Save the planet...at least a little.

I'm a somewhat 'green' type of person, but...well, given that Operation Write Home is based around using paper - which generates trash and kills trees - I guess I'm not really all that green. None of us papercrafters truly is when it comes to our craft, even if we're diligent in recycling everything else.

Now bear in mind, I'm not one to encourage everyone to go out and recycle  your garbage into cards. It really depends on what the recycled material is, and how it's used. I've seen coke bottle labels slapped on a card, chunks of odd fabric, used foil - you name it, and it's arrived in my mailbox. Lots of folks are either trying to be green, or, I suspect, are trying to make cards on-the-cheap; but it's not always helpful to make things out of trash when it comes to our heroes. They, just like you and me, can tell when we've tossed junk together to make a card, and they deserve our best, not our leftovers :)

But recently something happened at work, and I just had to reclaim it from the recycle pile. Our color printer went nuts - printing on expensive paper, it entirely covered 11x17 paper! Sheets and sheets of it. Mostly with solid cyan ink....some of it made funky patterns though, and was kinda cool. But I couldn't stand to see all that way expensive thick paper and way expensive ink go to waste.

I brought the stack home, and first cut it into cardfront sized pieces. Then just stared at it for ages. It's slick paper, too, so it was going to take a lot of adhesive to hold it down...and though it's way thicker than yucky computer paper, it's still of an odd quality. "Cuttlebug" was the thing that came to mind...so I got to work. I came out with a lot of cards, just a few of which are shown here:

This thank you card sports a little pun stamp from Stampin Up...the edge was pierced, continuing the 'grate' joke just a little further. I layered it, because the background was going to be way busy! The paper I embossed for the background had all that pattern on it, and a row of random text - which I covered with the ribbon. The whole thing is layered on black, to stabilize the weak paper - it wanted to curl something fierce. So lots of adhesive later, this is the thank-you card I'll be sending to the MIKE program for the fundraiser.

(Speaking of which, do you have time for 2 quick cards? See the request here.)

Now these little love cards came out really fun. I used the blue reject paper, and there was also some greyish colored stuff too. I embossed both, and cut them in half, so each sheet made two cards. I punched owls out of the matching blue paper and some other scraps, layered them on nestability circles. (I tried scallops around them, but that was wayyyy too busy with all the texture.) The sentiment I wanted to use was one reallllly long one; I thought about just stamping it inside, but decided to cut them up in bits on the front. I had to use the Scotch quick dry adhesive though, since it's hard to stick things to cuttlebugged paper, much less this slick embossed paper.

So that's my attempt at saving the planet. I guess at least a couple sheets of paper get used for something else, and that's a good thing, even if my favorite thing to do really does kill off trees....

PS - Another idea for the ustream broadcast that I forgot to mention yesterday: we could pick a digi image for everyone to have on-hand, and have a color-along session. I could color the same image in different media (mediums?).....anyone have a favorite free digi to work with? Maybe we could set something up to try it - an evening this week or sometime next weekend....just thinkin'!