Graduation Congratulations!

I was thrilled to make a graduation card last week for a dear friend who has been diligently working towards her Ph.D.!! Now that DR. Katie has the card in hand, I can share it here.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't struggle with this one. When I finally agreed with myself to use her school colors, though, the rest of the card fell into place. I wanted to give Dr. Katie the ultimate gold star (remember getting those stars as a little kid?), and the Medallion stamp seemed perfect. I embossed it with a very juicy Versamark pad and Gold Fire Opal embossing powder onto Elegant Eggplant cardstock. No sooner did I finish that step than I wished I had used textured cardstock -- so I added my own look of texture with a stamp from Stampin' Up!'s Extreme Elements set.

I've had my eye on the Happy Grad single stamp and Go, Graduate stamp set in the Summer Mini since I first saw them, and was sitting here kicking myself for not getting them in time to make this card -- when suddenly I remembered that Stampin' Up! offers both of them as digital downloads! I dashed to the SU! website to download them, and then spent a nice hunk of time playing with the images to get them the sizes I wanted. (This process would have been faster if I owned SU!'s My Digital Studio program... but it's still on my wishlist!) When everything was the way I wanted it, I printed it onto Shimmer White cardstock for an added touch of sophistication.

I settled on the Happy Grad sentiment for the front of the card. I didn't want to totally cover the Medallion, but I also didn't want the sentiment so small it couldn't be read. I did a happy dance when I realized that since I was sending this card inside a package, an envelope would be optional! I could let the sentiment hang off the edge of the card! I really, really like this look!


Here you can get an idea of how glitzy the embossed Medallion is:


I decided the inside of the card should be a little more whimsical to reflect Dr. Katie's personality. I had fun using the spotlight technique to highlight the grad in tennis shoes:


Stamps: Extreme Elements, Medallion
Digital stamps: Go, Graduate (includes Happy Grad)
Colors: Elegant Eggplant
Punches: Ticket Corner, circle punches
And: Shimmer White cardstock, Gold Fire Opal embossing powder, Copic markers

I've probably been driving Dr. Katie crazy with all my gushing these past few weeks, but I really am so very proud of her! (Got that, Katie? Love you!)

Smiles,
Joyce Spear a.k.a. StamperJoyce