Cards for Soldiers that took me almost a year to make.....

Cards for Soldiers June 2022

 This is the latest batch of cards I sent to Cards for Soldiers in June:

Cards for Soldiers May 2021

 It's been awhile since I've gotten a full box of cards made.  The Wuhan virus hasn't hit our family but seems like I really can't get moving to make the cards.

Cards for Soldiers November 2019

Some of the more than 500 cards I managed to make since February...

Cards for Soldiers

Since Operation Write Home ceased to exist, I've been looking for another similar organization.  I found one!  It's called Cards for Soldiers which is on Facebook.  They send about 20 large boxes of cards just about every day to troops overseas.   I also included a handful of miscellaneous pens which have somehow ended up not being used for some years around here.  Here's the first box of almost 500 cards I was able to make over the past several months:

Fin-tastic Secret Pen Pal Card

I believe I may have done a similar card previously....what can I tell you, I'm running outta ideas!!!  The inside says, "to one 'fin-tastic' kid!!!"

2015 Christmas Cards

 These cards were made from unfinished kits which a friend who had been a Stampin' Up demonstrator gave me because she was moving out of state and needed to clean out her stash.  Thanks, Donna!

In all, I made 131 cards, not counting the ones for the hospitalized children.  The middle top card is the one I made the most of before I ran out of supplies to make the 131 I figured I needed.  The Christmas tree is clip art I found by Googling 'Christmas Tree'.  The ornaments are from stamps I own.

December 2015 Secret Pen Pal Card

Instead of a Christmas card for the hospitalized children, I try to make winter themed cards.  The inside says, "Let it snow!!!  We want to make SNOWMEN!!!"

I'm Hooked on You

For August Secret Pen Pal cards, I copied this one from one I saw on Pinterest.  The big fish was one I found by googling 'cartoon fish'.  I cut them out and placed them on woggles, then added the little fish and other seaweed from sticker sheets I found at either Walmart or Dollar Tree.  The hook is a reverse 'J' cut on the Cricut out of silver cardstock. I added a piece of tan sewing thread as the fishing line.  The inside says, "You're a great catch!"

National Hug-A-Monster Day 2015

Ok, so I created my own national holiday...
The monster was printed from one I found on Pinterest which I cut out by hand then added a woggle; the dots are holographic from Sticko by eksuccess.

The inside of the card says, "I'll hug one if you will!".

Operation Write Home

This past week, I received the news that OWH is going out of business because the majority of the troops will be home before the end of this year.  On one hand I'm sad I'll no longer have a place to send hundreds of cards every few months and that is really being selfish.  On the other hand, I'm really ecstatic our troops will no longer be involved in trying to bring peace to countries that absolutely do not want it because of religious differences.

May 2015 Secret Pen Pal Cards for KIds

This was an easy card to make.  After printing out the front and inside message, I drew the stems with a Marvy LePlume II in a darker shade than the card  stock.  The white was daubed onto the card using a 1/4 inch stencil dauber dipped in acrylic paint then lightly applied.  The hardest part was waiting for the paint to dry.

Secret Pen Pal Card for March 2015

When I started making the cards for March, I realized it was taking me far longer than I had allowed time for in order to have them ready by March 1 for delivery to the hospital.  (Those I'll complete and send for April.)  So I set them aside and made up these.  The leprechaun is on a woggle so he will "dance" when handled.  The inside of the cards says, "I could dance a jig when I think of you!!!"

Valentine's Day Cards for Kids 2015

This card was really quick as I used three strips of different patterned washi tape and one strip of duct tape I found at Dollar Tree a week ago.  The foam hearts were part of a package of different sized white, pink, and red ones also at Dollar Tree.  I wrote "U & Me" on the hearts, mounted them on woggles I made and slipped them into envelopes....really, really quick and easy.  Hardest part was taping the woggles to the cards..

