Graduation-Palooza!

Hey Journey Friends!

As I'm madly prepping for Convention trades (AZ bound next week!) I set aside some time to create a few high school graduation cards for my nephew Alex and my niece Megan.  They both graduate this year and this Friday (June 3, 2016) my nephew graduated.  Megan graduates next Friday.  I'm hoping I can watch her graduation on Facebook Live.  We'll see if my sis can get that figured out.  HA HA.

Anyway, I'm sharing the first of the GRAD cards I created...Here's to Alex, the newest HS Graduate!

 

To create this card, I started out with a little wash of Blue Lagoon Color Splash and a little Shimmer Silver Splash along the edge.  Adding a bit of silver adds a slight shimmer and beautifully elevates the design.  After that dried, I wrote a little message to Alex over the ink using a Black Micron Pen. 

Next, I rubbed a little bit of Modeling Paste onto my favorite stencil Starburst Lines using my finger.  I find that using my finger instead of a spatula allows me to manage the thickness of the paste in varying locations on my piece.  I like a thin layer- where the paste translucently overlays the inked surface.  I did a quick blast of heat gun to dry.  After that, I headed to my sewing machine so I could add a few stitches for contrast/texture/dimension.  You can see below that I just did a few random passes with my machine using the zig-zag and the straight stitch.  

After stitching on the watercolor paper, I aligned my stamps from the Marquee Type stamp set onto a stamp positioner and stamped the marquee letters until they were perfectly inked with Versafine Onyx ink.  I applied some Journey Black Embossing Powder to the letters and hit it with my heat gun.  

Finally, I splattered a bit of Silver Silk onto the piece and mounted it to River Stone Cardstock then used dimensional squares to attach the stamped panel to my Blue Lagoon Card base (side fold).

Since Alex will be attending Full Sail University in Florida to pursue a degree in Video Game Design and Media Technology, I added some fun images from the set called Soldier Boy on the inside.  It's got a great collection of fun sentiments and images that are perfect for the video game enthusiasts.

Thanks for stopping by.  I'll be sharing my niece's card next week as I don't want her to have a sneak peek.  HEE HEE.