God Bless America

First, God has blessed this country with a force of men and women who feel a love and sense of duty to preserve this nation and our way of life. I am so grateful for their commitment.

Second, in case you missed it, Operation Write Home has reached a goal of 1 million cards!  www.operationwritehome.org We just wanted to give a shout out to all the people involved in making cards for

Do you like the card designed above? The card above was completely made by two of our Card Makin' Cuties for  the Fourth of July. They did an excellent job on the design and colors for the up-coming deadline for Fourth of July cards...but  I also think its perfect for other celebrations too. Do you need a cute design for a Fourth of July invitation-- well, here you go and thank Judy and Ellen for their idea.
  "You guys did a great job! Thanks Judy and Ellen!

The next holiday coming up is Father's Day. Here is an example we really liked by our group of card makers.

This card design was just one design we used for "Father's Day." The design uses several different scrap cuts and new paper punches. One of the reasons I like the design is it has a lot of built-in forgiveness. By that I mean, if you mess up the stamp on the "light house" you can remove it and stamp another circle. The over all card is 4.25" X 5.50" as OWH has asked us to make---a good size.

Any part of the card can be repositioned, squared up or replaced before the final card design is finished. Our group, Card Makin' Cuties, likes this style of card very much.
Using the various hues of blue for effect,  light blue, sky blue, medium blue, and a navy chalk pad for edging--- with  gray, as the neutral it impressed us with its look of simplicity. Look closely, the pop comes from the tiny bit of red in the stripe gross-grain ribbon in the design.  Hope you try one of these designs and give us some feed back.
Well, happy card making.  We are  still novice at this, but we love making cards.
Gloria J.

Color choice makes a difference!

Hello! We have deadline coming up for OWH. One deadline is for more masculine cards for Dad--- cards that can be used for birthdays and other celebrations for men. We also will be making Fourth of July cards for celebration.  The design below is one we wouldn't think to use for a Fourth of July card, even though it has a flag in the design. Look again.

 

The print design used above has much cooler colors in it. You can see the gray in the design is very strong and this color may indicate a cool background such as blue or blue gray to off-set the total card design.

Embellishments (like punched-out stars) might be brushed on the edged with a blue gray chalk ink color before we adhere them to the card front design. This might be used as a card for remembrance or for Memorial Day. 

When we design cards, we are expressing something of ourselves within the card. This is one reason hand made cards are so personal.  

I usually sit in my studio experimenting with colors before a whole design is finished, just ready for the next card. I love to look outside watch the birds and the trees now green. Its all the little creatures and their activities that make life so enjoyable.  We, like all God's creatures, make our own homes warm and inviting for friends and family. Likewise, we make our cards with the same spirit of hospitality, for the pure pleasure of enjoying the "free gifts" of life and liberty of expression. 

Operation Write Home is a wonderful way to give our cards away to soldiers in deployed areas who want to reach out to loved ones back home. The soldier can find a card they like that expresses what they want to say and mail these cards back home to family members for a birthday, anniversary, get well, or a special occasion. 

Its with this same spirit of hospitality when I sit in my studio watching the neighbors struggle with their garden, mowing grass, or digging in their yard, I look for subjects of life and colors; earth tones, neutrals and  natural sources of color and simplicity. I work and forget myself, leave my situation behind me and think of the one who might select one of these cards. I realize what motivated our Lord with the passage: "Love thy neighbor as thyself." I serve out of God's love. My only regret is I can't express this feeling to everyone I meet. 

In order to have a ready made selection on hand, I have a little box of  2"X3" of scraps in different colors cut just for this designing purpose. I try several combinations with my print papers before I make a final choice of colors and patterns for the design. Then, by adding on embellishments our design is completed.

A card is a special way to communicate who you are and share how you feel. Always choose to make a card a blessing to someone; one that communicates your freedom for life and your liberty to create a work of beauty.  

I hope you all have a great day making cards for someone you love and care about. 

Gloria J.

Mom's Day: Havin' Fun Together

We're having fun with one of our friends. I think it would be safe to say Ginny is "mom" to more than few women besides her own two lovely daughters. AND... I will also stick my neck out further to say Ginny is beyond 39 years old. ( She's in her early 80's, though you couldn't tell it by her skill level.) She can make cards with the best of 'em. She is a remarkable lady who has given us a new perspective on life and living. 

We make cards to give them to others! This embraces what Ginny is all about---"you can't live if you just sit at home sitting on your hands and doing nothing." This is her philosophy. 

We celebrate role models like you, Ginny, who demonstrate with their own talent and life experiences how to live a joyous,victorious life in spite of life's age traps, adversity, deboggles and disappointments. We've witnessed your smile.

On this Mother's Day, Ginny, have a great day and enjoy your life as we enjoy the pleasure of your company...  you are one of the "Cuties."  You are special and we love you!

Brunch: Wanna have a brunch for Mother's Day? Check out what Julie is serving up on her web blog.Handmade by Julie,www.handmadebyJulie  has a cute card and some tutorials that are fabulous. Click from here to take a peek at what she's doing with her cards. Thanks Julie for the great ideas!

Don't forget to get your cards ready for OWH!

Have fun with friends, celebrate each day with them. They are gifts to each one of us and Sunday is just a day named to celebrate this fact!--- After all, Mom's deserve to be treated with some TLC more than just one day a year. Right? Right!

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.  

Life--Still Learnin'-Thankfully

Life is still a learning curve for me. I am retired and today I just learned how to grab a button.  Thanks due to Julie www.handmadebyjulie, I learned to place this button on the blog. Julie is a blogger I met through Operation Write Home.  She's a wonderful teacher, check out her blog link. She has some great ideas on card making on her site. She's a talented woman. Along with others, the OWH  team, our shippers, Julie helped me (a retiree) gain some confidence about blogging and stamping with Operation Write Home www.operationwritehome.org  (OWH).

My grandchildren have been learning to make cards over Spring Break. It was interesting watching their eyes as they learned about the "Any Hero" cards from the web site. Megan and Ronnie discovered making "AnyHero" Cards are an important part of OWH and supporting our troops.  I listened as they carefully chose the message stamps for the cards they were making. They were aware of the word meanings in this very different context. Soldiers under deployment was a new term for them... so the sentiments stamps and what they wanted to say was important. One of their cards said, "Thank you for our freedom."
I wondered, "what do you think they will remember of their Spring Break? My awful spinach quiche or making cards for heros?"  What do you think?
Once again, I learned something from them, "LIFE" is so very precious!
It's the reason we want to be involved in something emotionally, personally or perhaps financially. We want to matter or as one of the children's cards stated we want to make a difference in this life.
Life is precious all the time, in the happy times, in the busy times, and even in the sad times.  Teaching others about OWH is only one way of expressing our gratitude about life. Today is thankful Thursday. I am thankful for all those, (whether it's family or friends... old friends or new friends), who have shared in the effervescence of life.
               Let me know your thoughts with a comment.