Heads Up! Craft Show Saturday (or Sunday)

Melissa Fulgham and I will be vendors at the Angola By The Bay Women’s Club  35th Annual Arts and Crafts Fair this Saturday, July 17th. The fair is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the grounds of the Angola By The Bay community. The rain date is Sunday, July 18. We are one of more than 70 talented crafters from four states who will be exhibiting. Angola By The Bay is on Angola Road one half mile east of Route 24 between Lewes and Millsboro. For more information, call 945-2700. We hope to see you there.

Heart2Heart Challenge 2 -- 1-2-3

Our Heart2Heart Challenge this time was to use ONE stamp, TWO print papers and THREE embellishments. Since it's time for our ministry to send some handmade cards to Operation Welcome Home Maryland, I thought this might be a good project fit. I used CLOSE TO MY HEART's Olive Cardstock and two B&T papers from IT'S A GUY THING. I finished it off with three Colonial White (I think) medium-sized brads and voila! My Hero card . . . actually, it's one of six Hero cards.

Cardmakers can support our troops

When my husband and I arrived at BWI at 11:30 this morning to pick up our daughter who was returning from Kyrgyzstan, I never expected to stumble across a way for cardmakers and scrapbookers to support our troops. Since our daughter's flight was delayed another two hours or so, we were invited to help put together goodie bags for the returning troops (see the bag in my daughter's left hand). It was filled with a water bottle, a home-made thank you card, two pieces of candy, a protein bar and peanut butter crackers. Leslie's "card" was made by a little girl named Alicia who thanked her for her part in keeping the war from coming to us. When I asked volunteer Larry W. Shipley  if they could use any more cards, he said, "yes, we're running low." Today, they were meeting 430 returning military servicemen and women. Another volunteer told me that last year they greeted 42,088 returning heroes and sheroes.

I can't tell you how much seeing this picture of my daughter in body armor and carrying an M-16 gave me pause to stop and think. She's an equestrian, working on her master's degree in finance, and enjoyed doing little girl things when she was a child. I tried to rationalize, thinking that maybe she was holding someone else's weapon for the sake of the photo. So I asked her if the M-16 she had in the photo was hers:

"Of course, Mom," she said. "I was in a hot spot. We had to wear the body armor and carry the weapons. We all had to qualify on them too. It was a pain in the neck carrying them around when you're trying to do your job. I was glad when I could get rid of it."

Yeah, these are our children, doing their best to keep the war on terror away from our shores. And these wonderful volunteers at Operation Welcome Home Maryland pause a moment and give our returning military members a sincere "thank you."

If you're interested in sending thank you cards (I didn't see envelopes with the ones we placed into the goodie bags) to our returning service members, you can mail them to:

Operation Welcome Home Maryland
Attn: Larry Shipley
46 Carroll Street
Westminster, MD 21157

Thanks for your support.

50-Card Christmas Workshop

When I saw these cards on one of the Close To My Heart (CTMH) bulletin boards and realized that you could make 50 cards from half a level 2 paper pack, I knew this was an incredible holiday workshop. Unlike the one I saw, I've added a few extra elements to the project. Instead of two basic stamp sets, I used four. Instead of 4" x 5.5" cards, I purchased quality card bases at 4.5" x 5.5 inches. So I created a "ribbon" effect by adding a half-inch strip and crimping it. In the first set of four cards you see, I used CTMH's Angel Sent cards featuring for sweet cherubs (A1099). Visit my website at http://dianecook.myctmy.com for more art. I'll be posting more later today or tomorrow. My workshop is at my home and is slated for Saturday, October 3 from 9 AM to 5 PM. Sign-up deadline is September 15, 2009. For more details, email me at dcookwrites@cookworkshop.com and I'll add you to my newsletter mailing list.

50-Card Workshop

Above are some examples of an October 3rd workshop that I plan to teach during which we will make 50 Christmas Cards from 1/2 a level 2 paper pack day-long session. This is my first pass which takes a bit longer than it should because I did a lot of detailing. I will try it again next week to work faster and more efficiently.