United We Stand

I am in the process of making my last shipment of cards for Operation Write Home. As of August 1, 2015, they will not be receiving any more cards. Due to the drawdown, they just do not have enough contacts left to send cards to, to justify their staying in business. One of the categories of cards they take is called "AnyHero" cards. Basically, these are just thank you cards, written TO our servicemen & servicewomen overseas, to thank them for their service & sacrifice. I created this card with that in mind.

I based my design on OWH's Sketch #243:

I used one of the images and a greeting from Doodle Pantry's "Let Freedom Ring" set. I cut a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper to 2.75x2.75", and printed the flag image on that. I also cut a piece of light blue cardstock for the background to the image panel, and printed the greeting at the bottom left of that.

I colored the flag with Inktense pencils and a damp brush. Unfortunately, because of all the waves in the flag, I messed up the coloring on the red stripes the first time, so I had to reprint it and start over. Thankfully, Doodle Pantry also has a version of this set with the flags colored, & I was able to look at that image and use it as a reference. So I got the coloring right the second time! For the blue section, rather than try to paint around the little stars, I took a tip from Sandy Allnock, and painted over them, putting them back in with my white gel pen. I also managed to make the white stripes a bit too grey when I tried shading them. So I went over those with a white gel pen as well, blotting off the ink with a dry paper towel as I went, to lighten them up. I was glad that worked, because I really did NOT want to start over yet again! :)

I decided to move the strip on the right side of the focal panel onto the greeting layer & make it longer. I cut a narrow strip of vellum, and die cut the stars out of it using one of the dies from My Favorite Things' "Blueprints 18" set. I colored the back side with a red Marvy LePlume II marker, and set that aside to dry.

I matted the focal & greeting panels with red cardstock, added the vellum strip to the back panel, and adhered the flag panel in place. I die cut a piece of white cardstock with the largest of Lawn Fawn's "Large Stitched Rectangle" dies, and adhered the matted panels to the center. Finally, I mounted the finished card front to a white A2 card base I'd made from 110 lb. cardstock.

I'm entering this in the June "Vellum" challenge at Live Love Cards.