Stars and Stripes

This week our theme for the Card Crafter's Circle challenge blog is stars and stripes. Although not required to go patriotic, I chose to use the adorable Meljen image provided to construct this red, white and blue step card. (Hope over to the CCC blog, http://cardcrafterscircle.blogspot.com/ and see the different ways my teamies used the stars and stripes theme.) With 4th of July (Independence Day) coming up, this theme and the image were perfect for displaying a little of the USA pride (grin).

Once again, we welcome back a wonderful sponsor, Meljen Designs. Meljen's Designs is a lovely stamp company owned and illustrated by Melissa Jenkins. She illustrates whimsical rubber and digital images inspired by her kids and family. Meljen's Designs has new releases, along with a new challenge every Thursday, a Guest Designer each month at the Meljen's Designs Blog, and freebies and promos now and then on their facebook Fan Page! Please visit the Meljen's Designs line of stamps at our store HERE to browse through all Melissa's lovely designs! You can also see Melissa's rubber stamps at her corner of Whimsy Stamps!


Our randomly drawn challenge winner will receive 4 digital images (uncoloured) of their choice... what a great prize!

I had never made a step card before, and thanks to one of my teamies, Anne-Marie, I learned a very easy and quick method for creating this cute and different little card. It is so easy! Simply fold your card base in half (as normal), but then fold the front and back in half again. Your card should then look like this ^^.

I wasn't quite sure if I had any patriotic paper in my stash, but I was pleased to find a DCWV pad that had a fantastic patriotic theme. The page consisted of different strips of design -- perfect for the little step card. I cut three of the strips to fit the panels of my card, and adhered them to the front, the valley behind the front and the back mountain. (I need to take a picture of my card from the side so you can see the total design better. I'll try to do that and add it to this post.)

 

I then used my Cricut cutting machine and the George Basic Shapes cartridge and cut two stars. The blue star is 5.25" and the red is 5". I did not do a lot of colouring of this adorable little image. I did take my BG000 and coloured a shadow all around the dove so that he would stand out more. I also used that same colour on the swirls in the design. I used B91 and R14 to colour the stars. I tried several blues and reds but most of them were too vibrant and too distracting. (My 8 years old Granddaughter was here when I was working on this card. When I finished colouring one image, she told me, "I'm just not feeling it, Ma'am." She did approve of this final version, though.)

I cut the image in a circle using one of my Spellbinder circle dies and adhered it to the middle of my stars. I then adhered the stars to the middle of the back mountain. I cut a red heart with blue button and adhered it to the front right, and then I added three buttons to the back left using adhesive dots so that I could stack them and stand them up.

The fab Meljen designed coupled with that great DCWV paper made this little creation so quick and easy to achieve. We'd love to see what you create. Remember, just use some stars and some stripes and then enter your lovely in our weekly challenge.