Independence Day Weekend!

Hello everyone, Happy 4th of July weekend! I can’t think of a better way to spend my day. (Well, camping would be nice, but is not in the cards for me this weekend, with my broken knee!) Not in the cards! Hahaha! Whee!

There is a fantastic event going on over at the Stars & Stamps forum for Operation Write Home today and tomorrow. . . every couple of hours there will be a challenge and different blogs to visit. It looks like each blog will give a project to do. You can participate in as many or as few as you want. There are going to be prizes and fun things along the way.

For example, the first challenge is up and running at Brenda’s Stamping Corner. . . Her challenge is to make cards using camouflage. It just so happens that I had some scraps of camo paper in my “patriotic” stash – I love these patterned papers by Karen Foster Designs!

I will be posting photos and links all day for the card challenges I am able to participate in. I hope to do a lot. . . For my first two I chose to make “Any Hero” cards – so these will be completed with a short letter of thanks to a random service person. Soon, these little home made cards from Idaho will be half-way around the world, in the hands of one of our deployed heroes. I can’t think of a greater way to spend the 4th than by thanking our troops for what they do for us every day. Without them, we wouldn’t even have our freedoms to celebrate!

So check back again for my other weekend projects, and thank you for stopping by! Have a safe and happy holiday, everyone.

Challenge at Brenda’s Stamping Corner – use of camouflage. These “Any Hero” cards will go to a random service member, so I kept them clean and simple.

For the Challenge at 2 Paw Prints! This card had to have a fish bowl. Oh my gosh! It's like a treasure hunt! Do I have a fish bowl??? Let's thank my little digi-image by Dustin Pike. I also used my cuttlebug embossing folder with the swiss dot pattern, a random scrap of orange and yellow ribbon and some acrylic beads for the bubbles. . . and I colored with Kirsten's Copics - she says it's my weekend for visitation with the markers. . . yay!

I do not believe I would have otherwise been inspired to use the combination of colors challenged by Tanya over at Tinkerin In Ink. . . I will definitely have to participate in more color challenges in the future - I found this to be both challenging and fun! BG patterned paper is positively ancient DCWV and the rose stamp is Rosy Regards from Close To My Heart.

(Insert brief intermission for an afternoon nap!)

Over at Our Little Inspirations we are invited to make a card describing what freedom means to us. So here, I tried something new. I have never used a photograph on a card for the troops before, but when I think of freedom, I think of this beautiful country that we live in. Here is the view from my back yard. Well, it's a little further than that. Only 45 minutes from our house, is the country that I love best. It's where my ancestors lived, it's where my family has vacationed for generations, it's where I will take my grandkids some day, and it's where my ashes will go when I die. . . and we are free to live and love in it because of our heroes, past and present. I thought that maybe a random hero might enjoy this photo of "home" . . . maybe one of them will recognize this beautiful place.

Here is something vintage for Holley over at Holley's Hobbies. . again I do not think that I would have otherwise been inspired to go for the vintage look today, but these challenges are really fun, and I am having a good time using up some of my old stash!

This is getting tricky. . . over at Petunia's Paper Passion we have been asked to make a card with a moon on it. She has a beautiful woodsy card, with a wolf howling at a night sky. Try as I might, I could not locate a stamp, patterned paper, or die cut of a moon. So I took things into my own hands and created this "Get Well" card with some cute medical brads, a silly sentiment, and a hand doodled original image. . . after 20 years of patient care, do you really think that my mind goes anywhere else when I think of the word, "moon?" Seriously.

I learned something from Marti at the Essence of Paper today. . . there is a name for that kind of patterned paper or a sentiment with just words on it of a coordinating theme. . . it's called Subway Art and I have some cute camping Subway Art paper in my stash! I decided to use mine as a cute background. This entire card is Imaginisce. I don't yet have all of this "Happy Camper" line of goodies, but oh yes, they will be mine!

Here's my last one for Saturday - Scrappily Ever After's challenge is to make a card using, or inspired by this photo. I had so much fun using a photo on a card earlier in the day, I decided to give it another go.I printed the photo on a plain cardstock paper and then added it to the card along with an "America" stamp by CTMH. I blinged up the flowers by adding stickles and outlined the letters with a clear star gel pen and added some red white and blue bling - this card is very sparkly - the photo doesn't do it much justice.

That is all for Saturday's cards! Please stay tuned for Sunday. . . and thank you all for stopping by - I have had the most fun ever hopping and creating with all of you today!