Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day, everyone! I finished up my Father's Day card last night, so today I'm going to post pictures of the process of making it. Now, please keep in mind that I don't own a Cricut machine, so everything on my cards is either handmade or embellishments that I've purchased (such as the chipboards). I've also been exhausted after starting classes this week and working two full days in a row, so this card isn't my best work, but I feel it should be posted anyway, despite the fact that I'm not really happy with it. But hey, I have to start somewhere, and I'm hoping that this blog will help me improve my card making skills. With that said...

This is the final picture of the card. My dad is really into patriotism, so I decided to make a patriotic card for him. The stars didn't work out as well as I hoped they would (I wanted them to have more of a sponge effect), but oh well.

Here are the materials that I used to make this card:

Sorry about the bad lighting and ugly-looking carpet (it really doesn't look that bad, I promise) but this was the best I could do for only having one night to complete the card. I used:

-Patriotic Collage paper made by The Paper Studio

-Vintage Flags paper made by The Paper Studio

-Red D A D chipboard embellishments

-Regular scissors and zig zag scissors (the border of the card is zig zagged, it's hard to see)

-Elmer's spray adhesive and Elmer's Craft Bond Memory Glue Pen

-White Anita's All-Purpose Acrylic Paint and homemade star sponge

-Sharpie, tacks, exacto knife, and paper trimmer

To make the stars, I created my own star sponge stamp. To do this, I made a star template in a word processor, tacked it to a sponge, traced it, and then cut it with an exacto knife. Here's the more detailed process:

Not perfect, but it worked.

Yes, this is a Thanksgiving-themed paper plate.

And that's basically it! It took about two hours total, with having to wait for the paint and glue to completely dry. That's probably WAY longer than it should have taken, but hey, I'm just a beginner. :) I realize now that another goal of starting this blog was to show that awesome cards can be made by anyone, even on a low budget and with a small amount of materials. Part of the fun for me is figuring out   how to make my cards more creative with only a small collection of supplies, such as creating the sponge stamp. 

I hope you enjoyed my first "real" blog post, and thanks for stopping by. Many more to come! :)

Ashley