the homefront blog

Crafter Dee N from Duluth, MN loves making cards. And she’s leaving an incredible legacy of not only her craft—but her heart for our nation’s heroes!

Dee had been visiting her grandkids—Brecklin, 6, and her little brother Jaylen, 3, in Iowa. “I had given Brecklin a bunch of card making supplies and a couple of books showing different layouts when we saw her last month,” said Dee. “I told her if she made “nice” cards without too many stickers we could send them to the troops.”

Dee explained to the kids that they would be writing to the troops [men and women] that maybe didn’t have any family–no kids, maybe no living parents or brothers and/or sisters. She told them that “we had to let them know WE cared and wanted them to return home safe and sound.” Brecklin probably didn’t really understand “war” but she said “they should be home with their kids” and “not fighting far away.” Of course, Jaylen said, “Yeah, should be home with their kids.” They both said this from the heart—and with tears in their eyes.

Dee received the cards and wrote us right away. Brecklin made 31 cards, with her mom’s help to print out sentiments for the inside; and Jaylen sent 5 cardfronts that Grandma put onto cardstock and wrote a note inside.

So without further ado, we’re sharing some of these treasured works of art; they’ll be shared with our nation’s heroes in boxes going out very soon! Please feel free to leave feedback for these two little heroes; Grandma will be visiting them and will show them their artwork on the internet!

It’s hard to say thankyou in big letters through this blog software but….
THANK YOU!
Thank you to the individuals who responded with monies for us to purchase envelopes. We did buy some—and this morning, National Envelope rained down the blessing of 10,000 more envelopes! They arrived on Sandy’s doorstep this morning and were received with tears of joy and gratitude!

The donations received for envelopes will be used to move these envelopes out to shippers as needed. And anything beyond that will be used to ship cards to our heroes!

NOTES for cardmakers:
This means you can send in A2 sized cards (4.25 x 5.5) without envelopes once again….or you may send envelopes if you wish, which stretches our 10,000 envelope donation to last longer.

A7 sized cards (5x7) can be sent in without envelopes too; each shipper has plenty of envelopes for that size too.

If you send cards of another size, please provide envelopes for those; we’ll put them in whatever envelope we have larger than the card if we need to, but it’s nice if square cards are in square envelopes, etc.

Recently CFH received yet another fantastic donation of supplies…we don’t show you all of the ones received (though they’re all celebrated on Thursdays!), but this particular gift came with a letter that touched our hearts! Scrapyourtrip.com in Florida sent boxes of supplies directly to CFH, another to a cardmaker near their facility, another to a cardmaker stationed abroad, and yet one more to a deployed cardmaking hero. The supplies sent directly to CFH we’ll be using for cardmaking parties, and divvying into prize packs and RAKs…thank you, Tony and ScrapYourTrip.com!

When I first heard about “Cards for Heroes”, I knew I had the right place – the right people – that would make great use of my donated supplies. It really warms my heart that there is an organization of creative and energetic people that use their skills to help lift in the spirits of our troops and their families in the special and personal way that a handmade card does.

These supplies you’re receiving are sent to you unconditionally. I don’t expect anything in return – I’m content with the knowledge that they are going to be used to give comfort to our troops and their families. And you’ll notice that some of the supplies are in brand-new condition and some are slightly damaged – my experience with the card makers I have donated to in the past is that you guys make good creative use of it all.

I hope I’m hitting the mark on sending these supplies to you and that you will be able to use them for this good purpose. While I have never served in the military, I am deeply, deeply grateful for those that do. I believe to my core that it is the brave and selfless men and women of our armed services who keep us safe and allow us to live the blessed lives that we do. These donated items don’t even break the surface of the sacrifices that they (both the troops and their families) make for all of us, but my hope is that they can be used to help at least in some small way. Your creativity and volunteer time is the real gift, but I’m happy that I can help.

Sincerely,
Tony S, Vice President
ScrapYourTrip.com™

We recently received an amazing donation from Envelopments, Inc! (we waited until now only so we had a few more samples to show you before posting photos!) Many thanks to Patrick Chen, Brand Manager at Envelopments, who coordinated this fabulous donation for us! We’ll be posting more about the company and their heart for what we do in a coming blog post - you won’t want to miss that!

We have some of these Envelopments to share, so please read through at the end to see what you can request and how it will work.

Signature Pocket Fold cards
These Signature Pocket Fold Cards come in a variety of sizes and orientations. They’re approximately 5″ x 7″ folded, and outer envelopes were generously provided for each one. This first style has a pocket that holds a note to the recipient, and we were given approx 200 of these in a Christmas-type red color.

Here’s a sample of one made using Rusty Pickle vellum donated last holiday season, a sentiment from Hero Arts, and a decorated note in the pocket that matches the center panel design.

Next on our ‘runway’ is a slightly different style with another pocket orientation. We have approximately 200 of this burgundy color (close to the Christmas red, but slightly more purple), and 100 of the lovely tan pearlized ones:

This sample patriotic card takes advantage of the burgundy in the patterned paper by Paper Pizzazz; the paper continues behind everything as a liner to the pocket as well. The Marine sentiment stamp is by Paper Inspirations (purchased at Agape Gifts), stars are punched out, and the paper in the pocket for the sentiment is designed to match the rest of the piece. The metal adhesive stars are by Colorbok.