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Card

This is a card I copied from one on Pinterest to take to the pediatric ward in the local hospital. Using the Cricut and SCAL software, I picked the font from my computer's file and made a stencil to color in the word, "Cowabunga" out of cardstock.  I used wiggly eyes and dimensionals to pop the faces.  The inside says, "Hey, dude! Isn't it time for a pizza"

2014 Festival of Trees Christmas Cards

After several false starts to make my Christmas cards,  beginning with:

I stamped a sheet of card stock with one of the tree stamps from Stampin' Ups Festival of Trees set using their Garden Green ink pad, scanned it into my computer and printed out enough for 150 cards.  I hand cut out all the trees and then used a gold metallic gel pen to color all the balls on the trees.

The next step was to use the star stamp from that set to stamp strips of card stock using a metallic gold ink pad...which did NOT show up as being gold.  Oh, the stamp was gold, my fingers were gold, but the image on the card stock was definitely NOT gold!  The fix for that was to  use a gold metallic gel pen to color each and every one of those 150 stars.  After hours of coloring and then cutting out about twenty of them, I realized I could have used some gold metallic card stock and the Cricut.  I spent probably an hour getting the stars sized at 1/2 inch and lined up on the screen then had the machine cut them out.  Once cut, I realized they were NOT the same style star as what the screen showed - the top point was taller than the other four points.

After using up the peel-and-stick sentiments on 25 of the  dry embossed  snowflakes on the card fronts, I stamped the sentiment then dry embossed the snowflakes on the next 125 fronts.   I cut pieces of plain white card stock at 1.5 inches by 4 inches to wrap the ribbon around and tie with a knot.  I cut the grosgrain ribbon at nine inches and started tying knots.  When I went to Walmart to get more spools of 3/8 inch Christmas green ribbon, I found not one spool.  In fact, the whole ribbon section was a colossal mess.  The few spools of green ribbon I managed to locate were mossy or pea green or way too wide.  So it was back to my ribbon stash to see what other green ribbons I have on  hand.

 I found some half-inch organdy ribbon so I cut lengths and proceeded to use up all that ribbon.

After that ran out, I decided to just go with the gold ribbon (which is what I should have used from the beginning, except I wanted an all green and white card except for the 'balls' and stars on the trees).  **I've tried to change this sentence to be black and not underlines without success.**

(I just counted the finished cards to discover that somehow I actually made 140 cards and I don't know where the other ten went!)

December 2014 Cards for Kids

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 This is this December's card for the sick children in the hospital.  I put the gingerbread boy on a woggle I made, and embossed the card front with snowflakes after I printed the sentiment.

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 After printing out these cards (I made the mistake of printing them as two on a 5x7 image instead of the way I had done them last year as two on a 3x5 image) and cutting them out, I split them into groups of four for each card.  I made a pocket for the inside of the card to put them in.  The inside of the card said, "Pick a card and do what it says!" and "love from your Secret Pen Pal."

November 2014 Secret Pen Pal Card

This month's card is a copy of one I found on Pinterest a couple weeks ago.  The inside says, "And always number ONE with ME!"
After making these cards for the kids in the local hospital once a month and sending kids' cards to Operation Write Home the past few years, I'm about out of ideas and afraid I'm going to have to duplicate the cards.  That's not a happy thought.

The Apple of Someone's Eye

This card was very easy to make:  I have had this dried corn paper for some years, the apple was part of a stack of die cuts I bought at a thrift store for a quarter, the sticker is from a sheet of stickers I found in the classroom/teacher section of Dollar Tree.  I traced the stem and the leaf then cut them out and glued them onto the die cut.  The inside of this card says, "You are the Grade A, #1 apple of someone's eye".

September Secret Pen Pal Cards

The cards for the kids in July are gone; I didn't take a photo of one.  We had just returned from our two-month RV trip to Oregon a week prior and I guess I was out of snyc.

I had made a similar card using yellow and white figured paper, inked the edges, and gave to our granddaughter for her birthday with the appropriate sentiment.