Thinking of You

Recently, one of Operation Write Home's card makers unexpectedly passed away. Since 2011, she had donated almost 1,000 cards! She had also been OWH's Featured Cardmaker last June. So, in her honor, Operation Write Home has invited card makers to CASE one of her cards from that Featured Cardmaker post, then post a link on their blog. Her family will be invited to view both posts. This is my contribution.

The card I'm CASEing is this one:

To paper-piece the hot air balloons, I first colored the stamp with a brown brush-tip marker, then stamped two balloons onto white cardstock. I also stamped the balloon portion onto 4 different pattern papers from the "Take Note" 6x6" paper pad by Doodlebug Design. I fussy-cut the sections and glued them in place onto the cardstock base. (Note to self: when using liquid glue, do not stamp the base with a water-based marker, as the color will bleed!) I also colored the balloon baskets with the same brown marker I'd used for the stamping, using a lighter brown colored pencil for the inside of each basket. Finally, I fussy-cut the balloons, leaving a small white border around each.

I die cut the clouds using these dies from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps & glued them to a blue patterned paper from my scrap stash. I drew birds in with a blue marker. Then I adhered the paper-pieced hot air balloons to the sky panel. I stamped the greeting on white cardstock, cut it into a banner shape, and inked the edges with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink. Then I adhered that towards the bottom of the sky panel, which I matted onto a dark blue cardstock.

I adhered the focal point panel to a piece of white cardstock cut to 4.25x5.5", and wrapped blue baker's twine from Maya Road around the card front below the focal panel. Finally, I adhered this to a standard A2 card base with foam tape.

I'm linking this to Operation Write Home's blog. I'm also entering this card in Simon Says Stamp's Monday "Journey" challenge.