Birthdays and other celebrations!

Hello! This has been a wonderful week to make cards before all the outside activities begin. We've had some rain and then we've had more rain. This has added up to a lot of water and no gardening or planting taking place. So while we were inside, we used our time to catch up on a few cards and made these simple and easy cards for children entitled, "Enjoy your Birthday! Our clever card makers designed the front of the card with the stamp, the colored card stock, a print paper layer and the sentiment stamp. Easy enough... and the "wow" factor were the tied buttons. Cute, Judy! This was really clever. I call this simple design... Design 101. Everything is centered on the front of the card. The stamp design is attached to background on card stock,  which graduate in size from the center stamp design to the larger print paper on the card fronts.
Another design, Judy used all primary colors on this card and it looks great.

 The colorful print background gives the card "fun-appeal"--- and who doesn't like a cupcake for their birthday! The "balloons" stamp is printed onto  a white card stock, cut out, small bakery strings are attached to the back of the balloons and then, paper pieced onto the left side of the card front, with the sentiment stamp anchoring down the balloon cluster strings. Judy, Ellen, Ginny, our Card Makin' Cuties, did a great job on these birthday cards for Operation Write Home (OWH),  www.operationwritehome.org which provides hand made cards for our troops to send home to their loved ones.Click onto their link right here.Read more about what they are doing.

With lots of Graduations coming up this May, you might have just enough time to make your own hand made card. Here is another easy pattern to follow.

The idea we wanted to try was a bit different than the typical Graduation cards of black and gold. This design was based on the bright colors of the celebration papers. The lime green in the printed paper is placed along the right side of the card front. The colorful print is added off-side and the punch out scalloped oval is stamped with the sentiment.

 Just A Great Tip: ( thanks to OWH) We saw a need to multi-stamp our design stamp onto a blank sheet of card stock. These prints are colored when we need time fillers, like, waiting in long gas lines, at the doctors, or for children after school. Any time you have a second or two, color them in. Stamping and coloring them when you have a few minutes is a real time saver.
NO EXCUSE. When you need a card in an emergency---cut one of your pre-stamped, pre-colored prints out, attach it to colorful card stock and print backgrounds add the embellishments...and pop it in the mail.

 With Mother's Day, Graduation, Birthdays and more, spring is a wonderful time to be a card maker. I hope you can adapt these easy designs to your own cards. Share your thoughts and ideas too. Let me see what you are doing or leave a comment. What is your best tip? And by all means, show us how you used these tips and ideas.

Cards and Congratulations!

From the studio and onto the blog. Hurray! Look, I finally figured out how to make this leap! And, I want to personally thank you so much, Ellen, for being the photographer. As you can see the pictures we have here are from our March workshop. I am so excited, now, they are on the blog site. I mean this has taken me weeks to figure this step out.
In a way, its a real congratulations to our Card Makin' Cuties         (http://www.cardmakincuties.blogspot.com) and to finally see our work published. As I said, Ellen (one of our cuties) took these shots. These are  just a few of the cards we made at our March session for OWH (www.operationwritehome.org).
Our cards are generally very simple designs because we are so new to this craft. We are still learning how to use many of the materials and tools for this art form. Yet, we fell in love with making cards. As you see from the photos, this is where we begin in our studio with our group hand making each card for our troops through OWH.
The saying I'm thinking of is: "the journey begins one step at a time." In our first group session, we had all our cards made and they were ready to mail out the next day. That morning I went to the studio to get the cards... and I don't know what happened. Maybe it was the moisture in the building, the change of temperature, the glue we had used... or all of the above. The printed paper had pulled away from the card stock and was all curled up.
I sat down and almost cried. What happened to our lovely cards? Only a few remained stuck. I got on my computer thinking surely there was an answer out there. I typed in "glue problem" as a cry for help. We solved the problem at the "card hospital"  by one of our fellow card makers and Operation Write Home.
Who knew glue can get old... or for that matter, that glues have different purposes.
I always thought of glue as glue!  NO!
I watched a tutorial about glues and their purposes. I guess you could say the whole world is not all stuck on one brand as a commercial would indicate.  You may prefer one brand over another but the key to the tutorial is use the brand of glue that works well for the job you are doing.
By agreeing on one brand of glue at our next session, you can see the results in our pictures (shown above). What was that again?..."the journey begins by taking one step at a time." And so it does! We know we are just simple card makers. Just as we know we are new to this whole art form. We hope to keep going forward just as many of you have done.  So let's continue to enjoy the journey we've begun.
Proudly displaying our progress one card at a time!! Gloria J.

Beauty Beneath the Surface

  I came across this picture of my daughter's high school play. These kids had many challenges getting this production off the ground. Yet I know the experience drew them together. Now, if your looking at picture for perfection, it is not particularly a great picture. The composition, lighting, and arrangement of color are all a little off---but its beauty is what it represents. Its a memory, a moment in time for the people in the picture. The beauty is not on the surface, but beneath it.

What the card makers do for Operation Write Home (www.operationwritehome.org) goes way beyond providing their beautiful hand made cards to the organization. Beneath every card mailed to deployed service men and women is someone who cares enough to support them and encourage them to write home. In turn, the soldiers are reaching out and sending a loving thought to someone they care about and love. This circle is completed when a friend or family member open the card and have this tangible moment of being loved. The "Any Hero" cards do the same from the children who make them, to OWH and are placed in the hands of a soldier. The shared love completes the circle.

Other acts of beauty are they unselfish ways our bloggers share some great ideas on  OWH through the blog site link. Terrific designers who have their own blogs to help you get started. Sandy has a TV program on line now and you can up grade your skill-level by just tuning in to the TV show on OWH.  Beneath the surface of this organization doing good, is this selfless effort of love and caring.They are giving themselves, as are many hundreds of card makers all over the states who want to share and encourage our deployed troops.

Directly, beneath the surface is the real, true beauty;
the beauty of sharing time with one another, getting to talk and know others across the country with this same interest and sharing a way to communicate our love for them and our art. Just this week, I was reconnected to one of my own high school friends who knew we were making cards for OWH. We live hundreds of miles apart. Many years had passed between the days we were in high school plays together. As we reconnected I found out she made her own cards, and asked to send them for mailing. What a beautiful gift!  A moment for us to remember those days and make some new days of our own.  Like my daughter's high school play picture, we are friends connected to one another though this experience in our lives and the moment will be remembered!

What thoughts do you have about beauty? or Card making, or friendship? Or looking at our link with OWH? Share them with us.