Cards for Hospitalized Kids

I have to share with you a fabulous idea from a reader named Lynn. She received one of my Hope Heart Starter Kits a while ago, and she was inspired to use the heart templates in the kit to make greeting cards for a wonderful organization called Cards for Hospitalized Kids. When you click on that name and go to the website, you will see how easy it would be for you to brighten the day of a hospitalized child by making and sending a greeting card.

Here are two cards that Lynn made using my heart templates (you can find them at the end of the post HERE, and print them out on your computer). I love how these look! What a great way to use up extra scrapbook paper! What a nice message she wrote inside! The stickers inside are a really cute touch too.

I haven't made any cards--YET--but I intend to. In fact, even though I haven't been feeling especially "crafty" lately,  I am strongly tempted to commit myself to a "card-a-day" challenge (like the "heart-a-day" challenge I undertook in 2012). Or what about a Facebook group, where everyone could post pictures of the cards they make? This could be just what I need to get back into general crafting, while doing good at the same time. The cards could be as simple or as elaborate as time allows, and I'm very inspired by the photos of the kids on the website, posing with their cards. So I will be participating in this, one way or another. Anyone else?

Hand-Carved Bird Stamp

Back in May I told you how excited I was to find a hand-carved stamp project by a favorite artist of mine, Geninne Zlatkis, in the book Craft Hope. The picture below shows the book with my uncarved stamp (with the images already transferred to it).

Since then, I have finished my bird stamp, and these are the materials I used (below):  a Speedball cutting tool, which has blades in five different sizes and shapes, and a block of Speedy-Carve, also from Speedball.

After a couple of hours of work (spread out over a couple of days)  I had these two awesome stamps!  I love them!  Carving stamps is a lot easier than I expected it to be, so I encourage anyone who is interested to give it a try.

I visited Geninne's wonderful art blog and found a carved stamp tutorial which is a great place to start if you want to try carving your own stamps.  She recommends using Color Box inks, so I bought this cool rainbow of colors for myself!

Each color separates from the others, so you can apply the ink to the stamp.  See, I told you it was cool!

I used my new bird and flower stamps to make all these cards.  I played around with different colors for the birds and flowers.

My daughter was standing behind me at one point, and she said "Put the flower stamp in the middle of the colors!"  I tried that and ended up with some pretty multi-colored flowers for my bird to hold.

These cards are exactly what I have been wanting to have on hand--I can say I made them myself, and they are really cute, but each card only took a moment to create, so I don't have to ration them, or feel that they are too precious to use.  I can make and use as many as I want! 

My First--and Second--Hand-Carved Stamp

For the longest time I've wanted to make a hand-carved rubber stamp; I've seen them on Craftster ever since I became a member of that site, and I think they are cool!  I bought a set of linoleum-cutting tools about a year ago, and several months ago I picked up two blocks of "Speedy-Carve".

The only thing missing was an ink pad, and that fell into my hands when I attended Fork and Talk in Little Rock, Arkansas, (hosted by Craft Gossip and sponsored by EK Success Brands).  One of the items in the huge bag of products I received that day was this big black ink pad.  Perfect! With all the materials ready to go, I finally had the motivation to give it a try.

Here is an in-progress shot of my SECOND carved stamp; you can see the tool I used at the top of the picture.  I traced the heart and wings from a plastic template I already had made (I use it to make sewn hearts).

And below you can see the finished products:  my first two carved stamps!  Yay!  The one at the top of the picture is actually the first one I made.  I tried to carve the words in the center...and realized what a newbie I was, when I stamped it the first time and the words were BACKWARDS!  AARGGG!  So I just carved them off the stamp and resovled to try again later.  I finished the second stamp last night, in about an hour.

To get the words onto the stamp, I printed them off the computer, then drew over them (on the right side of the paper) with pencil.  Then I put the words face-down in the center of the heart and traced each letter with a pen (I thought it would give firmer pressure than a pencil) to transfer the pencil marks onto the stamp.  It worked great!  (Although I must say, the directions that came with the stamp did NOT work great:  "Use slightly warm iron to transfer images:  pencil drawn, newsprint, freshly printed ink-jet and laser-print images."  My freshly printed ink-jet letters did not transfer at all with the slightly warm iron.)

So, now that I have these awesome new stamps, what am I going to do with them?  I tried stamping the one with words onto a card; hmmm, looks okay, but kind of plain and boring.  So I tried something else.

Oh, yeah, that's better--I glued some randomly-cut pieces of bright paper to the card, then stamped on top of them:

I made a lot of cards!

And I stamped a envelope for each card using the stamp without words.  I intend to use these as inserts with swap packages and etsy sales, and I will write the recipient's name inside the heart on the envelope.  (Hey, if you join a swap I'm in, maybe that will be YOUR name!)

I'm so happy with how this stamp came out; I especially like the all the little lines in the background that make it look hand-made.  The carving was actually much easier than I expected; it just takes patience and a steady hand.

I've ordered more Speedy-Carve...now I just need another good idea...