Sunday, June 13, 2010

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

5 comments:

Katie Kleber said...

these pictures do *no* justice to the beu-T-ful card she has made and i have been the lucky reciepent of...i have been just gazing at the star and all the glitter and it was SUCH the treat to receive it in the mail/package. joyce, you do good work!

peace, dr. katie (huge smile!)

christina d said...

See Joyce I told you so!! The card is beautiful and I just knew Katie would love it. Way to go girl, keep up the great art!!

Kel said...

That is absolutely gorgeous!! love it!

Libby said...

Very nice. I'm'onna imitate u.

Anonymous said...

Very nice. I'm'onna imitate u. -Libby