Popping Up for a Thank You

Yesterday, I mailed off an OWH box with 62 blank greeting cards and 50 Any Hero cards with notes. I'm really excited in the participation I got from the folks at the Shrimp Boil. I was also delighted to find that the younger ones, teenagers on down to 2nd grade were all about writing a note to a soldier.

I seem to be in a "let's try something new" mode here of late. I subscribe to Amazing Paper Grace's blog and the other day, she had a standing pop-up card with a link to the tutorial. Seemed pretty straight forward, and I decided to have a go at it for the Phindy's Place challenge this week. The hard part was finding an image that was more vertical so that I could keep my card to the A2 size. Thankfully, Cat Thank You, filled the bill. The challenge was to use Red, White and Blue. I'm about starred out(after 72 patriotic cards), so I scrounged around in my stash(which is organized for patterns rather than color) and found this red alphabet paper that came in a GIANT package I bought from Sam's about 5 years ago. Using the tutorial I found HERE. I cut the box base out of the red. I "stamped" my image on some GP white cardstock, making him a little taller and leaner(one of my very favorite things about digis is the resizing option). I colored him with Copics using red, white and blue for obvious reasons. I cut out the back-up block out of the same alphabet paper, and backed it with a matching piece. The paper is Light Blue Check from Remember When. I punched the red strip with my my MS double loop punch, and cut the cat out(the hardest part for me). My tab for the top is made with Spellbinder's Label Four. Finished it off with some red and white ribbon. It is of course, going in my next OWH box, I'm just not sure where they're going to write their note.

I love hearing from you and all comments are appreciated.

Good Morning All,

It's a beautiful day here in the Deep South, but looking to be a very hot one with a possibility of some T-storms this afternoon. Won't bother me though as I'll be in TM playing as soon as I get this uploaded and clean up the mess that I created yesterday.

Yesterday was probably one of my all time most productive day. It helps of course that I wasn't using colored images, cards were mass produced, and it only involved cutting and taping. Coloring slows me down considerably.

This first card was made from an image that I colored forever ago. In fact it's one of the first things I ever colored with Copics. I decided to put it into a card and slip it into my OWH card box. I thought it would be perfect for some Dad to send to his little cowboy. We're really into cowboys here, as our grandson is all about being a cowboy, and by definition, according to him at least a real cowboy, is a Garth Brooks singing cowboy. The image is from Precious Moments, and I pretty much let the image be the card. I hand printed the tag and used some twine to tie it all together. Never fear, I have another image all colored up to make my grandson a birthday card, but that will be another day.

Now onto the Any Hero cards. With this first one, I used my MTC program with my Cricut to make and cut the cutout star base. I then printed the "stripes" paper, a freebie, on vellum. The Word Art is from Paulette at Create with TLC. I tried a new technique for me, heat embossing a digital image. I printed the Word Art onto the dried "stripes" paper and embossed as soon as it came out of the printer. My suggestion is to have everything ready to go and RIGHT next to your printer. I trimmed along the stripes and circled around the Word Art and mounted the stripes onto the stars background and that onto a white card base(much easier for writing a note).

Any Hero Card No. 2 for the day, was based on a CAS sketch, where you printed the sentiment straight onto the card base and then added your matted designer paper(mine is from Paper Studio). I created the Word Art myself in PSE and then found this Heart in the MTC gallery. The latest version of MTC lets you save a cut file to a png file, so I imported it and overlaid my Word Art and printed the sentiment off onto my card base. Since things were just a little too white for me, I took my red fine pointed Sharpie and doodled around the outside edge of the front of the card.

Remember that I'm making the AnyHero cards with plans of making the Shrimp Boil guests write a note. Well a lot of the guests are going to be children, so I printed out this free image from the OWH Memorial Day Blog Hop, made it into a card using a sketch that I CASEd from Katie and using scraps from all my other Any Hero cards. I left the image uncolored so the children could do their own colorful interpretation and will take crayons and markers(no not my Copics) for them to use. I wanted this to be something all could participate in and how special will it be for one of our servicemen or women to read a note of thanks from a child. I have 72 blank Any Hero cards just waiting for a message and that's all for this round.

Thanks for stopping in and hope your day is filled with some crafty time.

On a Personal OWH Card Challenge

I was so hot and sapped when we got back from my brother's Sunday night, that a post wasn't on the agenda at all.

