I love creative days

My original plans for yesterday were canceled, so I had some spare time to sit down at my craft desk and create. For once, Mr. Mojo was visiting during one of these times! Hallelujah. I might have chased him off again, though, since I didn't feed him any chocolate, chips, or other delicious snacks. This trying to eat healthier thing sucks sometimes.

Anyway, back to it.

I took a class at Stamp Hideaway with the awesome Sharon. She has boxes of Stampscapes stamps, and taught me how to use them. Thank you, Sharon! I am now addicted. Of course, I had to buy some of my own. The card fronts for the cards below were actually made using her stamps, though. I just had to take a few minutes to mount them on cards.

I love how you can leave them in black and white. I think they look striking that way. Each scene takes several stamps to create, but it's actually quick and easy once you learn how to do it. Makes for fast cards when you need one in a hurry.

Then I had colored some images ages ago and used those to get some more cards made. It's time to send in Mother's Day cards for Operation Write Home, so that they can get to the soldiers in time to write notes and send them back home. I made more cards than those pictured, but I don't want to overload you too much. Here's a sampling of the cards I made with some images I'd precolored:

As usual, I tried to keep them kind of flat for ease of mailing. All images were colored with copics.

Thanks for stopping by my blog. I hope you'll consider taking some time out to make a few cards for Operation Write Home. Enjoy what remains of your weekend!

Fantastic....five?!?

No, this isn't about the movie "The Fantastic Four", which I have never seen. The title just came to me because I managed to complete five cards today, and to me, well, that is fantastic. I went to my first ever crop to benefit Soldier's Angels. I met several wonderful women there, and had a blast crafting with them. It was really fun to sit with Karen, Darlene, and Tara. I met them for the first time today. We were all working on different things and it was so interesting to talk to them about their projects and lives. What a great group of women. Karen was making dolls and she made me one with a cute little strawberry dress. I love her! Pictures to come later for that.

As usual, I spent so much time socializing, shopping, and organizing that I didn't do much else. Well, except make five cards. At first, I was really irritated with my lack of productivity. After all, I used images I had colored ages ago, so it's not like I had to take time to color (which takes me forever). My fellow crafters made me see that I got a lot done. I made new friends, organized some stuff that had been sitting as a mess for ages, and made cards for five soldiers to use when sending notes home. I decided that I'll take that and be happy about it.

Here are the cards I made (sorry if the pics are blurry or a bit dull. I didn't really focus on getting good shots before turning them in):

I deliberately didn't take much with me in the way of embellishments: just some ribbon, lace, twine, pearls and a tiny bit of bling. No flowers or anything that would add too much dimension. I tried to keep in mind that these cards will be shipped multiple times: once to the Soldier's Angels headquarters to be added to care packages, then to the soldier, then from the soldier to his/her family. I figured flat cards would be better for packing as well as durability. It's usually really hard for me to keep my cards so embellishment-free and flat, but today, it seemed to flow. I think being around all of those other crafters who were also there to support the soldiers and enjoy a day together might have turned on my mojo! What do you think? What makes your mojo flow?