Thanks to the generous peeps at Operation Write Home, there was a new
Stampendous Father's Day stamp and two yards of May Arts ribbon in my
mailbox tonight when I got home from work. I won a contest on the
Operation Write Home YouTube channel last week in which I had to give a
shout out to my dad. I think the biggest compliment he has ever been
paid was from my maternal grandmother (his mother-in-law). She has told
me more times than I can count, "you'll never find a man as good as
your father." She loves him like her own son and when I see her light
up with him around, I think he might just be her favorite child. Due to
a stroke, my grandmother hasn't been able to talk in a couple of years,
but every time she sees my father, she is nothing but smiles and
giggles. Not many women think so highly of their sons-in-law.
Back to the card! The sentiment, "Dad, you're my hero," made me
think of my super hero stamps. They haven't been inked up lately, but
that's because my mom borrowed them before Christmas and still has
them. Thankfully, I had a few left over images that I'd stamped and
never colored in. I got to work with my Bic Markers (clothing) and
Copics (face). Super Dad needed to fly over something, so I grabbed a
Unity Stamp Co stamp of a city scape from a Valentine's Set and stamped
it twice so I'd have enough to put across the whole card. Super Dad
needed clouds, too, so I used printed paper by American Crafts. I stamped the sentiment on patterned paper, which I generally avoid, but such a subtle pattern didn't seem to take away from the stamp at all. I called attention to it with some of the striped twill by May Arts that Sandy sent and attached it with a staple.
I'm
also proud to say that I revised this card thanks to a month of card
makeover inspiration on the OWH FB page. Here are the before and after
shots. The more I look at them, the more I realize just how much of a
difference a simple mat can make around an image. I thought I was doing
the image a favor by fussy cutting it, but it needed to be the focal
point. In the first card, the sentiment stole the attention away from
the character. Thank goodness I was able to peel up the dimensional
adhesive and fix it! My other change was cutting the cloud paper straight across instead of following the pattern. I think that cleaned up the design some.
This card will join the others in my OWH box. Are you working on the Muscle Card challenge, due April 30?
Cards shipped to OWH in 2012: 302 blank and 200 AnyHero (as of March 4)
Cards shipped to OWH in 2011: 1695