Whew

My Matron Of Honor just graduated from the Saskatchewan Police College on May 25th. She did things like getting pepper sprayed, driving and shot gun training. So I thought she deserved a very special Graduation card.
I've never made a side step card before. I had a cut file for one that I imported into my Silhouette. However once I got it cut I discovered that the left side/front panel was only 2". Well that would make for a very small image. So I did some tinkering in the Silhouette program and made it 3 1/4". Much better. I used Frantic Graduate digi stamp from Sassy Cheryl's Digis. I colored her using Prismacolor pencils. I'm getting better. I've done a lot of browsing around Google images of colored digi stamps. I haven't tried blending yet but my shading is getting better. I drew some more grass at the bottom. Then I used my Silhouette to create a mask for my image and some clouds. I used Tim Holtz Distress Inks in Pine Needles and Broken China to do the sky and grass backgrounds. I've never 'masked' before. It was tricky because I wasn't sure how to tape my small clouds down without covering the clouds. I did it by working in sections and moving the tape. Really like the look.
For my sentiment I used MachineScript font and adjusted the character spacing until all the letters were touching. Then I used the weld button under the modify tab to join them all together. I used the offset button to create the mat. The Police hat was a Silhouette image. The badge I downloaded from the Internet from the Public Register of Arms, Flags and Badges of Canada. I sure hope that's not illegal ;o) The accents are fabric covered, striped brads.

My lessons learned: I used my B00 Copic to outline my image AFTER I did my masking/inking. That worked really well because my mask was just a bit larger than my image so my inking did not go right to the edges of my image. The outline filled that space really well. This was a lot of work to put together, took the whole day, but soooo worth it. I really like the way it turned out, especially my coloring.

I'd like to share my card at:

Paper Pretties graduation, closes May 22,

Moving Along with the Times keep it real, closes May 23,

4 Crafty Chicks graduation, closes May 23,

Stampin' Sisters in Christ build up your card/layers, closes May 27,

My Craft Spot congratulations, closes May 28,

Sassy Cheryl's favorite color combination (blue & white), closes May 28,

The Crazy Challenge 3D, closes May 28,

Tuesday Throwdown 3D, closes May 29,

Papertake Weekly national colors (red & white), closes May 29,

Creative Card Crew dimension, closes June 3