Pair of Pears!

More fun stuff! I had a good weekend making cards for our soldiers, and writing an article. Here's a pair that I made using Gina K's sketch challenge on Stamp TV:

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 This is old paper. Yes. Basic Grey Nook and Pantry. Remember how popular that set was? And I still have a 6x6 pad. Ha! Hoarder! This also conforms to Gina's color challenge for this week, so if you want to play, you can use Lemon Drop, Creme de Menthe and Red Hot.

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Same sketch here, just a little difference in colors. All the base cardstock is Gina K's pure luxury line, and patterned is Basic Grey.

Thank you for dropping by to see what I've been up to. Have a good week!
~ky

OWH is Important Business

Another set of cards made for our heroes. I just love doing this - it makes my soul soar.

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All the patterned paper is Basic Grey and Cosmo Cricket. The cardstock is Bazzill except for the first card, whose base is Gina K Pure Luxury. Lovely Labels and Inside and Out stamp sets (both by Gina K Designs) were used on both with Memento inks. Lovely Labels are wonderful - they were created to fit perfectly with several of the most popular Spellbinder's Nestabilities Labels dies. LOVE!!♥

These projects, while created for our soldiers, were entered in Gina K Design's Stamp TV challenges. What? You don't know about that place?? You really must visit - it's free to sign up, and everyone there is so gracious and helpful. Gina gives wonderful tips, freebies, and video tutorials. There are challenges you can enter to win stamp sets, and you don't even have to have Gina K stamps to play!

Oh - in case you didn't notice my two big blinkies over on the left... Yeah - those. Just a reminder that you can do something a little bigger, and that I will be joining the Bunny Hop for Operation Write Home. I will be issuing a challenge to my readers on that day, with a prize. Lots of blogs will have prizes, tutorials, challenge, great info - put it on your calendar and hop along! March 5th. Start at Operation Write Home. If you have a blog, you can sign up to join us! You don't have to have a tutorial, prize or challenge, it's easy!

Get your kids, or grandkids, involved in writing letters to heroes - seriously, they LOVE getting mail! Check the Homefront Blog for inspiration, and the Schools and Scouts page for guiding kids wanting to help.

Thanks, for taking the time to visit here.
~ky

Multiplicity

Are you familiar with Operation Write Home? I have a link to them on the sidebar. It's a national movement of crafters making cards. Those cards are collected, sorted and mailed out to military stations with little or no Base Exchange opportunity to purchase cards. The soldiers at those station can pick their choice of cards and have a personalized way to keep in touch with those back home.

Why hand made cards? Don't they have internet video chats, satellite phones and the like? Yes and no. Not every post has access to the things we take for granted. Like you and me, they enjoy putting words on paper. They know the value of handwritten bits of love showing up in the mail box. Cards are more tangible than that video chat. It's tactile.

I traveled to every post to which my Dad was assigned. However, the anti-American sentiment got so bad when we were in the Middle East, families were sent back to the US without their benefactor. We spent 6 long, frightening months hearing about all the attacks on Americans in that area. It was hard not to imagine something had happened to Dad. That short walk to the mailbox each day was our lifeline to him. Mom did get to talk to him about once a week on a crackly phone line with imposed time limits.

She kept every letter we received. We made it through (there were 2 scares when we awaited that military vehicle in the drive to tell us the unthinkable), but those letters... well, they are worth more than gold, even now. We didn't have the luxury of cards. It's just a little bit of love that I can bring to our servicemen and women that might help families back home keep it together until their soldier returns.

If you make cards - share the love. When you make a card, there are almost always left over bits that are the exact opposite of the card you made.

I made this card, and had a card base of green leftover from making the green panel. I also had enough yellow to make a base like the green panel, and enough printed paper to make the triptych.

It only took stamping a second butterfly and the time to adhere it all together to make 2 cards instead of 1. Give it a go - keep one, send one to OWH to make a soldier and their family's day. Or send them both!

Cheers!
~ky

Supplies: Gina K Designs Pure Luxury cardstock, Tim Coffey patterned paper, Versamark and Memento inks, Stampendous embossing powder, Scor-bug, Tim Holtz Sizzix die - Flourishes, Gina K Designs stamp set Hope for Haiti.

Can't Fence Time

No matter what we do. No matter how much we like today, want to stay this age, want to stop our angels from growing up - time is going to keep moving. It's like a conveyor you can neither stop or get off. Things change, apple carts get up-ended, relationships change, hearts break, it's just how it works.

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Change isn't always a bad thing. Time moves us from good to better as well as from bad to worse. We keep the memories, the pictures, the events, the ephemera. It keeps us warm in later life to hold those pieces. This art journal page was created to remind me that Time will not honor a fence, and like the quote says:

"What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it."

So today, I'm announcing that time has brought change to this blog. This blog will continue to exist, and will be devoted to things in my life that fall within creative, but not original, art. In other words, I will post mainly things that I make that utilize someone else's art prominently. Things like stamped cards, combination projects that are more about assemblage. Just as important and fun, these artworks take less of my energy, and contain less of my uniqueness.

I will be working on a new venture, with my own domain that hopefully will combine my several blogging venues into one, neat location. I will be sure to let you know once I get things rolling. In the meantime, keep creating. Keep documenting time in your own unique way, and be sure you're getting a good return on your daily investment!

~ky