OWH Card Sketch #135

Hi friends.  Here's a card from Card Sketch #135.   This is only the second time I've participated in the weekly sketch---and I think it's fun!  

I used a kind of "different" take on a love sentiment....maybe it will strike a cord with someone!  The word "fine" is colored and on vellum.  I layered it on white card stock and popped it with dimensionals.  Although it is hard to see in the pic, the two small white hearts are glossy accented (thanks to the blog skip this weekend that reminded me to use my glossy stuff for extra pizzaz!)  A little white faux stitching to finish it off.  I'm sorry that my picture isn't very crisp...it turned out a bit fuzzy.  Thanks for looking!

   

Back to work, finally got some monkey cards done!

Hi friends!  We went back to work at the public schools early in August, from our shortened summer break, which meant busy times for me and less time for crafting, which makes me a little sad  :-(   A new school year is full of transitions for our kiddos, and since I work with kiddos with special needs, I am often especially busy this time of year....transitions are frequently & notoriously hard for kids I work with! 

Anyway, Sandy put out a call for some "fun" cards that mom & dad heroes can send to their own kiddos, so I did 3 along that line.  They all say "Hi" but I was wishing I had a "monkeying around" or a "hang in there" stamp or something....wasn't sure on the appropriateness of something like that?  Thoughts?   hmm...a mom or dad sending a card home that says "hang in there"....please weigh in on this! 

The monkeys are from a couple of sets of La Petite 3-D stickers that were being clearanced at Hobby Lobby.  I used my Texture Boutique for the yellow cardstock and for the "bark" look on the branch.  Tim Holtz distress ink to the embossed image for a "vine" kind of look.  Since I used craft and brown cardstock as the card bases, I lined the insides with yellow for a lighter surface to write on.  Thanks for looking! 

 

3 purple & green cards crafted last night

Hi guys. Last night I did a bit of creating and chose some purple and green (accented with blue) items that were calling out to me!  The die cut pieces are from Paper Wishes.  I feel a little badly that these are pretty "feminine" in color and just hope some heroes in OWH loves them....    Maybe I'll try and counter them with some cards that are more "masculine" next time!   Thanks for looking!

Four different cards...one is a real cute fishie card!

Four new cards I made over the last day and a half. The first one was taught to me by my friend, Judi, at a Stampin' Up demonstration. You use Christmas ornament stamps and punch, turn them on their side, use a scallop oval punch and cut "fins" out of it, add a googley eye, and you've got a cute fishie! Use your sponge inking with about 3 differing shades of blue on a wave template to make the background of the card. I decided to go just a tad farther and cut a piece of craft to use as sand and I had some cute little epoxy stickers for the bottom dwellers.  I made one that says "hello" for OWH and this one is for my daughter to use.

This is just a simple card with no sentiment for OWH so a hero can personalize it as he/she likes. 

I really love how this one turned out.  I'm a sucker for blue anyway and use it A LOT (probably more than I should) on my cards and scrapbook layouts.  I don't own the punch for the border yet (used this one at a scrapbook store) but like the effect that it gave my double side border, so it may have to go on my wishlist. 

I know this one looks like the sentiment is slighly blurry, but in fact, that is on purpose.  I double stamped the sentment:  once in black and then slightly off-side of it in green to get the shadow effect.  Very simple card on craft paper. 

The four of them all together.  I ended up with 3 of the "peace & love & happiness" cards, 2 of the fishies, and that was it!   Thanks for looking.....I appreciate it!

For today's card post, I'm putting on some early Christmas Cards I made----you've all heard of Christmas in July, right?  Well, I did these the final week in July~~~   These will go in with my Operation Write Home (OWH) cards, but I probably won't send them out until late Sept.  

There's stickles on most all of these, but I don't think it shows up well in the photos....looks better IRL (in real life!)

Here's a group of them....I think I ended up with about 3 more than this shows, and now I'm ready to put aside the Christmas cards for a little while!  Back to more "seasonal" crafting!   (i.e. it's VERY hot here, so I'm looking for cool colors to craft with! 

  Thanks for looking!!!!

More "love" & "miss you" type of cards....with a patriotic paper/color scheme---from a OWH sketch.  I made two cards of each of the samples I will show.....so a total of 6 cards in this set.  They're fairly similar....just different embellies/sentiments.  I like how they turned out, and hope that our heroes do, too!   Thanks for looking, and commenting if you have the time. 

