that should be here next week. So if you have cards to donate that don't have envelopes, we got yer back.

These are today's fare. I made 6 of them. I know I've made gobs of cards of this same pattern. But I love it because it is quick, easy, creates nearly no waste and I think they are super cute.

Rotate Picture!

I learned to rotate a picture in Blogger! Thanks to this helpful post  http://www.linesacross.com/2011/08/how-to-rotate-pictures-in-blogger.html and I linked it! GO ME! This whole blog thing thought it could get the better of me. But, here I am blogging, rotating and linking.You just wait...someday, someone is actually going to VISIT my silly slime spot.

Card Worksop Part 2

 Once again I apologize for the pic being sideways. One day I'll figure out how to fix that, but apparently not today.

Anyway... here is the second set of the CTMH Just Because card workshop. I thought they turned out nice.

I learned quite a bit along the way. First thing I learned is, while I enjoyed doing this workshop on my own, I would NEVER, EVER recommend doing it as an actual workshop. You would have to do all the cutting, which would take weeks, or schedule several hours on several days to have "them" do it. It would take forever and someone would cut theirs wrong and you would end up redesigning cards to fit the pieces. UGH!

The other thing I learned is, for the OWH project I'm working on it would have been MUCH more energy efficient to have made 20 cards all alike of each design and it probably wouldn't have used any more paper per card.

The patterned paper I used was from the BoBunny Father Christmas collection. LOVE IT! I wish you could see it better. Maybe when I learn how to rotate the pic I'll retake it too (insert rolling eyes here). Stamps are CTMH.

Just Because Card Workshop

I've been working on the CTMH Just Because card workshop published in the CTMH Wishes book. The idea is to make 20 cards (2 each of 10 designs) from 6 sheets of cardstock + bases. This is my analysis:

It took a couple days to cut all the bits but I did it on the first try. Go me! I had to use a magnifying glass to see the measurements. I tried to enlarge it on a copier but they didn't copy well enough to read. I blame the old eyes, not the new copier.

I don't know what brand the white paper is that I'm using but it does not stamp well. It doesn't absorb the ink so it kind of runs and can smear if you don't let it dry for a few minutes. That slows the process down. The cards are turning out nice. I'm only half done but here is a view of the first 5 designs.