Graphics by Fran, card by printer...

There's a very special post on the Stars and Stamps blog today - beautiful art cards by a very special lady. Fran doesn't use stamps or clipart or patterned papers - she draws and colours every one of her cards by hand, and they're amazing! And because she's so special, she gave us some digital art to play with, as long as we're using it for OWH. There are four different clips, so if you don't like the fishy, there are plenty of other choices.

Anyone who's read my blog knows I'm not fond of colouring. Sandy's examples are totally awesome, but I couldn't possibly do justice to Fran's designs if I tried to colour them in myself (you really don't want to see what I did to the poor fishy I tried to draw scales on by hand...) Luckily I don't have to try. I cheated! lol There's another solution that works really well for simple designs with fairly large pieces - I paper-pieced them! NOTE - paper-piecing wouldn't work well on Fran's other images because they're too detailed and you'd go barmy trying to cut and reassemble all those fiddly little bits, so I chose the fishy by default. Besides, he's CUTE!

So how do you do paper-piece a piece of clipart? Easy peasy! I printed the art out on four different coloured sheets of paper, and then I cut out the bits I wanted and assembled them on top of the blue background. I had to cut the yellow fish right out of the sheet to get the fins and lips, so I used the other parts on a second card - this time I just glued the yellow on top of the white sheet and coloured in the background with a pale blue marker. There's still enough bits left to do a purple fish with lavender lettering, but two was enough to give you the idea.

It's bloghop time!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend to you all...

This entry is part of the Operation Write Home Memorial Day Weekend Bloghop. If you are following the hop in order you should have come to this blog from Christy's 'Wonderfully Complex Designs'. If you've come from some place else, you're welcome to join the hop - there are well over 100 blogs signed up, so there's plenty of beautiful cards to admire, ideas to be gained, and blog candy to be won. The official start of the hop it at http://www.owhstarsandstamps.org but it's a big circle so you can pick it up from here and not miss out on anything.

Speaking of blog candy... Last time we had a blog-hop I asked people to do a challenge - but I didn't realise that when you have 100+ blogs to get through in a weekend you really don't have the time to follow up on them all! My challenge was too complicated for the time-frame available, and my blog candy was unclaimed. So this time I'll make it easy for you. I have not one but two small patriotic grab bags of goodies to give away, so there are two things you can do to win - 1) Follow my blog. And 2) Leave me a comment on this entry. Don't forget to include your blog/website/email etc so I can get in touch with you some way if you're a winner.
If you do both you get two shots. On Tuesday I'll draw some lucky numbers from a hat and two people get an envy. Now that's not too hard, is it? :)

Your prize will contain various goodies to make beautiful patriotic cards, and they'd make great Any Hero Cards for Operation Write Home. OWH always needs notes and cards of encouragement to include in the shipping boxes... The message doesn't have to be fancy and complicated - just from the heart like these little ditties I created (feel free to borrow/adapt them to your needs).

Dear Hero

this I pray

God bless you

every day

 (OR God keep you

Safe today)

*****

To our Heroes

Thank you for your courage

Thank you for your dedication

Thank you for your willingness to serve

Thank you for your strength

Thank you from America

My other gift to you is is a sheet that I created to print patriotic cards. I made the frames from scratch in photoshop and added free graphics I found online. It was made to print on a standard sheet of paper. Just print it out, cut it into four and mount the images on a plain card and voila.

And in case you don't like the whole sheet, here's a single frame with a blank center you can use to make your own card from scratch.

When you're done with my entry, your next stop on the hop is Katlyn's 'Splashing with Joy. She's new to OWH so make her feel welcome - and she has a lovely free graphic to share.

Stamphaven Blog Banners

I post a lot to the Stamphaven board... it's for stamping cardmakers and other stamp-artists, and a lot of the people there support Operation Write Home (which was how I found the board in the first place!) The stamphaven logo is a rectangle and it didn't translate to my blog very well... so I disassembled it and made some square versions. There are lots of cool tools and tips on Obsidian Dawn Resources, including the Scroll Brush I used to decorate my banner (yes, it's exactly the same scroll that was originally used - I was thrilled to find it on google!) 

Here is the original rectangular banner...

And here are my blog versions... As you can see, one uses the central (blank) part of the orginal banner for a background, one uses another misty winter scene that ends up generally pale and un-tree-like, and the last uses plain black and white... feel free to make use of any of them to link back to Stamphaven!

 

Oops, I missed a day! Digital Card

I made four cards yesterday... but I forgot to come and post them! Oops! I'll have to make two posts today to make up for it.

The card I'll share with you is an all-digital card. It took about three times as long as making a card out of paper, even WITH one hand! All the graphics except the brads and sentiment are downloads from the Scrapbookbytes website. I made the brads myself. I did digital scrapping for awhile years ago and I downloaded every freebie I could get my paws on!
This is the digital image but I also printed it out and glued it onto a card base so that it can actually be used for OWH.
PS. I went to the site to see if it was still operating five years later... it is, and my personal gallery is still there! For a real touch of nostaligia, visit my Digital Scrapbooking Gallery. I warn you I wasn't very good at it...

More Hanukkah cards

I used assorted bits and pieces from my collection for these cards... the greetings were mostly printed out on my computer, and the menorahs are clipart from http://free-bitsela.com/ a website devoted to providing free Jewish clipart for all occasions. They have some really cute graphics there!.

Time for something different - Hanukkah cards

I'm feeling burned out with making Christmas cards, and Fabre put out a special request for Hanukkah cards for Operation Write Home, so I dragged out all the blue, silver and light purple card-making stuff I could find in my collection and whipped some up last night. I used some of my general 'happy holidays' type stamps, and I printed out some Hanukkah greetings on the inkjet printer. These cards were mostly decorated/stamped with a Sky Blue 'brilliance' ink pad - these are gorgeous metallic inks that don't rub off or smear once they're dry. Somebody gave me the light blue pad as a present, and I've hardly ever found good ways to use it! I got the snowflake and star diecuts from the craft store in a little 'hanukkah pack' and everything else is bits and pieces from my collection.

Without further ado, here are my cards... sorry the flash has washed out the glitter, but it's very dark out there this morning! I've got lots more stuff to play with too, so more cards will be coming. :) Please leave me a comment and tell me if these look appropriately 'hanukkahy' to you.. I'm not Jewish and I want to send in cards that are appropriate...