New Sketch challenge

Well, my friend Sue (HRH) found another blog with sketch challenges, so I decided to check it out. Card Patterns is a new blog, as a matter of fact yesterday they posted their third challenge. This card is made from their second sketch challenge, and also satisfies my weekly Christmas cards for Sparkle's Christmas card challenge (admittedly, I haven't been doing EXACTLY what Sparkle is challenging, I am just striving to actually get Christmas cards completed). These two cards were made using CTMH Evensong Creative Basics papers and CTMH cardstock in Cranberry, New England Ivy and Olive. Stamp sets used were CTMH Victorian Snowflake and Christmas Scripts. The large snowflake was embossed with white embossing powder on New England Ivy cardstock and mounted using 3-D foam squares. Cranberry cardstock was edge distressed with Cranberry ink. I added some clear sparkles on the corner. The sketch for this week looks great, you should check them out!

Not exactly "scrappy"

So another way I put my craftiness to use is by making plaques for people when they receive orders somewhere else (or retire, or just get out of the Marine Corps). I like to make sure that when someone leaves, the gift we give them is something that they will appreciate and be proud to display, and will hopefully remind them of fond memories. Well, my sorta-boss (who is a bit, shall we say, "abrasive") is leaving to go be the head honcho for our military occupational specialty in Quantico, VA. He has a reputation of being, well, somewhat of an ass, but he knows a lot. And if you know a lot (and read the orders), you can successfully go head-to-head with him. But if you are guessing or making stuff up, standby to be destroyed. Well, needless to say, he is not the "touchy-feely" type, and something that sounded sentimental or like a "suck-up" wasn't going to cut it. So someone had the idea to "nail a boot to a board and tell him 'we're giving you the boot'". So I ran with it. I mounted a Marine Corps combat boot (hot weather) to a cherry plaque board, along with an anondized brass white cover (hat for you non-military types) emblem and the inscription plaque which reads "In appreciation for all you have given us, we are giving you the boot. If you need anything in the future, just READ THE ORDER! Semper fidelis". To mount the boot, I drilled two holes through the sole, and attached it through the bottom of the board using carriage bolts and wingnuts (the wingnuts are inside the boot). I cut a foam block to fit in the heel of the boot, then hot-glued a black plastic cup on top of the foam. I then tied the boot, and he will be able to use this on his desk as a pen holder. I put self-adhesive rubber pads on the back side of the board (to help keep it from slipping, and to allow it to sit level because of the round heads of the carriage bolts). I think he will get a "kick" out of it.

It has been a while

To say that things at work have been hectic would be an understatement. We are still only half-staffed (since the rest of our guys are still in Iraq), we had our triennial quality audit at the end of January, and the units that we support have been getting tasked with providing a bunch of equipment for Afghanistan. Which means we are tasked with calibrating and repairing the test equipment before it deploys. We have been SWAMPED. So I have been putting in a lot of hours, plus doing a lot of work from home. Crafts have definitely been forced right past the back seat and into the trunk. Luckily, everyone has been busting their tails, so we are in good shape at work. And we did OUTSTANDING on our audit. I've caught up on my rest, and only have a few minor work-related things to do, so I can finally scrap again.

Today's card I actually started on January 17th. It was a combination of four different challenges: The OCC color challenge (use two shades of blue), The OCC Technique Challenge (emboss resist), Splitcoast Stampers sketch challenge 211, and Sparkle's Christmas card challenge. And, I totally ripped-off fellow BB Brandi's snowman from the card she made for our stamp of the month swap. It took me until today to get this card finished. Admittedly, it isn't a true emboss resist. I was having a hard time embossing the snowman head and body, so I finally broke down and used liquid glass on him. Unfortunately, the liquid glass caused the paper to curl a little bit. I should have used my sponge daubers to apply Versamark, and then pour on the embossing powder. My two shades of blue are CTMH Twilight and Outdoor Denim. The paper is CTMH Aspen, and cardstock in Twilight and Outdoor Denim. Stamps are CTMH All Decked Out and Shining Star. The stars are mounted with 3-D Foam Squares. There would have been two cards, but I tried using my embossing pen to emboss the snowman for the second card and I ended up with a blue snowman.