Hello crafty friends! Today, I’m sharing the graduation card I made for my niece. It has a bold color scheme and the beautiful Aquapura Fae digi-stamp from Heartcraft Paper as the focal point. (If she looks familiar, you might remember her from the Hooked On You card I made a few months ago.)
For this card, I started by printing my digi-stamp onto cardstock. This image has both the mermaid and the fish. I colored them with my Copic markers and then cut them out with my ScanNCut. I die cut the pieces for a mortarboard and tassel from black and yellow cardstock. The cap came down a little too low so I trimmed about 1/8″ from the bottom edge and glued it in place on my mermaid.
For the water background, I ink blended Peacock Feathers, Mermaid Lagoon, and Seedless Preserves Distress Oxide inks onto an A2 size panel, as well as a scrap of cardstock that was large enough to die cut several leafy branches from. I sprinkled on water drops and absorbed them with a towel to lift some of the ink and create bubbles. When the pieces were dry, I adhered the A2 panel onto a yellow card base, and I die cut three branches from the scrap with a die from the Lynda Kanase Flower Basket Die Set.
For the yellow layers above and below my scene, I used wave dies to cut out a section from an A2 size panel of yellow pattern paper. I arranged the scene and glued the layers flat to my card, trimming away any pieces that extended off the sides.
To create the sentiment, I die cut the word congrats three times from yellow cardstock, and again from gold glitter paper. I glued the four layers together for a nice thick embellishment. Then, I stamped and embossed the rest of my sentiment onto black cardstock and cut it out with a fishtail banner. Normally to emboss white on black like this, I stamp with Versamark ink. This time I wanted to try it with my Versafine Clair pad because it gives me crisper impressions. Unfortunately, when I melted the white powder on top, some of the black ink bled up, resulting in a splotchy finish. I decided to use it anyhow because it lends itself to the slightly distressed look of the pattern and ink blended papers.
To finish the card, I glued the sentiments in place then added a few black flat back gems. I also gave the top of the mortarboard, the tassel, as well as her wings, fins, and tail, a healthy coat of shine with my Aqua Shimmer pen. I really like the way this turned out and I hope my niece does too. Especially, since I colored the mermaid to look like her. 😉
Do you have any graduation cards to make this year? If so, I hope you’ll give this idea a try! Thanks for stopping by today; I’ll be back soon with a set of box cards that got me thinking outside of the box.
This site uses affiliate links whenever possible, but only for products that I actually use and love.
