Star Theme Thank You Card

Star Theme Thank You Card Supply List. Links are for your convenience, not referrals.

• Card Base: 6.25 in x 4.5 in (You can make your own with a piece of card stock measuring 6.25 in x 9 in, and scoring at the 4.5 in mark.)
• Design paper: 6 in x 4.25 in (I used the stars and stripes from the Magic Moments paper by Miss Kate Cuttables)
• Black Card Stock: 5.50 in x 3.75 in for the mat and 2.50 inch x 2.75 in for the thank you stamp
• White Card Stock: 5.25 in x 3.50 in
• Fiskars Essential sayings clear stamps
• Fiskars Wedding day clear stamps
• Acrylic Stamping Block
• Pigment Ink in White, Black, Red, and Yellow. (Colors were chosen to match the design paper. If you're using different paper, I would adjust the colors as needed)
• Star embellishment, or Star punch measuring approximately 1.25-1.5 in
• Adhesives (I used 10 foam squares and a tape runner for this project) 

Assembly:

     I always like to start my cards by cutting out my base pieces of paper and lining everything up to make sure that it's going to look the way that I want it to. Nothing is adhered yet, but I do this prior to any stamping so that I can make sure that my sizing looks good. For example, I typically like mats and frames to be about 1/4 of an inch larger in width and length. However, I really liked the stars and stripes paper for this project and wanted it displayed more than just a little around the edges. Therefore, I went with a 1/2 inch larger in width and length than the next piece in that layer so that enough of the design would show around the edges. Now that I'm confident that I like the spacial arrangement of the card I moved on to the stamping of my designs.
    
     I wanted to make my own unique pattern for the predominant white background so I searched my stamp collection for different gratitude stamps. Luckily, there are a wide variety of stamps that have some version of thanks associated to the set and I choose the wedding day thank you and three different thanks from the essential sayings set. I liked these because they varied in script and size, however you're not limited to using the exact stamps that I used. Search the stamps you have on hand and see if you have anything that will work. Make sure to try and switch up in sizes to keep the background a little bit more interesting.

     Now that you're ready to stamp go ahead and start with your largest stamp first and work down to your smallest stamp. I choose the thank you from the wedding day stamps to start and stamped the smallest black card with the sentiment using white pigment ink first. I then stamped the sentiment in yellow, red, and black on the white base. Some helpful hints for this step include:

• Start with your lightest ink first and move up to your darkest. This will prevent contaminating lighter ink pads with darker ink, as well as help ensure that your image is the color you were going for. 
• Keep baby wipes or a stamp cleaner pad next to you to clean off your stamps between colors. Still stamp lightest to darkest in case you didn't get everything.
• I like to keep a piece of scrap paper next to me to make sure all of the ink has been removed from the stamp. Simply use your stamp on the scrap paper first, if something comes off the stamp it's not clean enough to move on to the next color yet.
• Using the largest stamp first ensures that you have the space for it on your background.
• Also, as you can see in my picture don't be afraid to stamp off of the paper. Use a silicon mat behind your paper for easy cleaning and just wipe the excess off with the baby wipe. 
• Progressively get smaller with your stamps making sure to alternate between your chosen colors. 
• The background is done when you're happy with it. Don't worry if a few stamps didn't go perfectly as planned, remember you're placing something on top of this background so some mistakes can be hidden. Feel free to place the smallest gratitude piece on top of the background at any time so that you can monitor your progress.

     Once your background is complete you can go ahead and assemble the card. I would recommend that you lay everything down in order one last time to make sure you're still happy with how everything turned out. The first draft of this card included silver ink instead of yellow. While the background itself looked okay, I hated the way that it looked when I laid everything down. Since I hadn't adhered anything yet, I simply re-stamped the background with yellow and liked the final product much better.

     I adhered the stars and stripes paper to the card base with a double sided tape runner so that it would lay flat with the paper. I used the same tape runner to adhere my custom thank you background to the black mat that it was designed to sit on and the star to the black thank you rectangle. I used the foam squares to adhere the black mat with the thank you paper to the stars and stripes paper, as well as the black thank you portion with star to the thank you background to give the card a bit of dimension. You don't want to adhere every layer with foam adhesive or your card won't fit into an envelope as easily. Make sure that you're considering your delivery method when developing your cards!

    As a final step, I went ahead and stamped the envelope with another gratitude stamp. Don't forget to include the envelope in your creative process, it adds just a little extra something to your project.

Good luck with your creations, I hope you'll share some of your projects!