Oh What a Knight!

Our valiant knight graduated and he had to be rewarded with a special card!  Well, I hope he thought it was special.  Again I do what I do, I started off my design with school colors and mascot.  So Maroon and Silver and a Knight (they also use navy but I didn't know how much so just went with what I know). 

I stamped the background with my stamp positioner and Memento ink so I could get deep coverage.  Then I lined up tape and foiled the silver lines by burnishing the foil into the tape.  All that sounds easy but took long enough to do.

Then I decided to take a leap of faith and learn to use my Silhouette Cameo.  I stamped my graduation hat and knight and a diploma on cardstock and scanned them into my computer and then used the Silhouette software to combine the mortar board and the knight into one image to make a cut file.  I never seem to start with the easy things!  I managed it with the help of YouTube and a bit of patience and love how it turned out.  I used my stamp positioner to line up the diecut with the stamped images starting with the mortar board which I stamped and masked to stamp the knight in.

I colored the knight with Copics and then die cut the circle with Nestabilities and stamped the "you did it!" in Versamark and clear embossed.  I think if I had to do it over I would have gone with white embossing to make it pop a little more.  After that I layered the circles under the graduating knight.  The last bit is that I decided to decorate the envelope to match in an ombre effect of gray to maroon.

Ingredients
Card Size - 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in;
Cardstock - Recollections 110lb: white; Bazzill Maroon; Foil Paper;
Stamps - High Hopes Stamps: Knight, Grad Cap; Stampendous: School Years; Kitchen Sink Stamps: Playful Numbers;
Ink - Memento: Tuxedo Black; Rhubarb Stalk; Gray Flannel;
Accessories - Silver foil; Dimensional tape.

ROAR! RIT Class of 2015

What do you do when 2 out of 3 of your son's roommates graduate? Two different cards? Two the same?  Subtlety or KAPOW!  Well, I tried to think of 2 different but equal designs and I couldn't so this is what I did.

I decided to go with the School colors of Orange and Brown and the School mascot, a tiger, as the focus.  And of course, the tiger HAD to be graduating!  Then I thought, what if it were a shaker card?  Everyone loves a skaker card right?  So I looked through my bead stash and even my sequin stash and nothing.  All my sequins seem to be Christmas themed and my beads are tiny.  

So I decided to experiment with Shrinky Dinks.  Yes!  All those little mortar boards and diplomas are Shrinky Dinks.  Did I mention how awesome his roommates are? In fact, the Shrinky Dinks mortar board is the same one on the tiger's head. Boom! I love it when a plan starts to come together.

I made the main background using a non-patented hinged stamp positioner so I could restamp as needed and keep it aligned.  The one I have isn't easy on this size card but I made it work.  I masked the tiger and stamped over him with the large tiger stripe background stamp.

Then it was time to decorate the envelope to match.  I went with the same background stamp and an ombre effect of the school colors but starting with black moving through brown to orange.  Who needs a specialist inkpad?!

Ingredients:

Card Size - 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in;

Cardstock - Recollections 65lb: white, kraft, orange, black; scrap packaging transparency;

Stamps - High Hopes Stamps: Tiger, Grad Cap, Diploma; Stampendous: Simply Safari, School Years; Hero Arts: Graduation; See D's: Plain Jane Alphabet; Cornish Heritage Farms: Tiger Stripe;
Ink - Memento: Tuxedo Black, Rich Cocoa, Tangelo;

Color - Copics;

Accessories - black cord.