Mockingbird Thank You

As I mentioned in this post, May is Military Appreciation Month in the U.S. So Operation Write Home is collecting thank you cards & letters to send to our overseas military heroes. A friend's son is in Boy Scouts, and so I asked if the boys in his troop would like to participate by writing notes, if I provided the cards. The leader said yes, so, at least for the next few days, I'm on a thank you card kick!

I used the following sketch from Operation Write Home as the basis for my design:

I did make a few changes. I rotated the sketch 90 degrees, added layers, and added the "thank you" scalloped circle piece.

I started with this stamp from Our Daily Bread Designs. I stamped it on watercolor paper with Ranger Archival Jet Black ink. As one of the lessons in Online Card Classes' "Watercolor for Cardmakers" is on watercoloring images, I colored the image using Inktense pencils and water. For the background on that piece, I felt it was a little too plain, so I applied a wash of blue watercolor over it, being careful especially to leave the flowers white.

For the background, I first cut a piece of black-and-white checkered paper to about 1/2" smaller on both sides than an A2 card. To tone down the pattern, I blended Pumice Stone Distress ink over it with my Mini Ink Blending Tool. To create the mats for it, I cut 2 pieces of white cardstock and blended Weathered Wood & Stormy Sky Distress inks over each. Finally, I cut a piece of navy cardstock to 5.5x4.25", and adhered all the layers to each other. The narrow rectangle behind the focal panel is patterned paper from my scrap stash.

When I placed the focal panel on the card front, it kind of blended into the light blue piece directly behind it. So I cut another piece of navy cardstock large enough to leave a 1/16" mat all around, and adhered the panel to that. To do the greeting, I stamped the "thank you" onto navy cardstock with Versamark ink, then heat embossed it with Ranger Silver embossing powder. I die cut that with a Lifestyle Crafts die, and adhered it to the front of the card.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Our Daily Bread Designs' "Wing It"
Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Spring Flowers"
Simon Says Stamp's May "Work It Wednesday" (use patterned paper)