Tagging along with FMS #256

Good morning, crafty friends!

Another week, another challenge from Freshly Made Sketches.

This sketch features a large fish-tail tag.  

I made two cards following the sketch and am leaning towards the second, pink one. What do you think?
Both cards feature new stamps and dies from  Stamp of Approval collections, Candy Cane Lane and Lovely Notes (wreath).

I heat-embossed the Lovely wreath in white on vellum, as I didn't want to lose the detail on the patterned tag. The pine cones and greeting are embossed on copper powder from WOW.

For this card, I reversed the plain and patterned paper and created a swag using the stamps from the Candy Cane Collection Beautiful Boughs. The JOY die is from the same collection. Less busy and better balance, I think.

How is your Christmas card stash coming along?  Make sure to check out the details on the Caring Hearts Card Drive HERE or HERE, and get crafty!

Caroline

The DAY we've all been waiting for!

Good morning, crafty peeps!

How awesome is today?  

World Card-making Day, celebrating the kindness and creativity reflected in our hobby.

As I scan through my blog feed, I'm seeing several blog hops commemorating the occasion with very worthy causes. Check out HERE and HERE.

Today also appropriately marks the kick-off for The Caring Hearts Drive 2016.

I'm attaching details from Vera Yates' post. There's lots to read, so grab a beverage, sit back and read on...

2016 marks the 7th year for our annual Caring Hearts Card Drive. Its purpose is to collect hand-made holiday greeting cards for the elderly living in nursing homes. The card drive was begun in 2010, to honor Vera's mom's request. That first year,  750 cards were collected; each year since, the drive has grown. Last year, over 22,000 cards were received and distributed to 96 nursing homes in the States, 15 in Australia, 16 in Canada. The drive creators, Vera Yates and Jennifer McGuire, are excited to continue bringing holiday cheer. This year, the drive is branching out to the United Kingdom. 

The holidays are about family, kindness, and joy. During this time of year, many elderly nursing-home residents can feel lonely, missing their families. What better way to bring a smile to their faces & brighten their holiday season, than by sharing our love of card making? A simple gesture letting them know that they are not forgotten, that someone still thinks of them. We all love making cards and what’s better than knowing that our creations have brought a smile? 

 Here's how to participate:  - 

• The card drive runs from October 1 to November 25, 2016.  Your cards need to be received by November 25, 2015, so plan accordingly when sending them in.
•  Please make the cards for Christmas or Holiday Wishes. (For those sending cards within Canada, French sentiments are appreciated, too.) Anyone can send a card, your children, church groups, scout troops, etc. 
• All cards must have a message inside (it can be stamped or hand written) from the sender. Please sign your name and include where you are from. Part of the fun for the recipients is receiving cards from different part of the country and the world!
• Please include an envelope for each card and please don't seal the envelope.  
• Cards should be standard size (A2 or 4-1/4" x 5-1/2") as this helps in packing them more efficiently.
• Please don't use any pins (for safety reason). Glitter and glitz on the other hand, most welcome!

• This next is totally optional, but if you'd like to include $1 or $2 to help with shipping, it is much appreciated. We cover the shipping costs ourselves, without sponsorship, so any donation toward shipping helps tremendously. Some card-makers send stamps vs dollars through the mail. 
• Please send cards to the collection address nearest you.

• For the USA, you can mail the cards to: 
• Vera Yates, 1314 Roy St., Houston, TX 77007 
•  Tina Schrof , 185 W. Pugh Drive, Springboro, OH 45066 
• Lynn Reloza, 3353 Cimmarron Road, Cameron Park, CA 95682  

• For Australia: 
• Linda Langes, c/o Gilston State School, 588 Worongary Road, GILSTON QLD 4211, Australia 
• Deb McCleary, PO Box 213, Heidelberg, VIC 3084, Australia  

• For Canada: 
• Caroline Bredeson, 7 Brown Street, Ottawa, ON K1S 1L9, Canada 
• Rita Andrews, 28 West Gissing Rd, Cochrane, Alberta T4C 1L6, Canada  

• For UK/Europe: 
• Taheerah Atchia, 36 Pinewood Crescent,Orrell, Wigan, Lancashire, WN5 8NF, United Kingdom 

• In each package, PLEASE include THIS SUBMISSION FORM. This helps us in keeping track for prizes! That's right, to thank you for your generosity in sending in cards, various paper-crafting companies have donated prizes. Each card you send, enters you into a draw for a chance to win a gift. And there are many to be won :) So the more cards you send, the better your chances.  
•  To help us promote the card drive, whenever you're sharing your projects for Caring Hearts on social media, please use the hashtag #caringheartscarddrive. This drive represents part of the creators' wider goal to spread kindness and make it a trend.
• The nursing homes that we support are based on those people suggest to us. If you would like your local nursing home to receive cards from the card drive, please email Vera or Jennifer, providing the names of the nursing homes and the number of residents, so we can make sure that we send enough cards. Each year, the number of nursing homes we can support is based on the number of cards received.  
•  The prize list will be updated as more prizes come in. And huge thank you to all the fabulous, generous companies who support this card drive by donating awesome prizes.  See the complete list on Vera's blog.
• A new feature this year is a Caring Hearts Card Drive stamp set! The generous people at Sugar Pea Designs have created a whole line of goodies to help spread kindness.  20% of all sales from this collection will be donated to the Alzheimer's Association. There is a blog hop to introduce the set, with yet more prizes up for grabs. Check it out on Vera's blog HERE.

I conclude this LONG post with a few Christmas cards to get the ideas flowing. I hope to share some cards made with the Caring Hearts collection in the next few days.

 More Dazzle stickers and Simon Says greeting die, in French.