Yesterday started off with running errands both at home and in town. The afternoon was mine, and I quickly ensconced myself in TM with some images to color for some OWH cards. I have a lot of cards to get made by the 3rd of July. I'm working on my own personal card challenge. This first card is made from an image called Wonky Coneflower given as a 1400 Follower freebie from Tiddly Inks. Be sure to check out all of her images here. I knew it would be perfect to work up some quick OWH cards for the troops. I colored with Copics and it was a quick coloring. Sentiment is from Bird's Cards. I used the sketch for this weeks OWH Stars and Stamps Challenge Card for this card. Paper is from The Paper Studio.

Since I was on a roll with this sketch, I decided to use it again for some OWH Any Hero cards that I'm working on for the Shrimp Boil. The background paper is from Karen Foster Designs, the star striped paper is a free printable. Both the flag heart image and the sentiment are from Create with TLC .

I know some are wanting to see the inside ofTazMania, so here's a picture of the finished insides without furniture. The floors are red cedar that we bought from a friend with a small sawmill. We had it planed and tongue and grooved. I cut the boards and DH put them down. I finished by applying 8 coats of varnish. I had seen a barn with the loft done at a 45 degree angle, and I loved the look of it. The first picture is a close up of the floor and the right picture is looking toward the door. Walls are bead board sheets that we varnished without staining.

Road Trip

For those of you who know me, those words do not give me a warm and fuzzy. For 10 years I spent about 1/2 of each year travelling and doing corporate training. I was away from home for a week or two weeks at at a time. I learned to dread all things airport, for if it could go wrong, it would if an airport was involved. When I quit work, I was so looking forward to being at home. That lasted about 3 months and for the next 10 months, I traveled by car to Flora, MS(about 155 miles from my house)staying 3 to 4 days each week, helping my older brother care for my mother in her last months. Since her passing, going on long road trips is something I avoid like the plague. A week ago, we drove to Orlando and back, attending a nephew's wedding.


Today, we're driving to Flora and back for a family(this time on my side) barbecue. One of the nephews is home with his family(wife and seven children) and since we don't see them often, we're making the trip. I'll be tired tonight when I get home, but it will be worth it, to see my siblings, my niece and nephews and the great -ieces and -nephews. This nephew is a Marine, and although he has served overseas in some terrible places, I think he's got as difficult or more difficult job now. He's stationed in Wisconsin and is the Marine "presence". What does that mean? He's the military person that gets to tell a spouse or parents that their wife or husband or child has lost his life and won't be coming home . One more reason I have for supporting OWH.



Now let's get to the good stuff. This first card is one I did for this week's Sassy Cheryl's Flower Challenge. The image was a freebie that Cheryl posted a while back. I love this bear with his bouquet of posies. I colored the image with Copics. I obviously had Patriotism and picnics on the brain when I chose colors and papers. The papers are from a Paper Studios Back to Basics mat stack(don't you love those small pieces of paper so there's not much waste) The sketch I used was from the CAS site. The punch is MS Daisy Lace Edge. My flowers are floss flowers made using a needle tatting technique. The tutorial I wrote for making these can be found here. Flower centers are baubles I purchased from Stamping Bella.







This card whipped together fairly quickly, so I also had time to get another 8 OWH Any Hero Cards made for the Shrimp Boil. This one was also made using the CAS sketch for the week. Star paper is also from Paper Studio and from a border pack. The rest of the paper is cardstock I had on hand. I used my Cricut and MTC software to design the layered stars. The punch was of course MS. I'm up to 40 Any Hero cards ready, but will gear up this next week. I also want to do some cards for the troops to send out.



Hope you each have a wonderful and blessed day!

A Tiddly Inks Card and some Any Hero Cards

This weeks Tiddly Inks Challenge was to do a Robot card. No problem, since there just happen to be some adorable robot images at the Tiddly Inks Shop. I chose Roboto with his really neat square balloons. This was a simple card to put together since I used robot papers that I had on hand. I don't remember who made them, but I do know that I colored the image with Copics, and the sentiment was created in WORD. Here's the Luv Bot.

As I said in my first post, my real reason for starting this blog is to show my support of OWH. I'm working on Any Hero cards for family members to write in at our Annual Around the 4th of July Shrimp(if there are any) Boil this year. Here's the latest set of Any Hero cards, I've finished.

Thanks for visiting and come back to see the progress on TazMania in the days ahead. I appreciate each of you for taking time out of you busy day to stop by for a look see.