OWH Blog Hop

Welcome to the OWH BLOGHOP!!!

If you want to start at the beginning and see all the great cards, please go to Operation Write Home's Blog: www.owhstarsandstamps.org

For this blog hop, the instructions were to make a red, white and blue missing you card. Our first stamp set from Papertrey Ink is our absolute favorite! I don't think a week goes by when we don't use it. Therefore, when I read the instructions for this bloghop, I thought the set would be perfect for the bloghop card. This card was made with the Everyday Button Bits stamp set. The vintage buttons for the hot air balloons are also from Papertrey. Finally, the sentiment comes from AMUSE stamps. The red paper behind the sentiment was punched with the Stampin' Up window punch. 

The Operation Write Home Blog is an amazing resource for new card makers! It has great tips and tutorials on there. We always visit the blog to learn about new projects and products. In fact, we learned about PTI from the blog! 

I hope our cards can bring a smile to someone hearing from their family members overseas! I feel like it is the least we can do to help these amazing heros and their families. 

Thanks for stopping by! Please leave a comment and let me know what you think of the card! 

The next stop on the bloghop is : http://shelleyscreations.blogspot.com/

Some bunny loves you

Hi-

I just though I would post a similar card to the one below. For this card, I also used the Tiny Treats: Valentine set from Papertrey Ink. I really like the bunny image- the little heart tail is so sweet. I stamped the border in a light pink and the bunny with the sentiment in black. I put the bunny in the frame on a piece of maroon Bazzill swiss dot paper. I then finished the card off with a strip of pink paper and two small pink buttons. Instead of coloring the entire bunny, I decided just to make the inside of the ears pink and the heart tail red. 

You're a great catch!

Good Evening! I have to start off by apologizing for not updating the blog in a while. I have been inundated with school work. Thankfully, last Tuesday was my last final exam!!! We spent Tuesday and Wednesday cleaning out the dorm. When I finally had some free time, I decided to use all of our new stamp sets. In the past few months, Robin and I have discovered the amazing stamps from Papertrey Ink. Every month they come out with new stamps and I have to admit that we are totally addicted. We are currently waiting for even more stamps that we ordered Friday night, but I decided that I should ink up some of the other PTI stamps that we have. This stamp is from a fantastic set called Tiny Treats: Valentine. It comes with the larger frame and various small images with matching sentiments. The images include a small bunny, a frog, a dog etc. and all of them have a small heart. I really love that all of the images and sentiments fit perfectly in the border stamp. Furthermore, it is great that this image coordinates with the Marvy Punches. 

For this card, I decided to use the fish image and the sentiment, "you're a great catch".  I stamped the border in a light blue and the fish and sentiment in black. I then colored the image with Copic makers. After punching out the entire stamped image, I mounted it on a large piece of navy swiss dot paper from Bazzill. I then added a strip of light blue paper. To finish it off, I attached two small blue buttons. 

I hope you enjoy!

Purrfect!

The midweek challenge on Operation Write Home's blog this week was a Free For All- create a card using any of our favorite past challenges or sketches! Although I normally like the fact that the sketches and challenges provide some direction, I thought this would be fun for a change. I really don't have a favorite challenge, but I loved looking through all of the gorgeous cards people created for the "Four Legged Friends" theme. There is something about a cute animal that brings a smile to almost anyone's face. 

Robin made this card and when I saw it, I thought it would be perfect for the blog this week. Recently we have been using a lot of stickers from Paper House Productions. The stickers are awesome- they are images of either animals, flowers, shells etc. and they are incredibly realistic. A few months back, we posted a card using the sea shell stickers. For this card, Robin used the small kitten stickers from Paper House. She put each sticker on a 1 inch white square created by a Clever Lever Punch. The cats are then sitting on a chocolate chip brown square and all of this is on some matching green and brown paper. All of the matching papers are from Stampin' Up. Finally, the sentiment came from the Stampin' Up 'Pun Fun' stamp set. She punched it out using the two Stampin' up sentiment punches and backed it with the matching chocolate chip paper. 

We have made many versions of this card, using cats, dogs and even butterflies. If you have not used these stickers before, you should really check them out! They are a lot of fun to use on cards for our heros. Hope you like the card! 

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!