 Stamps and paper from Close to My Heart; dies from Penny Black and Paper Wishes; greeting die, Ellen Hutson.

 More Paper Wishes products.

Decorating the inside of the card adds to the fun!

Have a blast crafting today!

Caroline

Merry...Wednesday :)

Happy hump-day, crafty peeps!

Just three more sleeps until World Card-Making Day!

Which is also the launch of this year's Caring Hearts Card Drive.  More details on that on Saturday.

In the meantime, I'm adding to the Christmas card stash, playing along with this week's Merry Monday challenge:

using the non-traditional colours of dark & light pink and grey or silver.

I used a cut-away card design I say on Stamp Nation's latest blog hop, by  Ingrid Blackburn.

A portion of the card is cut-away, and the top and bottom parts are connected by some silvery snowflakes.  The pink watercolour dot paper is from the new Close to My Heart Whimsy Fundamentals paper pack. I thought it looked like softly falling pink snow! The card base is Raspberry cardstock. Snow flake dies by My Favorite Things.

Inside message appropriately sparkly, from Winter Greetings stamp set by Lil'Inker Designs.

Still lots of time to link up with the Merry Monday Challenge #215! 

See you there,

Caroline

FMS #255

Post #2 for today.

It's been quite awhile since I played along with any challenges. 

I used this week's Freshly Made Sketch #255, to consume some more supplies for ever-growing stack of Christmas cards.

The big rectangle in the sketch seemed perfect for some festive plaid paper (old SU), and I've been wanting to play with those cute little gingerbread people (Lil' Inker Designs) for quite some time. Adding a little Copic marker around the edge of the kraft paper made them nice and "crispy."

Finding a font which would fit between the parts of the sentiment (also LID, currently on sale!)) was tricky. The word JOY was cut with an old set of Sizzix alphabet dies. Their wonky angles inspired the cart-wheeling gingerbread men.
There's still a few hours to play along with FMS this week!
Caroline

Supplies:
All cardstock: Close to My Heart
Patterned Paper: Stampin' Up
Die and stamp set: Lil' Inker Designs
Liquid Pearls, Wink of Stella Pen, Versamark & white embossing powder, Copic markers 

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Hello crafty peeps!
It's been a long while since I shared anything, although I have done some scrap-booking, card-making and sewing in the past few months, along with a lot of browsing of internet crafting blogs... Just no time to photograph and write about my own creations.
But all that is about to change, because the advent of fall means that a cause near and dear to my heart is about to begin again.

The Caring Hearts Card Drive is about to start its seventh year :) 

This "sharing of kindness" was begun by Vera Wirianta Yates in Texas. She began sending hand-made Christmas cards to nursing home residents, to brighten their holiday season. Many cards (22,000 in 2015), volunteers and years later, the movement has spread from the US to Canada, Australia, and now through the UK, to Europe.
The drive begins officially October 1st (also World Card-Making Day!) and runs through November 25th.  I will be sharing sneak peeks of cards I've been working on leading up to the launch next weekend. I will also share the complete list of details on how to participate. You are welcome to make cards, as well as to help in their distribution.

I like to start the Christmas card-making season by clearing up my desk and using up supplies (yup, not allowed to buy anything new until I've made a couple dozen cards with the goodies on hand).
This year I began with a partly-used kit from 2010 by Paper Wishes.  One of their specialty items is a line of stickers called Dazzles. You might think, they don't look like TOO much on the sticker sheet, but once you begin backing them with patterned paper, colouring them in with Copics or Distress inks, altering them with embossing powder or alcohol inks, they look AWESOME! I feel every holiday card needs a little sparkle, and the foiling on Dazzles does just that.
Here's a couple of examples from that kit:

See what I mean by creating a scene, colouring in the Dazzles, and adding some extra glitz with sequins, Liquid Pearls and Stickles?

 The snowflake holographic paper from Paper Wishes sets off those snow-peeps perfectly. And check out the (craft-foam) "snow," for some tactile fun.

Off to do some Sunday stuff; stayed tuned for more on the Caring Hearts Card Drive.

Caroline

Playing with Atlantic Hearts

Good morning crafty peeps!

Missing in action again for MONTHS, but happily, I received an invitation from Michelle Stewart to join with other alumni of the Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge.

So I am posting for Sketch #156 .

I used the  paperpack Regatta and stamp set with coordinating Thin-cut dies, all from Close to My Heart, to make a sweet nautical-themed card. I heat-embossed the anchor die-cut with metallic silver.

The message inside says, "you are my anchor". Another quick card for hubby's suitcase when he travels to Vancouver later this week.
Short and sweet; I hope to get to some more paper-crafting this weekend.

In the meantime, swing on over to Atlantic Hearts and see the other entries. Then try your hand at this week's sketch!

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Happy & Fabulous in 2016

Big smooches to you, my fabulous crafty friends!

My first posting of the New Year. It's been a busy month so far. My job as a speech-language pathologist ended just before Christmas, but this semester, I'm teaching a course on stuttering. I was a last-minute replacement, so I've been scrambling to get the materials ready.

But I couldn't resist this week's sketch from Freshly Made Sketches.

Cindy's original design was for a gate-fold card, so I decided to go with that to create invitations to my neighbours and sisters for a ladies' pampering evening later this month.

Here's my version:

And here's what the card looks like as it opens up.

I used an older Stampin' Up set with FABULOUS images to create the right-side design, repeatedly stamping the lipstick image in subtle CTMH Slate ink,

I coloured one of the images for the inside, using Copic markers.

The smooch is a Lil'Inker Designs stamp, inked in CTMH Pomegranate, and embossed with clear shiny powder for some shine. The sentiment stamps are LID, as well.

Hope your New Year is off to a FABULOUS start.

Stay crafty,

Caroline