To a Classic Father

Hi, everyone!

It's good to be back on line. Caught some kind of bug that had me down for a couple of days. But, I'm happy to report that I'm getting twitchy about spending so much time on the couch. Guess that means I'm getting back to my old self! Even made it out to a store today!  :)

I'm still busy making dad cards for Operation Write Home. As you can imagine, lots of our deployed heroes want to send cards to dad around Father's Day.

Stampin' Up! espresso card base
Core'dinations chocolate lover and Recollections black cardstock
Stampin' Up! Guy Greetings and Banner Blast stamps (in Distress Ink black soot)
Tim Holtz Simon Says Stamp stencil (in DI walnut stain)
inking in DI vintage photo; Really Reasonable Ribbon ribbon

When I think of the men in my life -- hubby, dad, and dad-in-law -- I see conservative, stoic, no-nonsense guys. I kind of think many of our troops' dads are the same kind of guys. So, I'm going with lots of Earth tones and no-frill designs for these "macho" men. But, I'm making some special backgrounds and using some gorgeous ribbons! For this background, I:

• did some second-generation stamping of a tool image,
• stamped a star image between tool images,
• lightly stenciled a dot pattern (in Distress Ink walnut stain) in open, non-stamped images, and
• applied (DI vintage photo) ink around the card and along the distressed edges.

Love, love, love the way these techniques turned a plain cream piece of cardstock into a one-of-a-kind piece of designer paper!  Perfect for all those macho dads.  :)

I'm going to be linking this card up to:

• the current Male Room challenge to create your own background paper,
• the current monthly Work-it-Wednesday challenge on the Simon Says Stamp blog,
• the current Anything Goes! challenge on the Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge blog, and
• the current Anything Goes challenge on the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge blog.

Parting Thoughts

A new OWH Sketch Challenge goes live tomorrow. And, the March Words 2 Scrap By challenge posts on Sunday. Hope you will be able to play along.

Have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping and happy scrappin'!

30 Things I Love About You

Hi, everyone.

Tomorrow is a special day for our hubby, me, and our family. It marks my Dad's 80th birthday, our nephew's 13th birthday, and our 30th wedding anniversary. I posted Dad's card in an earlier post entitled Look, Dad. And, I will post my nephew's card in a later post. Today's post is for hubby.

The "card" shown below was one of our Tim Holtz CREATE projects. After choosing the wedding photo for the front cover, I decided to make this hubby's card. My thanks to CREATE amiga Sue for the card's theme: 30 Things I Love About You.  So, upon returning to home, I completed the card, including making the 30-things-tags that comprise the interior contents.  :)

Front cover -- completed during class

Interior Left and Center Flaps -- with tags peeking through
Decoration started in class, finished at home

30-Things Tags -- cut, stenciled, and written at home

You'll notice the tags are arranged in a random order. Even the numbering is rather random, with the longest "things" appearing in the back section and the shorter "things" appearing in the front. When I realized that the text was going to affect the placement, I stenciled numbers in a random order and then taped them in place -- in a little more linear arrangement than Tim probably would have chosen.  :)

Think hubby will be a little puzzled  by a vintage photo of an unknown bride and groom at the puzzle. Then again, he heard how the CREATE projects were like nothing I'd ever done before. 

Parting Thoughts

Here's hoping for another 30 wonderful years.

Thanks for stopping and happy scrappin'!