Celebrate Patriotism!

Aloha, all!

     Here we are on Tuesday, with another of the SU Only Challenge Blog challenges!  I have to tell you that this one had me scratching my head about what to do.  The theme is Patriotism.  If we were just for stamping friends in the United States, we might have made it Fourth of July.  But many of our challenge participants are from other countries, and that wouldn't make much sense for them.  I can hardly wait to see what people from countries other than the U.S. make!

     Anyway, I looked through my collection of stamps and there was NOTHING!  Nothing for making a patriotism-themed card, at least for me who does happen to live in the U. S.  Who thought up this theme???  Oh, it was I.  Hmmm.  So I'd better come up with something!  And, of course, I did.

     My first thought was to make something that looked like an American Flag.  But, after trying a few different layouts, I thought I'd just use elements of the flag and layer them up in a bit of a different formation.  For the stripes, I ran a piece of Naturals White Card Stock (the card stock used throughout the project) through the Sizzix Big Shot with the Stripes Embossing Folder.  Then I used my Brayer and Cherry Cobbler Classic Ink to color the raised stripes.  After I'd run the brayer across the card stock several times, I decided I liked the almost rustic look of the partially colored stripes.  So I decided that would be the look for the entire card. 

     My next part of the project was the star.  There are no star punches or Sizzix dies with stars in the current catalog. And while there are some stamp sets with stars – most notably Simply Stars and Words of Courage – I don't own either of them.  What to do, what to do.  Then one of my childhood memories popped up in that little lightbulb above my head.  We used to fold paper and make one cut and, voila!  We had a star!  Oh am I glad I'm here in the age of the internet.  It just took one try and I found the instructions for that (it came back to me pretty quickly, but I was glad to have the reminder anyway).  (Here is a link to instructions for making the folded-one-cut star that I used.)

     Let me tell you that using card stock to make a small star is not a great idea.  But I did want my star to go with the rest of the card, so I worked with it as best I could  I started with a 2-1/8" x 2-3/4" piece of card stock and followed the instructions from there.  The star was a bit wobbly, but I just hand-trimmed it until I felt like it was OK. 

     I wanted the star to have some texture, so I ran it through the Perfect Polka Dots Embossing Folder.  Once I sponged the edges of the star, I found that there were perfectly placed polka dots on the left and right points, and that made the other three points look a bit, well, naked.  Rather than redo the star, I used a stylus to make indentations on the other three points and then colored them with the Cherry Cobbler Stampin' Write Marker.  That looked better, at least to me!

     When I went looking for a "celebrate" stamp, I found the stamp from the Perfectly Penned Stamp Set right away, and stopped looking for any others.  I think this looks right at home on this card, stamped on the Naturals White card stock with Midnight Muse Class Ink and matted with the same Midnight Muse Card Stock on which the star is placed..  And here I go tying my project up with a ribbon!  This time is was a piece of Cherry Cobbler Seam Binding Ribbon, with the bow off to the side so you can read the sentiment and see the star.

     So, without much in the way of patriotism-related products (actually NOTHING in the way of such products!), I made a card that certainly meets the challenge!  I hope you'll try out the SU Only Challenge with this theme!  Lots of Stampin' Up! users are going to be looking for ideas, and yours might be just the one they want! 

     Now here's something I haven't done in awhile – I have a sketch for you!  I forgot how much fun it is to make these sketches, and I hope to be doing more of this during the summer!