Stampers Best - Logo Stamp Set

(Welcome, Skippers! Did you come from Pam's Place?)

 The Birthday Bash continues for Operation Write Home this week with some goodies from Stampers Best! Wow, they have a whole truck load of stamps for OWH and donate $1.00 per each set sold to us... isn't that awesome!? I bet that you will see lots of their focal point stamps along your hop today, but I'm here today to show you another side of things! (Does this surprise you? No, it should not.) :)

My favorite set from Stamper's Best is this one:

The Logos Rubber Stamp Set for $8.99

When first the name changed from "Cards for Heroes" to "Operation Write Home", we all got the free little red rubber stamps for the backs of our cards! You can read up on the history here, if you want. It's a fun story. You can also still, thanks to Stampers Best, get one of those freebie stamps here! If you haven't done this yet, and you participate with us, please, make this important step! Stamping the backs of your cards to label them clearly as coming from Operation Write Home is such an important finishing touch. If your cards arrive to your shipper already stamped, it is such a huge help!

Now then, about that freebie. My very first freebie stamp remains to be the one and only stamp in my collection that I have almost lovingly used to death. I use it so often that I have given it a little place of honor. I'll share that with you later. My freebie stamp was used so much that I decided to supplement it with the Logos set from SB. I have always been so glad that I did! It's fun to have a little variety and options for my card backs. These are all cards that I have shown here on my blog in the recent months. You've already seen their pretty faces. Now it is time for me to show you a little behind the scenes? Are you ready, cards?

Aboooooout... face!!

(There are lots of them, so I made them small. You can click them to zoom in if you like.)

The logo stamps in this set are slightly larger than the freebie stamp. I like this, and I love that the little "Thank you for your service" message is included. It's such a nice touch.

Sometimes, especially with my patriotic cards, I like to get a little bit fancy and color my stamps with markers, to make the logo in red and blue. 

Here you can see two cards made on a kraft base. Stamping the backs of these can be done with a dark colored ink, or, you can use the label method. I bought a sheet of label paper - the kind that you might put through a printer - and stamped several logos onto it and cut them out. I keep these on hand for labeling the backs of dark colored cards, so that our OWH logo is still very easy to see!

This is another card made on a dark base. This card is more formal and elegant on the front, rather than cutesey and fun. I used gold embossing powder to stamp the logo on the back of this one. Now isn't that fancy?

The stamp set includes two little stamps that say simply, "OWH" instead of the whole title, "Operation Write Home." When using these ones, it is best to also include the circle part that says, "Thank you for your service - operationwritehome.org" That way, there is no confusion over what the "OWH" stands for. I do love that this part includes the URL, so that the sender, or recipient of this card can easily look us up and see what we are all about!

Now then, as for my old freebie, I gave it a place of honor. I picked up a self-inking stamp at the office supply store and mounted it carefully inside. It comes in real handy when I have multiple cards to stamp after a card party. If you love this idea, you might like to know that you can order your favorite logo stamps this way too, over at StampXpress. They are more expensive to order them individually this way. For my needs, Stampers Best was the way to go, because I love the variety of looks that I can get for the backs of my cards with this one, great set. 

Hey, thanks for stopping by today to see my favorite set - and thanks to Stampers Best for their awesome support of Operation Write Home!

Your next skip stop is Beth's Place, so hop on over to BunnyScrap and see what she's got for you today!

(Or, you can start at the beginning of this blog skip, over at Stars & Stamps.)

Unity Stamp Co. / OWH Blog Skip

Hello everyone.. I'm so excited to be skipping along in today's Unity Stamp Company event with Operation Write Home! If you would like to start at the beginning and see all of today's beautiful creations, you can do that over at the Stars & Stamps blog.

If you came here from Lee Mae's blog, you are hopping along in the correct direction! Hooray!

I'll keep it short and share this Any Hero card that I made with my Unity Stamps!

My inspiration comes from a project that I did many years ago. When A.J's dad came home from Operation Desert Storm and finished his service with the Marines, he showed me a collection of dog tags that he was keeping in a cardboard box. It included his own tags, his uncle's tags from Vietnam, his fathers' tags from the Navy and even a set from his grandfather's service in WWII. What a treasure... I had fun trying to create a shadowbox with them.

Here is my "shadowbox" inspired card:

Here's how:

• I cut three papers - two wood grain pattern papers at 4.25 x 5.5" and one red at 4 x 5.25"
• I used one of the wood grain papers as a base and mounted the red layer on top of this.
• I used an oval die to cut the "window" out of the other wood grain paper.
• Using the frame, I centered  it onto the red cardstock and traced a light line so that I would know exactly where to stamp the tags.
• I stamped the tags onto the red paper using VersaMark and some silver embossing powder.
• I stamped the tags with VersaMark again onto some grey paper and embossed with clear embossing powder. I fussy-cut these and added them over the copy on the red paper.
• I embossed the top "frame" paper using an embossing folder by SU and gave it a little extra dimension by distressing lightly with some chocolate colored ink.
• Finally, I mounted the frame to the top, using "The Precious" dimensional tape to give it the shadow box feel. I added the ribbon last, because it just seemed to need something more.

I think that the wood grain paper gave this card a nice masculine feel, and I hope that one of our heroes enjoys this card! I'll leave you with a little close-up so that you can see the dimension better.

Much gratitude goes to Unity Stamp Co. and to OWH for allowing me to participate in the skip this week, it's always so much fun! Thanks for stopping by!

Now hop along over to Ronni's Spot and see what she has for you next!