Great Impressions Blog Hop

Well, Hello!

I'm welcoming visitors for the Operation Write Home / Great Impressions blog hop today! If you would like to start at the beginning of this little hop, you can do that over at Stars & Stamps! If you have come here from Mary Anne's Blog, you are right on track! Isn't it a beautiful day for a hop?

Today I am sharing a card made for OWH using one of our cute new Great Impressions fundraiser sets. I'll be following this OWH sketch #227:

In addition to the adorable Great Impressions - Home and Sentiments set, I used some cute paper by We R Memory Keepers, a Spellbinders die and some die cut / punched stars. I colored with Copic markers and used some Liquid Glass on the cute hearts and windows:

Here's a little close-up detail if you would like:

I really love this adorable little set and it is so nice for them to donate 20% back to OWH. Many thanks to Ms. Deone for letting me participate in this today and to Great Impressions for teaming up with us. These stamps have such wonderful detail and they stick so nicely to your acrylic blocks. The letters in the sentiment are a nice font that stamp out very crisply - and what great sentiments for OWH cards!  I really enjoyed working with them!

Click here to get one!

I love this little set so much that I used it this week for my card featuring "ribbon" for my local card-making group. So here is an example of the card using the other adorable sentiment:

 Now hop along over to Carolyn's place to see what she has in store for you!

Thanks for stopping by!

Labor Day Weekend VCMP!

Welcome everyone! I'm so excited to be participating in the Operation Write Home, Labor Day Weekend Virtual Card Making Party! Woohoo! If this is your first VCMP, let me just tell you how much fun you are about to have! Every few hours, another link will be posted over at the starting place on the Stars & Stamps blog. You can visit each stop and play along by making a card to go along with the challenge on that page. Are you ready for your first challenge? Go!

My challenge is to make a winter or Christmas themed card for OWH following  a sketch! My card turned out to be Christmassy, because of the papers and sentiment that I picked, but you could definitely do this with a general winter theme by using any wintery themed papers or colors that you desire! Here is the sketch for you to follow:

I made this one up because it was such a good opportunity to use up my last little bits of some of my favorite papers. The 1" squares were done with a punch, although cutting 1" squares could also be done with any trimmer. (I must thank Paula for her awesome photo shopping skills and helping me with the sketch today! Thanks, Paula!!!) Here is my card:

Running the mat with the inchies and white cardstock through an embossing folder was kind of an afterthought, but I do like how it turned out, with just a little bit of added dimension.

Here are a few more tips if you are going to try this!

Inchies are best when punched or cut from paper with small patterns.

When assembling the card, start by placing the inchie at the top center onto your card first! Then place the other inchies around it, to complete the pattern.

Don't get hung up on the inchie squares... I think that it would also be fun to use other inch-sized shapes to complete a similar pattern... maybe some hexagons or even some snowflakes! 

Maybe some of your stops along the VCMP will include a little bit of incentive! As for me, I will be picking one of the InLinkz participants at random to receive a little blog candy. I've got an adorable, brand new acrylic snowflake stamp that needs a new home. Isn't he cute?

Single Snowflake by CTMH

Can't wait to see what you all come up with! Play along by adding your card below and thank you so much for stopping by!