So here's a pic of the group of the 6 of them:

 

Also, today, in order to not seem partial, I will post a couple shots of our other kitty: Sissy! She's so very "cat-like" in comparison to our other cat (seen in yesterday's post). Sissy likes people when SHE's interested in them, has the cat instincts for hunting/playing/wanting to escape to the outside and eat grass (which she's not supposed to do!) etc.

New cards from a couple of days ago~~~

I worked concessions at the Salt Dogs baseball games this weekend with my daughter to fund raise for the Cheer Leading trip to the Alamo Bowl.  Because of that, I didn't have a chance to get these new cards on here.   I really love how the "LOVE" cards came out (I made 3 of these same cards).  I used my cricut Lacy Labels cartridge to die cut the "LOVE" part, added some distress inks (Tim Holtz, either tumbled glass or broken china---can't remember!), used my Texture Boutique with the Swiss Dots embossing folder, prima flowers with blue Dazzles from Paper Wishes in the centers, and ribbon from my stash! 

Looks like this guy wants in on some card making action!  This is one of our two cats, Gizmo, all splayed out across my little crafting table!  He's the fluffiest and softest can you will ever know.  Love him, and his sister, Sissy!  (I'll do a pic of her sometime soon).   Thanks for looking and sharing any comments you might have!  I'm looking for advice on how to pack up my cards to ship off for the first time to OWH.  I have about 40 cards now, and hope to add a few more today.....

Back at home, missed my crafting!   So, I did some more cards for Operation Write Home (OWH).  There was a call put out for more "love" and "miss you" cards, so that's what I did! 

First 3 are "love" cards....each seen alone and then together as a group.

Then this is the group of 3 that I did that are "miss you" cards....

 This one has the green rick-rack trim and the other 2 look alike and have lavender rick-rack trim, as seen below.   Pretty quick and simple cards....makes me want a stamp that says "missing you" rather than "miss you"

 This is a card I did for my daughter's friend's b-day....sweet 16 obviously!

and then just a simple "hi" card....using my texture boutique with the swiss dots embossing folder.

Thanks for looking!   Glad to be back home with the rest of my family, whom I missed dearly!  And back to crafting, which I so enjoy doing. 

Day 2 & 3 of our extended weekend trip.  Day 1 was ziplining and on Days 2 & 3 we got to the reason why I came here---the whole reason for being here:  White Water Rafting.   Here are a few pics of our first time ever of WWR....

This first day of rafting was a beginner's lesson on Clear Creek in the Idaho Springs area of Colorado....just about 30-40 minutes west of Denver.  This usually has rapids classified as 2's and 3's (on a white water scale of 1-6) but, sadly for us, the water level this year is at record lows due to minimum snow last winter which equals less "melt" and mountain run-off.  So these rapids were only in the "2" category and, although it was still fun, it wasn't much of a thrill of a ride.  Because of that, we booked an intermediate trip the following day on the Arkansas River down through the Royal Gorge, out of Canon City, CO.  This place had many rapids in the 3's and 4's!   Much more exciting!  It was a couple hours drive each way from where we were, but then we got to do some "real" rafting so it was worth it!   There are two other people with us on this trip (they're the couple in front) and you see me in the middle on the left and Emily in the middle on the right. 

This was Loads of Fun! and I'm very glad I finally got to experience this and that no one fell out of the raft on our trip  ;-)  Another thing I can now check off of the bucket list.....

No new cards to display:   I have been away on an extended weekend in Colorado!  As hubby can attest to, I have fantasized and dreamed about white water rafting (WWR) for several years now.  In fact, a few years back our whole family went to Estes Park, CO and I tried to sign us up to WWR.  Well, that was a bad time to try and do it:  record high water levels with some fatalities and high minimum age requirements to participate (Emily wasn't old enough!).  Probably better for all of us that we didn't get to do it then.  Skip to now:  I've considered, thought about, and now have finally jumped in to DO IT!  Here's a couple pics of our ziplining experience.  We're only here for 3 days, and ziplined the first day with WWR the 2nd and 3rd day.  Pictures on WWR will come once we get back home and I get them on here! 

 Here I am!   The part that was pretty scary was the moment you had to take off.  Once zipping along, it was incredible....but making yourself take the "plunge" off the platform was really something....

 And here's Emily.  She seemed to be a natural at this and did really well learning how to control the whole thing.  In all, we did 6 "zips" on this trip, with speeds of 30 mph!  Keep watching in a day or so for pics of WWR....