Update on OWH and Making Smiles on Faces Award!

I know a lot of you were skeptical about our ability to make 250 cards in one sitting for Operation Write Home and frankly, I thought it was overly ambitious myself. However, I counted up the completed cards this afternoon and they totaled 241! Wow!!! Granted, they’re not completely finished. We still need to add the liners, stamp the back with the OWH logo, and put them in envelopes, but all in all I think we did great!!! The most important thing—everyone had a great time while supporting a worthy cause. Having said that—I’m taking a break tonight! It’s TV for me—no cardmaking to be had—well, maybe not. LOL!

I’m also excited about something else—I’ve received my first blog badge!!! Of course, it came from my sweet online friend, Lynn! Her one year blog anniversary is tomorrow, so be sure to stop by and see her at Trash to Treasure Art!!

Here’s the badge:

I’m required to tell you five facts about myself and then pass the award on to five more people. OK—let me think of some things you don’t know about me…

Fact 1:  My favorite ice cream flavor is butter pecan

Fact 2:  I could watch old westerns and classic film noir
             on TV 24/7 (while eating butter pecan ice cream)

Fact 3:  At heart I’m a shy person (don’t even think about 
             laughing!!!)

Fact 4:  I can’t even get a date using online dating services

Fact 5:  My favorite clothes are sweats and a flannel shirt
             (maybe that explains the date thing!)

Now I need to pass this badge on to five more people. I pass it on to:

1. Angie
2. Cheryl
3. Pam
4. Roni
5. Sherry

Have a great evening everyone!

Operation Write Home

I finished up the sample cards for the Operation Write Home project we’re doing tomorrow after work, and I’d like to share them with you. When we first started discussing this, we decided to make two birthday cards, two Valentines, and a miss you card. Here’s what I came up with:

Here’s the miss you card. I need to get Cuttlebugging—haven’t cut these panels yet!

The first birthday is the card I'm least satisfied with—it definitely needs something! I think we’ll end up putting the stamped image on pop dots—that should help.

 

On the OWH site, they suggested that birthday cards meant for kids are always welcome, so we kept that in mind. I think this sentiment will also get pop dots. The orange piece has been embossed with a Cuttlebug embossing folder.

Also—if anyone can give me any tips on photographing orange so it looks less like a construction cone, please let me know!!!

Here is a Valentine we’re sending—this is my favorite card (probably because of all the layers!).

Finally, here’s the second Valentine. I think we’ve all been enamored with the SU Fifth Avenue watercolor roses—I hope this isn’t too ambitious for us!

 

I want you to see the inside of this, too. The OWH site had this great idea, and we’re going to use it in all our cards. This is the only card with a sentiment stamped on the inside.

The inner lining of the card is a full sheet of text weight paper that can be unfolded for letter writing. Don’t you love this? Guess I’d better get busy folding and trimming 250 pieces of paper, huh???

Finally, I’d like to share a comment left this morning by Linda:

Kim OWH is a great project! But 250 cards in one hour? Well if you have enough people to help that should be the easy part, the kitting is the crazy part. Hope all goes well and smoothly for you! As a Mom and MIL of military personnel, THANK YOU for taking the time to get the cards ready for them!

Comments like that make all the effort worthwhile—thank you, Linda, and thanks to your family for helping to protect our freedom!

Now I have to get busy finishing up the kits and getting Angie’s blog candy packaged up to be mailed. Have a great Sunday, everybody, and I’ll let you know later in the week how close we got to making 250 cards!

Saturday ramblings…

Well—I just woke up from a two hour nap, and feel quite refreshed! :-)   The card class you’ve been hearing about went pretty well this afternoon. I think everyone enjoyed the projects. We had some experienced folks as well as some first timers—we may have recruited some new stampers and cardmakers! They loved the gift card holder, and came up with some beautiful designs. I wish I had remembered my camera so I could have shared all of them with you!

A big thank you to Angie and Rena for inviting me to help with their class—I had so much fun, and everyone is so nice!! I can’t wait to do it again sometime!

Now I need to move on to the next project—Operation Write Home. We have an organization of women engineers at the place where I work, and they approached me a couple of weeks ago about making cards for the military. I told them about OWH and we decided to start making cards on a recurring basis for this worthwhile group. Monday after work is our inaugural card making session, so I need to finish kitting up all the parts and make sample cards this weekend. We have the very ambitious goal of assembly line producing about 250 cards in an hour or so—wish us luck! I’m going to work on that this evening and tomorrow, and hope to post pics of the sample cards sometime tomorrow.

Also tomorrow—be sure to tune in for the blog candy giveaway! I plan on posting the winner around 8:00 am EST. Good luck!

Quick and easy gift card holder

Tomorrow is the Christmas Card class at Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church with Angie and Rena, and in addition to the Christmas cards I showed you previously we’re going to make a surprise project. It will be a surprise to the ladies, but I decided to give you a sneak preview. Before I get started, please be kind—this is my first tutorial! Actually, it’s a bit of a stretch to call it a tutorial—this is so simple. There are no special techniques involved, and you can easily alter the size to be smaller, larger, or whatever. So—here goes. 
You will need:

• Cardstock
• Patterned paper (scraps work great for this!)
• Embellishments, stamps, and punches of your choice (any or all!)
• Scor-Pal or other scoring tool
• Adhesive 

1. Cut your cardstock to 6” x 10”. Score along the long side at 2” and 6” and fold along the score lines.
2. Apply adhesive to the edges of the 2” section similar to this:
   








3. Fold up the 2” section and adhere. Your gift card holder will look something like this:
   
   






4. Now it’s pretty much done—just decorate and embellish as much or as little as you want. Here’s my finished gift card holder: 

OK—see why I hesitate to even call that a tutorial?? It’s embarrassingly easy! Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and will make some fun gift card holders for those boring gift cards we all give as gifts to someone on our list!

Oh—here’s what I used for my holder:

• Cardstock—Stampin’ Up!
• Patterned Paper—Papertrey Ink
• Flower—Hero Arts
• Stamp—Wordsworth/Rubber Soul
• Lace—clearance bin at JoAnn’s
• Snowflake brad—haven’t a clue…

Please be sure to stop by throughout the weekend. Tomorrow I’ll let you know how the Christmas card class goes, and Sunday I’ll announce the winner of the blog candy! I will post the winning name around 8:00 AM EST (assuming I roll out of bed in time). I’ll also be talking a little bit about Operation Write Home on Sunday, so be sure to come back!
Have a lovely Friday, everyone!

Gaining momentum

Nothing fun to post for you this evening. I just wanted to say a great, big,

Thank You!

to everyone who has stopped by to visit and leave a comment. I’m up to three followers—whoo-hoo!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

I’ve been working on kits for the Christmas card class at Angie and Rena’s church on November 14. I need to get those kits finished up so I can get started on a project for Operation Write Home. Stay tuned for more on that later. I’m ready for bed now, though! Be back later…