A sad note for OWH cardmakers

Somebody happened to get a card from Operation Write Home and they recognised the photo and knew the photographer, and they mentioned it to Sandy. They weren't mad it was one of those co-incidences (what are the odds?!) but it got Sandy into a flap about copyright. She decided that cardmakers are not allowed to use any recognisable source material for their cards. No photographs unless you took them yourself, and even then they're discouraged. No recycled images from books, cards, magazines, or any other printed material you may find, pick up, or get in the mail. And she didn't mention it but this is even more important so far as I'm concerned - NO RANDOMLY DOWNLOADED IMAGES FROM THE INTERNET.

If you put something onto a card you have to have made it yourself, photographed it yourself, drawn or painted it yourself... been specifically granted the copyright by the person who did, or made it using materials that were specifically sold for crafting purposes.

This has upset a lot of cardmakers who like to make recycled cards... It upset me too. If you glance back over my posted cards you'll see a lot of them use images that are recycled from those cute little gift books that turn up in the thrift store looking brand new five years after somebody gave them to you. Nobody ever really wants to buy them - if you're going to give someone one of those gifts you'll want it to be new - so I'd snap them up, cut them up, and make them into cards. They were great because they were almost always the right size for the cards and they have lots of sweet sentiments on them, and you got a lot more bang for your buck than buying specific crafting stuff. I've got a box of cut-up gift books that I won't be able to use now. I also pulled photos from tourist/travel brochures, junk mail, and christmas catalogs if the paper was thick enough to withstand gluing without disintegrating. Most of my christmas cards are made by recycling old ones because they're too nice to throw away, and they're free. I'd only made a few so far but I was gearing up to pull out last years' christmas box and start recycling cards... and now they're all useless.:(

So what CAN you use aside from stamps (which not everyone has skill with, and which can be very expensive to purchase...) I use stamps sometimes. But I'm lousy at colouring and I don't have the money for the ubiquitous copics, so I'm reverting back to my old standby for adding instant colour to cards - stickers. And I'll probably be using my punches more... I've got yards of patterned paper to play with. I got a stack of photo stickers from Ross yesterday. And I'm not going to force myself to make christmas cards that I don't want to make... I'm using my new photo stickers to make birthday cards instead. I almost never make them because I'm rushing from holiday to holiday trying to meet the mailing deadlines. Valentines Day is coming up next... and of course there are my punches and my Cricut. I just have to get motivated enough to remember to pull them out and use them.

How did I go two whole weeks without making an entry? I made a bunch of cards but they never made it as far as my blog... last week I was making cards for our local cat rescue group 'Beyond Nine'. I sent them a package of 55 assorted greeting cards to use for fund-raising. Here are some of the ones I made for them. Most of these use recycled images from gift books or advertising materials.

Recycled Cards and OWH

I packaged up my 'Any Time' cards for OWH and got them off in the mail on Tuesday, which was pretty much the last day to get them there before the contest closes on the tenth! I thought I'd made tons but when I started counting them there were only 36... It's not worth sending a priority envelope unless there are at least 50 cards in there, so I sat down and whipped up a dozen quick notecards using recycled images to fill up the envelope. The photo ones came from a Florida tourist brochure that had full-page colour photos on one side of the pages, and the art ones are made from a 'friendship' gift book I bought to use for card-making. The sentiments were all pre-stamped because John was building my new computer and I couldn't use the desk OR the dining room table - I sat on the bed surrounded by supplies and glued up the cards there! 

365 Cards 49-52

Last night I was so tired I went to bed at ten o'clock... which of course led to my being wide awake at three in the morning. After staring at the ceiling for awhile, I got up and started work on the cards.

Day 49 - Super Sketchy Sunday.

I made a straightforward flower card to use up some of the silk flowers in my stash. There's a wide ribbon in there but you can't see much of it! The card background was gently direct-inked on a large stamp pad.

Day 50 - Digging Deep.
Find three things in your stash -
1) An item that is more than a year old
2) Something that you were given that you have never used - this could be from a swap or a gift, but it has to have come from someone else.
3) Something you forgot you had.

I rummaged through my 'miscellaneous' embellishment box to make this card. I bought the red box about four years ago at the Dollar Tree. The mini playing card was given to me so long ago I'd forgotten it was there... and the cherry brads were a gift last year. (the bank notes came from Party City...)
I was going to make the sentiment something about 'never gambling on love' or love being a 'sure bet' but I wasn't thinking quite clearly enough at 3am to finalise it.

Day 51- Tuesday's Trio.
Use at least one of each of the following 3 items:
Alpha Sticker - Stamp - Red
This one was very straightforward. I shadow-stamped the background (ink the stamp and stamp on plain paper before stamping the card, and repeat...) A pretty floral ribbon (I'm trying to use some of my stash now it's out where I can see it!), a rubon, and assorted stickers. I've got tons of lettering but it's all random letters at this point, so it's a good thing I like the 'ransom note' look.

Day 52 - Save the Date

There is very little (I'd pretty much say NO) demand for Save the Date cards for Operation Write Home and I don't need any myself... so I stretched the terms a little and made a card that COULD be 'save the date' or it could be for a more general announcement. The picture is recycled from a gift book and I handwrote the sentiment.

New cards from old (books)

I picked up a couple of cute little 'gift' books on the weekend at a second-hand book sale - you know the kind... little books about the size of a greeting card with pretty pictures and sentiments in them. They're intended for you to give somebody instead of a greeting card, but if you cut them apart the individual pages make lovely cards. All they need is a little selective trimming and a bit of embellishment and you've got a stack of beautiful cards with very little work required.

The hardest part of making them is deciding which side of the page is more appropriate to use, because you can only use 50% of the contents - the other side of the page is glued down! 
Last night I sat down and made some of them up into simple, colourful, cheerful cards for Operation Write Home. I hope they make the recipients smile as much as I did making them.

How many cards can I make in 90 minutes?

This many! This morning I finished off making some cards for our churches' card ministry before I went to service. I gave Birdie 38 cards in all, but here are the ones I made this morning.

Is anybody interested in this thing?

I didn't make any cards today, but here's a pair I made a few days ago. I used pictures from an advertising brochure and some ink. The poodle is cut on an angle because it had price balloons in either corner, but I think it makes it look more interesting! I'm wondering when my hand is going to get better so I can go back to making cards properly instead of improvising all the time!

Cards from scraps and stamps

Today's mission was to see how many partially-assembled cards I could get finished off... I pottered around remounting card fronts and adding sentiments etc. Which brings me to these four - I started to make fridge magnets for Christmas presents but I never glued magnets onto them. I found the stash today and I decided that they'd make cute cards, or at least the non-Christmas-themed ones would!

The pink background is a scrap of bazzill that I'd punched some flowers from. The 'You and me' stamp is my favourite Heidi Grace line and the hearts are Scrappy Cat. The roses were unmounted.
I cut the magnet squares from used cereal boxes and covered them with patterned paper and recycled greeting card images.

The stamps on the left are Heidi Grace. Isn't that corner stamp elegant? It reminds me of Art Nouveau (sp?) My mother had a lovely sideboard with carving very similar to this. I mixed things up a bit for the second card. I used a card background from my ever-dwindling stash... and since I had to use light cardstock for the sentiment, I nested the words on jigsaw pieces.

I'm pretty pleased with this last card. The green background was already stamped and there was a slight flaw in the ivy, so I covered it with a ribbon... then I added a sentiment and a cute wateringcan stamp from my stash. I finished it with a 3D punched flower that's been in my stash forever, with a gem in the middle for bling, and I drew in the rain with a marker - because if it never rained on our gardens, the flowers would never bloom!