OWH Sketch # 9

Good Morning! After my midterm yesterday, I decided that I needed a break and so I made a few cards for Operation Write Home. One of the cards I made was for Sketch #9 on the operation write home blog. I really liked the sketch this week, as it was unlike anything I have previously done on a card. The owl came from the Inchie 'Heart Full of Love' set. Robin stamped up a bunch of these owls and we have had them around the house for a while. I thought it would be fun  to use one for this challenge, although I was worried it might look too much like a Valentine's Day Card! I hope someone will use it as a general 'love you' or 'miss you' card to send home. I colored the hearts and the envelope in the stamp with various Copic markers. I punched out the pink background plain square as well as the red scalloped square using the Clever Lever Punches. Recently we have been using an old DCWV adhesive border paper pack. This paper pack has long, thin strips of patterned paper that are absolutely gorgeous! I love the various patterns, such as the floral piece that I used on the card. To dress it up a little, I used a Stampin' Up border punch to create the loops on the bottom. The sentiment is one of my favorite 'miss you' stamps and it comes from Amuse. Although the card looked nice as it was, I thought it needed something else. I decided to add three small red buttons from Papertrey Ink. I hope you enjoy it! 

Spring Break Blog Hop

Welcome to my stop on the bloghop! This is the first time we are participating in a bloghop so I'm quite excited! If you want to start at the beginning and see all the wonderful cards, please go to Operation Write Home's Blog: http://www.owhstarsandstamps.org/. 

The instructions for the card were quite broad, although it had to be something springy. We have ordered a lot of new Stampin' Up products in the past month or so, so I thought it would be fun to use them on this blog for everyone to see. The tree stamp on this card comes from the 'Seasons of Friendship' stamp set from Stampin' Up. For those of you not familiar with the set, it comes with a tree, a flower, leaves, a bird and a sentiment. It's a really awesome stamp set! I used chocolate chip brown ink to stamp the tree directly onto the white card. I then placed a piece of patterned green paper on the bottom. The paper comes from a Sizzix paper pack that we bought years ago. It has been sitting in the drawer for a while, but I thought the green paper with leaves on it was perfect for this card! I used a green marker to ink up the leaves and stamped them right onto the branches. I then used pink chalk ink for the flowers and stamped them on a scrap of white paper. Using a very small pair of scissors, I cut each one out and attached it to the card using pop up dots. This gave the tree a nice 3D look. Next, I used a small piece of chocolate chip ribbon on the bottom of the card. Finally, the sentiment comes from the 'Teeny Tiny Wishes' stamp set also from Stampin' Up. I punched it out using the window punch and then the larger punch to create the green background for the sentiment. I hope you enjoy! 

Although we are fairly new to Operation Write Home, I have to say that my favorite thing so far has been the Sunday sketch challenges on the new blog. I also love the tutorials on there! They really inspire us to try new techniques and different products. We have been making cards for a long time, and always had them lying around the house. Robin found out about Operation Write Home this past summer and it seemed like the perfect way to use our cards. We went from only making a few cards around the holidays to mailing out a box of over 150 cards every other week. I just hope our cards can bring a smile to someone serving our country and to their families when they receive the cards. 

As I mentioned above, Robin and I are fairly new at making cards and stamping so please leave us a comment! We would love to hear what you think about our cards! Thanks! 

Hop on over to http://thepaperspa.blogspot.com to see more beautiful cards! The cards on her blog are simple yet gorgeous so you should really check them out! 

Get Whale Soon

Good Evening. This card was created for the Operation Write Home sketch challenge #7 as well as the Moxie Fab World: Picking Up the Pieces Challenge.  I thought it would be fun to do something with the new Stampin' Up set that we received last week. The last two weeks for me have been full of exams and papers, so I have not had a moment to even try out the new supplies that came. Yet, after handing in my last paper and hw assignment today, I officially started my Spring break. This break I hope to make a lot of cards and hopefully I will post frequently for everyone to see them.

One of the stamp sets that we bought one was the Stampin' Up Pun Fun set. Anyone who has been reading this blog knows that I absolutely love cute stamps with matching sayings! This set was just awesome and I couldn't wait to use it. The blue paper strips on the card came from a variety of scraps we had around the house. A few of them came from an old Sizzix paper pad, which has some really pretty papers. Others were from a DCWV paper pack. After reading the post about paper piecing, I decided to give it a try. I stamped the whale on a piece of blue and white patterned paper from the Sizzix paper pad. I had never tried this before but I absolutely loved it! I stamped the whale on the patterned paper and on a piece of white cardstock. I cut out the whale from the blue paper and attached it to the image on the white paper. I then punched this out using the Clever Lever square punch and backed it with a larger scalloped square. Finally, the ribbon on the bottom came from an Operation Write Home prize from December. The navy seemed to go really well with the other hues of blue on the card. I hope you enjoy! 

Sketch #6

We made these cards for the new sketch on the Operation Write Home blog. The sketch had four equal sized rectangles covering the card with a small square in the middle. We were very intrigued by this sketch. Although it seemed relatively simple, Robin and I had a lot of trouble coming up with an idea for this sketch. We talked quite a bit about what would look best for the sketch, but we couldn't decide on one design. Therefore, we both made two cards and thought we would see which looked best. To our surprise, all four looked great! Therefore, we decided to do something new and post two cards in one post. We will post the other two tomorrow. 

Robin made this first card, and it is one of my favorites. The card is made with four rectangles from the Martha Stewart Valentines paper pack. We really like this paper, as it is double sided and each sheet seems to match perfectly with the rest. These two patterned papers are the pink and red polka dot papers from the set. Last week, after a very difficult exam in school, we received an awesome package in the mail from Papertray Ink. After reading the Operation Write Home blog entry about buttons, we learned about a stamp set from Papertray Ink that is meant to incorporate buttons into the design. Anyone who has been reading this blog knows that we love buttons, so this stamp set was perfect for us. The set is known as 'Everyday button bits' and comes with everything from hot air balloons to flowers. For this card, robin used the cherry stamp. The stamp just has the stems and leaves, and the cherries are left blank. We found a few nice red buttons around the house and used those for the cherries. Finally, we stamped the 'you're so sweet' sentiment that came with the set. The cherries and the sentiment were punched out using a scalloped square Clever Lever punch. 

Next, I made this card with a floral pattern and a matching solid paper. I was really interested in doing something 'springy' so I thought the paper would be perfect. The floral paper came from the grab bag that we won around Thanksgiving of last year from a local scrapbooking store. I am not sure who made the floral paper, but the solid blue comes from Bazzil. The paper has a really nice sheen to it. I then stamped the sentiment which came from the Hero Arts Thinking of You' stamp set. I punched it out using an oval Clever Lever Punch and then punched out a darker pink scalloped oval to go behind it. Finally, I punched out a butterfly using the Martha Stewart 3 in 1 Butterfly stamp/punch. I tried to pick up the darker blue color in the floral paper.