Heart felt Creations

Happy Memorial Day everyone!  A special thank-you to all those who have served in the Armed Forces or have lived through a loved one's deployment into harm's way.  A special heartfelt thank you to those who have lost a service member.  I will never forget those who answered the ultimate call to duty for their country.  It's easy to say "freedom isn't free", its much more difficult to put your life on the line everyday for that belief.  As a disabled veteran myself, I know that the cost of service for our country is often a life-long challenge for the veteran and those they left behind.

I have been busy playing with absolutely wonderful stamps from a new to me company Heartfelt Creations.  They have beautiful floral stamps with a twist - many of their designs have matching dies for cutting.  The blooms either work with an existing Spellbinder's die or they are a Spellbinder's exclusive for the stamps.

I found out last fall my daughter had a tattoo!  I know they are very common, but with five boys as well as Toni, I never thought it would be her.  I decided to do a page about this and used blossom's from Heartfelt to make a feminine feel to the page.

The main papers are from HOTP and they are flocked - I finally decided to use them instead of just "petting" them.  Toni's tattoo is actually the initials for her and her 3 brothers.  She knows they always have her back, so she decided to always have them with her.  I must admit, I cried when she told me why she picked "brat" for a tattoo.

 These are closeups of the flowers.  All are heartfelt with the exception of the 2 small pink ones in the second picture.  They were made from dies by Ecstasy Crafts.  The stamps from Heartfelt are easy to use on DP, vellum or cardstock.  You can layer them as is or as I did with the light blue and purple ones in the second picture, I cut off the back petal from the stamp to get an entirely different look.

These flowers also make wonderful card focals.  Another set is Daffy Daffodils and I made this card from them:

The three daffs on the border are one stamp and what I really appreciate is the stamp of a single daff which you can use for accent.  It isn't easily seen, but I stamped the daff head tone on tone on the yellow DP (DVWV).  I colored the images with Copic markers and foam taped them over the images for some dimension on the card.

All of the stamps are available from Inspired Designs.

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful long weekend.  Here in Maine, we finally have some sunshine!

Operation Write Home Sketch 70

I was lucky enough to be able to help out OWH by making samples for one of Julie's wonderful sketches.  The original OWH post is here.  I had a lot of fun making these samples - by now they have made their way overseas and (hopefully) been sent back home with a note of love by one of our Sailors, Soldiers, Airman or Marines.  Making cards for OWH has become very important to me; I was hoping to be able to send a  box of cards a month, but I am averaging a card a day, so I think my new more realistic goal will be 365 in 2011!

This card was made using K&Company paper.  It's hard to tell in the picture, but the heat embossing was done with Zing! neon orange on purple cardstock.  Sounds funky, I know, but it came out very cute.  I used my Nesties to cut the circle from the card front and to make the scallop.  The flower was made from a punch.

This card was made from HOTP papers using Nesties again for the circles and I folded a large flower in half.
Please, join in on the fun, make some cards using the sketch or not and help our service people keep in touch with home!

Operation Write Home and Father's Day

Seems a little early to be thinking about Father's Day, doesn't it?  But, to get cards to the troops and then back home to their loved ones everything has to be early.  I had just finished filling a box with cards, when I saw this post about not having enough Father's Day cards.  I hadn't made any, thinking they probably had more than they needed, but what do I know? LOL

So the challenge was to make five of the tie cards from the post (a great tutorial by the way!).  I ended up making 12 and because I didn't make it to the post office today, I'll probably add a few more before shipping them tomorrow -  I even gave a few pockets and handkerchiefs.  If you can, whip up a few and send them to the shipper nearest you - they will be much appreciated.

As always, I'd love it if you left some comments!

PaperCutz Challenge #91

Hello everyone!  This week at PaperCutz Challenge we are tasked with making a project for grads using any colors.  I have posted pictures of my son's graduation from college.  To tell you what kind of scrapper I am, I finally did his pre-school graduation a week before his college one.  I've never scrapped in order, I'll go through pictures and find the ones that "speak" to me. Thank goodness for 3-ring albums LOL.

I definitely know the papers came from HOTP, I'm not sure about all the embellishments.  I'm very proud of him; he is now in grad school working on his Master's.

Please play along with us this week!