Sketch Challenge #106

Hello, cardmakers! Y'all are really bringing the beautiful each week with your sketch cards! I love visiting your blogs and galleries and seeing your take on the sketch. I hope you all visit each other and leave some encouragement - you might find a blog or two you want to follow while you're doing it!

This week's sketch challenge is slightly different in that our sample maker Sybrina also created the sketch itself! Thanks so much, Sybrina, I enjoyed having the week off, lol!



Here are Sybrina's beautiful samples. To see more of her work and to leave her some love, please check out her blog, Scrapping With Purpose. My favorite here is the big star - it's an AnyHero card, too!







What will you put in the big circle? A stamped image? A large sentiment? Or will you use a circle at all - maybe some other shape? Be sure and come back here to link up and show us!

To play along in this week's sketch challenge, simply upload a project using this week's sketch to your blog or online gallery then leave the link to that entry using the Inlinkz widget at the bottom of this post. And remember, you may use this sketch at any time. Feel free to re-post the sketch on your blog along with your card… then come back and leave a link for us so we may all see your cards!

We encourage everyone to take a few moments to visit and leave comments for the other participants. Comments are a wonderful way to say thank you for sharing your creative project and inspires everyone to create.

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Featured Cardmaker, Lisa H., Rockport, MA

Happy Friday Everyone! I'm excited to be able to introduce you all to Lisa, this week's featured cardmaker. Lisa participates in lots of challenges and blogs over at The Purple Place where you can see more of her great work. I visit her on a regular basis and particularly like that she always has cards that show a variety of styles. So say hello to Lisa here in the comments section and  take a few minutes to check out her blog for even more inspiration!

How long have you been stamping?

I started in February of 2007, almost four years.

Do you have a craft room or specific area where you stamp/craft? 

Yes, I now have a wonderful craft room, which is where I spend the majority of my time. After craft supplies started to take over our upstairs den, we simply moved out that furniture, moved in my computer and headed to IKEA to buy bookcases, drawer units and a large craft desk.  It took us a few months to put it all together, but it was well worth all the time and I am very thankful to have it.

What are your favorite stamp/craft products?

I have too many favorites to be honest.   With so many wonderful products on the market, it's very hard to pick one.  I love them ALL and now have a wonderful collection of products to work with.   It's very hard to pick one favorite, but I can say that I've fast become a HUGE fan of all the Hero Arts products.  I was so impressed that they worked together with OWH to develop the new OWH stamp sets, which I love.    I also really love their stamp designs, as well as their papers and card stock.   I also love to color and Copics are by far my favorite markers.  I've already pre-ordered the brand new color collection, that is due out in February. 

 Do you have a favorite technique?

I like a variety of techniques and enjoy taking classes to learn more.  I've taken several technique classes at my LSS and also online with Jennifer McGuire, Kristina Werner and Suzanne Dean.   These ladies are three of my favorite desingers, but there are many more I admire and follow.

Are there colors you love to include on your cards?

Purple, Purple and Purple.  It's my favorite color and inspired the name of my blog - ThePurplePlace.

How did you hear about Operation Write Home?

I saw the OWH logo on craft blogs and had wondered what it was about.  Right about that time, I met Jan Hunnicutt in an online craft group and asked her what I needed to do to start donating cards.   Jan eagerly answered my questions and sent me links to the main site and also the Stars and Stamps Blog.

What motivates you to make cards for our heroes? 

The Heroes are my inspiration and I simply love to create.

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OWHtv: Episode 42 Hero on my Wrist, Studio Calico

This is the last show for a little bit...next week Sandy will be at CHA, and the week after will be out on the high seas! Hopefully the show will be back Feb 16, but that'll depend on post-travel recovery :)

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GlitterFREE Bling

 Thanks for a great challenge last week, your color challenge cards were beautiful! 

Our challenge theme this week is Glitterfree bling!  We challenge you to make cards that have bling without using glitter for our heroes to send home to their family and friends!  We can’t wait to see your card creations! 

