My Top 14 OWH Cards of 2014

Happy New Year, everyone! Hope 2014 was a great year for y'all, and that 2015 will be even better. Operation Write Home is having a "Top Cards of 2014" bloghop today, and I am happy to be participating. (To see everyone's work, click the link at the top of this post to go to the Operation Write Home blog.) We were encouraged to choose our top 14 cards of the year. It was hard to choose just 14 cards as my favorites, out of all the ones I made for OWH this past year. But here they are (in no special order)!

This one was a new-to-me design, that I'd found on Pinterest. I die cut all the letters and the heart, and arranged them on the card front. I later found a stamp in Hobby Lobby that does pretty much the same thing!

I love the watercoloring on this one. For quite some time while I was coloring it, I really wasn't sure it would work out, but in the end, I think it turned out quite well!

I like this one just for the "grunge" factor. I felt the opening around the truck, which I tore and then inked, turned out really great. A good card for a boy--or a tomboy girl!

I used a technique I'd seen Jennifer McGuire do, involving stamping the hearts in Distress inks and then flicking water with a brush onto them so the ink would bleed. Striking effect, I think!

Like many card makers, I don't tend to do masculine cards. I've been trying to do more, though. I especially the second one here, because it's also a one-layer card--something else I don't do much of.

I did a couple of techniques on this card. I used alcohol inks on glossy cardstock for the greeting panel, then stamped the "Hello handsome" on top. This was my first time doing this, and I was amazed how well it came out. I also did a faux letterpress technique on the background, by inking up an embossing folder before inserting my cardstock. I don't always get good results doing this, but this one was close to perfect the first time.

I used a stencil and inking for the sunburst in this card. I like how the blue panel anchors the sunburst & light bulb.

I love the cute critters in Hero Arts/OWH stamp sets. For the moose card, I stamped the plaid background behind the moose--not a quick process! The elephant card won a Heroine award in A Blog Named Hero's "Ombre" challenge!

I created this card for OWH's Memorial Day bloghop. I was surprised at how many people who commented thought the strip in the middle was pre-printed. In fact, I stamped the hearts & greeting and cut the strip out.

Another of what Laura Bassen would call a one-layer wonder. I masked the middle, used gel medium over a star stencil, and did a gradient inking for the background. Then I just removed the masking and stamped my greeting.

I really enjoyed doing the embossing in these last 2 cards. The brightly-colored one employed another new-to-me technique: monoprinting. I inked the back of a Tim Holtz layering stencil with Distress inks, spritzed it with water, and laid it down on a piece of cardstock to get the star-patterned print. I was glad it turned out right the first time, too!

So there they are, my top 14 choices for 2014. Hope you enjoyed--and congratulations on making it this far! :) I'm so glad to have found Operation Write Home, and feel honored to be at least a small part of their work! Have a wonderful day, and again, Happy New Year, y'all!