Amour

Once I have my Christmas cards done, it's time to turn my thoughts to Valentine's Day.  For those of you from Stampin' Buds who are new to my world, I am a huge fan of Operation Write Home.  Their mission is to send hand made cards to deployed soldiers--it's like Hallmark in a box.  When my husband was deployed, I received several cards and it really was a highlight for me.

This month I will be working with the Heartstrings paper pack just released in the new CTMH Seasonal Expressions catalog. Today, I'm pairing it with the Amour Occasions stamp set (which you'll be seeing more of later, I guarantee it!).  This stamp set is $17.95, but you can get it for only $10 with the December CTMH "Deal of the Decade" promotion celebrating ten years of acrylic stamps.  Be sure to read this post for all the details.

My first card is very basic.

I am a huge fan of top panels which measure 4 x 5.25 because it allows me to staple, tape, sew, poke, etc. and then mount over top of a "clean" (as in not stapled, taped, sewed, or poked) card base. It also works really well with 12 x 12 paper because I can get three cards from one 12 x 1.5 inch strips.

My second card uses the sketch from this week's Mojo Monday.

To make use of my 4 x 1.5 inch strip, I adjusted the background and texture paper a bit. My original plan wasn't to do the double stamping of "Amour", but the Lagoon ink didn't show up strong enough, so I offset the black ink second stamping a bit and I love how it turned out so much that I did it...

...on my third card.

This card makes use of an older Mojo Monday sketch.  I love how it turned out, mostly because I was worried about mixing my Gold Polka Dot Washi Tape with the cooler colors of the Heartstings paper. I counted on the design principal of using a color at least twice on any project because it makes the color look intentional. I think it worked and gave this card a very vintage feel.

Here's a quick look at how I made the fringe.  I simply laid down a layer of  adhesive, zig-zagged the twine over top, then snipped and frayed the exposed ends.

I am IN LOVE with this new thick twine, but you will need to use foam mounting tape with it.

As you can see from this detail picture, the two different paper patterns all came from that one 12 x 1.5 inch strip.  I could get 8 rows of 1.5 inch strips from a 12 x 12 piece of paper, each cut into 3, for a total of 24 cards.  I'm nothing if not cheap...uh, I mean, frugal.  Yeah, let's go with frugal.

Before I send these to Operation Write Home, I will dot the glittery puffy stickers with a little Liquid Glass to seal in the glitter.  OWH has a few rules to ensure the safety of our deployed soldiers, and one of them is "NO GLITTER!"  Those of you who have worked with glitter know how it gets on everything.  We don't want any on a soldier's uniform who then goes out for a raid and sparkles through the enemy's night vision goggles.

As we are in the season of giving, I hope you will take time to visit OWH and figure out a way to be involved.

Let's spread some Amour!

Until next time,
Becca

Amour	Heartstrings Paper Packet	Pixie Extra Thick Twine	Stuck on You Puffies	Piercing & Embossing Tool Kit
Lagoon Exclusive Inks� Stamp Pad	Slate Exclusive Inks� Stamp Pad	Black Exclusive Inks Stamp Pad	Gold Polka-Dot Washi Tape	Bling Gems Gold Assortment
Liquid Glass	Surecut� Deluxe Craft Paper Trimmer	3L® E-Z Dots® Adhesive	3-D Foam Tape	Sponge Daubers
Non-Stick Micro-Tip Scissors	1" X 3 1/2" My Acrylix® Block	2" X 2" My Acrylix® Block	2" X 3 1/2" My Acrylix® Block

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