Our sample card maker this week is Cara!  To see more of her awesome creations please visit her blog Crafting Adventures.

Thank you Cara for sharing your awesome creativity with us!

To play along in this week's challenge, simply upload a project using this week's challenge to your blog or online gallery then leave a direct link to your project using the Inlinkz widget at the bottom of this post.  And remember, you may use this challenge at any time.  Feel free to re-post the challenge on your blog along with your card… then come back and leave a link for us so we may all see your cards!

We encourage everyone to take a few moments to visit and leave comments for the other participants.  Comments are a wonderful way to say thank you for sharing your creative project and inspires everyone to create. 

Thanks for stopping by and hope you join in the fun!

To play along this week, please enter your name, URL and email address in the link below then press next step and select the photo of your creative project.  An icon will appear on the blog featuring the photo you selected.  If the photo doesn’t appear right away, don’t worry, it will after the page has been refreshed.

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A 5 minute bonus tutorial

Sandy here....I've had some random things I wanted to get out there, and had five minutes at the end of lunch hour to write them down for you!

Annual Review:
Interested in telling people just how much OWH has accomplished in the last year? Check out our Annual Review, and share it with your friends! Maybe they'll be encouraged to join us. http://operationwritehome.org/ar2011.html

Tutorials: 
We're trying tutorials every other week rather than every week this year...we hope this might help more people have time to join in and try them out! Of course this week it's a bonus list of random things from me, so this one's just filling an empty spot :) :) :)

1. To search old tutorials, scroll down in the right hand sidebar to Tags, and click Tutorials - that will pull up all tutorials in one spot. 
2. OR click here, where I already did #1 for you. :) 
3. OR if you prefer a listing that tells you what level the tutorials are (101 = easy, 301 = advanced, etc), go to our website under the FREE section, and we have a Cardmaking Resources page with a list of convenient links! Right here: Click.
4. We have the BEST cardmaking glossary I've ever seen on the web! Check it out here!

Blog circle:

To have your blog listed, you need to be a regular OWHer - so if we go visit your blog, you should have badges posted, or talk about OWH in some of your last couple posts at least. (We don't have room to list the entire internet in our circle!) Any one of our OWH blog team can add your link to our list, so leave a comment on a post - or you can email sandy@operationwritehome.org.

Email list:

Oh you didn't know we had one? We do! We send out a mostly-monthly email newsletter in the first few days of each month. Go here to get hookedup: http://operationwritehome.org/email.html

If you thought you were on the list but haven't gotten our enewsletters - check your spam folder, and also add sandy@operationwritehome.org to your address book. In February we'll have a special enews with a survey that we would love your input on - so please be sure you sign up for the email!

Subscribe:

You can subscribe by email to our blogs! Wayyy convenient. Our posts come to YOU, so about 12-24 hours after we post something, you get an email in your inbox. Just put your email in the Subscribe by email box in the sidebar of any of our blogs. (Note that we cannot remove you from those lists if you change your mind; look at the bottom of the email to change your subscriptions.)

Sketches:

Our sketches are available as one big pdf! And Kathryn made us a cool pdf to check off when we've tackled each sketch...pretty awesome!

I think that's it for my punchlist of things to share...hope you learned something new! :)

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Sketch Challenge #105

Hello cardmakers! Are you staying warm? Make some coffee, warm up those crafting fingers, and join us for a sketch challenge today! OWH needs some great cards!

Here's the sketch...



Our sample cards today were made by the awesome Allison G of Allison's Creations. She had a neat idea for her samples: the first card follows the sketch exactly, and the second card uses the same materials but "kicks it up a notch." What a great way to show how a sketch can be a jumping off point for our creativity! And the cards are so cute! Thanks so much, Allison!





How would you kick it up a notch? Be sure and come back here to link up your blog post or online gallery so we can all see! Let's get busy!

To play along in this week's sketch challenge, simply upload a project using this week's sketch to your blog or online gallery then leave the link to that entry using the Inlinkz widget at the bottom of this post. And remember, you may use this sketch at any time. Feel free to re-post the sketch on your blog along with your card… then come back and leave a link for us so we may all see your cards!

