Home of the Brave

Happy Birthday, America!  This week, we are celebrating Independence Day with the Craft Squad monthly blog hop!  Our theme for the month is “Home of the Brave” and we have some really cute projects to share with you!  We have a short hop this month, as many of our bloggers are on vacation, but I hope you’ll stick around anyway!  It looks like I am the start of this hop, so if you came here from Roxie’s Stamping Room, you are in the right place.

When I think “Home of the Brave,” a lot of great people come to mind.  I’ve known a lot of firefighters and policemen, doctors and nurses, and, of course military veterans.  I even think teachers are brave (and before you tsk tsk that, you just go coral about 30 Third Graders!).  But the one group of people who are most prominently on my mind right now are our young men and women currently serving on active duty in the military.  I have a small handful of them that I like to send cards and letters to, so I thought I would share one of those with you today.  The other card is a general “Happy 4^th of July” sort of card that I will be sending to my son who is away at college doing physics research.  I miss him, so I’m sending him a card.

The construction of these cards was pretty simple.  For “Land of the Free”, I used a series of die cuts from the Cricut Stand and Salute cartridge.  The patterned paper was a scrap left over from a Stampin’ Up DSP pack.

For “Home of the Brave”, I used the USA outline from Close to My Heart’s Adventure USA and black Staz-on to stamp on an old scrap of stary vellum before cutting it out.  I started with a white background, but didn’t like the way the map looked on it, so I switched to Stampin’ Up’s Not Quite Navy, which I think looks much better.  The loop-d’ loop (CTMH Sightseer) and star (Adventure USA) were stamped with white pigment ink and embossed.  “Home of the Brave” and the fireworks came from the Cricut Stand and Salute cartridge.

I wanted to stamp a sentiment into the “Home of the Brave” card, and I didn’t want to have to emboss it, so instead I inserted a piece of white cardstock and stamped on that.  The star and sentiment both came from Stampin’ Up’s Service and Sacrifice set, which was retired a few years ago.

That’s it for me.  Now it’s time to hop on over to Treasure Chest of Memories where Laura has another great project for you!  And be sure to comment on our pages to let us know how you liked our projects!

Day 22 – Sign of the Times

For Day 22, Lain gave us the prompt, “Sign of the Times.”  This made me think about a common sight in many cities during the first Gulf War.  My mother and I felt very strongly about supporting our troops serving overseas, so we marched in several rallies.  I didn’t have any photographs from those events, but these newspaper clippings (and photocopies of clippings) were perfect for a page like this.

I wanted this page to have an old-fashioned scrapbook feel – something more akin to what the Smashbooks have become.

Whenever I teach a scrapbooking class, I like to stress that scrapbooks aren’t just about the school pictures, the birthdays, or the Christmas tree.  Our scrapbooks should include pages that tell the stories of our life, who we are, what we did, and what was important to us.  Sometimes those things are not captured in photos, but there are many other ways to share them in our scrapbooks.  My challenge to you is to find a story of your own that can’t be told with photos, and then go tell it.  I’m sure you’ll find some clever way to make your story come to life!

Thanks, Soldier!

Today we stopped in Roatan, Honduras.  Even though Roatan is actually an island off the coast of Honduras, every time I think of this country, I think of the military build-up here in the early 80's due to the strife in El Salvador.  I knew a few soldiers who were sent to serve here, and fortunately, they all returned home safely.  I'm sure there were others who were not so lucky.  Being in the military is tough, and we don't give near enough thanks to the fine young men and women to serve our country so proudly.  Our cruise through the year wouldn't be complete without something patriotic, so last night, we gave everyone this cute little notepad holder designed by Valerie Jackson.  This would be a great Thank You gift to send to someone serving overseas, and works well for Memorial Day or 4^th of July.  You could even change the colors to use it for another occasion altogether.

This is the second year that Valerie has been an instructor with Crafty Neighbor scrapbooking, and I am so very happy to have her as an addition to our team.  Valerie is a Close to My Heart consultant and posts many of her wonderful projects on her blog Creative Sanctuary.  Valerie is also an organizer for the Dallas Crafters Marathon meet-up group that hosts monthly 3-day crafting weekends in Plano, Texas.