This next card was designed specifically for a soldier with a birthday coming up - complete with a pocket to hold balloons for him! (Manufacturer details are lost on me at the moment, sorry!)

Next is another orientation of the pocket cards: this time the card opens long and vertically! We have 145 left in a light blue shimmery color, and 115 in this luscious purple:

This sample card is for a hero’s Mom! This card can easily be a tall, vertical style, or horizontal, as you see here. The MOM letters are by Heidi Grace from a fantastic donation by Fiskars; these Envelopments are large enough cards that these monogram punch-out letters work well! Flowers are from Prima. (The lace and ribbon on the insert card as well as the little Love tag are of unknown origin!)

Portable Pockets
The Portable Pocket Cards are a much simpler style of card; they are a simple pocket into which a folded or single layer card can fit. These also fit into a larger outer envelope for mailing. We have 130 left in the mustard yellow color; 200 of the holly (they’re going fast, so please don’t get your heart set on getting many!); and 124 of the cream pearlized color.

Our first sample card for this style goes with the holly pocket (sorry, I couldn’t resist, Polly!). The card portion with the House Mouse image on it is a folded piece of cardstock, adhered to the 5x7 cardstock. The envelope is so lovely on its own, it needs no decoration!

This halloween card uses some more donated paper from Heidi Grace/Fiskars, and a simple diecut with patterned paper and a stamped image adorn the envelope. (The stamped image and sentiment are gifted and I don’t remember who they’re by!)

Metallic gold envelopesnts also donated these Metallic Envelopes and they are a super-special treat for the holiday season! We have hundreds and hundreds of these - you can help by making 4″ x 9″ cards to go inside them and sending them to any of our shippers!

We have some other styles donated to us as well, and are in the process of making some samples to show you in those styles too. Stay tuned!

Note to our AnySoldier “Support Junkies"!
You know who you are! These cards are fantastic to use for writing letters to your deployed hero contacts. The pockets can hold those cartoons you save, all the little goodies you like to tuck in! If you would like some, please email Sandy with which style you prefer, how many you think you’d like, and whether or not you want the outer envelopes; if you’ll tuck this into a box, the envelopment itself can act as the envelope, but we’ll happily send an envelope if you need one. Note that the Portable Pockets will be easiest for our heroes to write home on, so if you’re able to use the fold-out-style Signature pocket cards instead, that will be fantastic!

Note to our Cardmakers!
First, an important note: These cards do NOT have to urgently be used before Christmas, aside from the holly envelopments. So please continue whatever cardmaking plans you’ve had for the holidays, and continue sending cards to all shippers…this post isn’t meant to distract us all from keeping first things first, nor to drown Sandy during this busy season! But if making this style of card inspires you, read on!

On to the plan for sharing the goodies: these cards are quite large and bulky, and made of fanTASTic heavy cardstock, so we don’t want to use up our shipping budget on shipping them all out to be adorned, nor all your budget to return them! So we have an idea to try, let’s see if this will work:

1. Email Sandy to request the exact sizes for the panels for the cards you’d like to work on; she has the majority of the boxes. Please indicate which card style you’re looking at (you can describe the sample card if that’s easier!)
2. If you would like to pay the mailing cost to receive any samples, that can be arrangedt; it can either be the whole card or color swatches of the cardstock. Shipping cost will vary depending on what you’re asking for.
3. Create the insert and ‘card front’ for a panel, and send just those portions to Sandy and she’ll attach them to the cards.
4. If more card panels or inserts are sent in than are needed for available Envelopments, they’ll be made into regular 5x7 cards. But please be sure to email to find out what’s needed so we can use these as efficiently as we can. Thanks!

These will be sent out on a first-come, first-served basis…note that at the time of this writing, rumors of the availability of these cards is out (see the blog post here), so emails are coming in, especially for the holly pockets. I have to check email, half may well be claimed already!

Many thanks to Dave Pierce at RIS Paper (Connecticut) who obtained ANOTHER fabulous donation on our behalf, and the folks at Wausau, for making the donation: big boxes of cardstock—the equivalent of about 8,000 sheets! (This is in addition to the thousands of sheets that were donated by Mohawk a few weeks ago.) We appreciate the partnership with great companies like these who make it possible to do even more for our heroes!

There is still some of the red and tan left from Mohawk, but the new stock is white with speckles in it. This photo shows some of each:

If any of our cardmakers would like some of this paper, Paula (the stamper in CT who solicited this donation!) is willing to pack up the paper and get it out to you if you paypal funds for the shipping costs. First come first served! (This post will be edited to indicate all paper is gone, once it’s all been divvied out!)

Flat Rate envelope: $4.80, about 50 sheets
Flat rate box: $9.80 box, about 250 sheets
Large flat rate box: $12.95, about 500 sheets

Email Paula at desmarsol@aol.com, and specify if you would like the speckled, the red, the tan, or a mix; again, first come first served. She’ll give you her paypal information once you email her.

Thanks again to the donors - and to Paula for her help securing the donation and doing all the packing up and shipping!