We encourage everyone to take a few moments to visit and leave comments for the other participants. Comments are a wonderful way to say thank you for sharing your creative project and inspires everyone to create.

Read more...

The vlog...and a little more info

Hi everybody! Fortunately I did get power back - so I'm back to normal temperatures :)
Charity Wings voting link - http://tinyurl.com/7xmwsjo

And a little more about the low card count for this month:
I do know that I had said a while back that we may be facing less contacts, since those serving in Iraq were scheduled to come home. My direction was to scale back a little - mostly those who set giant goals to make thousands, ease up a little and focus on quality cards and not only quantity. Our expectation was that we'd have fewer contacts, however, nobody was more surprised than me that we have more contacts on our list right now than we did last January. Who'd a thunk it? Our waiting list stands at 18, some waiting since mid-December; we typically cover them within at least a month of signup date, and always try for 2 weeks, but haven't been able to this year.

Through November and December, there was a small drop in cards, which was expected, and totally fine - but usually things start to pick up up more in January when the holidays wear off. Not so this year! I checked just this morning and we're at 9,633 cards as of today...which is a fraction of what normally would be coming in - to compare, last January saw 39,665 cards! 

The "goals" posted on our homepage each month are roughly based on the last year as well as current info on contacts on our list...I thought 34,000 seemed like a low, reasonable goal, but it's proving to be out of our reach for this month. We always feel like we're not getting enough in January, but that's often because we have extra heroes on our list who signed up during the holidays, and by March or so things even out a bit. So some of this is expected, but not at this level. Typically December through February we stretch the time between restocking units to 7-8 weeks rather than the usual 5-6.

What's the reason for the slowdown? It could be a number of things, here are some things I'm thinking it might be:

• A lot of folks took my fall email to mean they can stop making cards entirely, or slow down to 2 shipments a year from their normal 6. I had hoped they'd slow down by maybe 10-20%, not quite that drastic of a cut! 
• Some people think all wars are over and all troops are home. They didn't catch the part that we're still fighting in Afghanistan....though the loss of six Marines should hopefully catch their attention.
• The economy is still hurting us! Ack! I can't wait til things are back on track. 
• Santa didn't provide enough inspiring goodies in our stockings?
• The eggnog hangover hasn't worn off yet.

So what does OWH do now? Here's the plan:

1. First, we'll be stretching the time between restocking each of our units a little further. It could be 8-10 weeks until we get back on track. 
2. Second, we're reaching out to more new cardmakers. CHA will be great exposure to get us in front of a lot of folks who don't know us yet. And PTI's podcast will feature OWH this weekend, and that should help too!
3. Third, let's all get the word out to our crafty friends! Be sure to post on your blog about our heroes' needs. Make sure that folks know we're still in operation.

One more REALLY important thing!!!Keep on making GREAT cards. I don't want this shortfall in January to lead to boxloads of sneeze cards just because everyone panics. That's not what will help us. Don't beg non-cardmakers to jump in and help, just because of a shortage now....cards that we cannot send will not help us fill boxes. We simply need all our regular crafters to go back to making cards for our heroes, at their normal pace....if we all do just our part, then the burden of both time and treasure is shared among everyone, and we'll be able to meet our heroes' needs without panic.

And a final PS: As of next weekend, I'm gone to CHA for a week, and then for another week on the cruise - but my mail is being taken care of by my housesitter. Kris will be on the cruise, and her hubby is bringing in the mail. NEITHER of us will be doing reports and recording packages, so please don't expect a receipt or email acknowledgement til we get back and our feet are under us again, and that could take til Feb 18th or so. We'll have one giant Thankful Thursday and Mailroom Monday report when all the data is in.


Caro is around and will be continuing shipping as normal  - and she and our board will be keeping an eye on you ladies on Facebook! Ha! Our blog team will be all over the S&S blog, too, so no shenanigans, ya hear? *grin*


Got more questions? Leave them in a comment and I'll answer as I can!
-Sandy

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