Getting Cricky Guest Designer - For the Troops

I am so excited to be the Guest Designer for today's Simply Sunday challenge at Getting Cricky. This week's theme is "For the Troops" and we are creating cards to honor the men and women in our military. The Design Team will be featuring Kristal's Freedom Isn't Free Stamp Set ($1 from each set goes to Intrepid Fallen Heroes which is a non-profiit organization that provides rehabilitative services to US military members who are severely disfigured from combat). I do not own that particular stamp set, but I do own a couple of the other sets. They are fabulous stamps! I just love how cleanly they stamp and many of the sets are mix-n-match so you can create whatever sentiment you like. And the purchase of every stamp set benefits a worthy charity. You can see all of the stamp sets HERE.

I have 2 cards to share with you today. Here is the first card.




The background paper is from EK Success (Inspirables Fresh & Funky line). It made me think of fireworks when I saw it in my stash so I thought it would be perfect for this project. The flag ribbon is an Offray Microspool from Joann's. The America title is a cutter file from Shirley Clark and I adhered it with pop dots. As I mentioned above, I don't own Kristal's Freedom Isn't Free stamp set, but I loved the sentiment in the set that says "Home of the Free, Because of the Brave." I made my own using the Zipty Do font and cut it from vinyl. (I used the word land instead of the word home. I'm not sure why - maybe because I had the Star Spangled Banner playing in my head.) The stars are K & Company Americana pillow stickers. I added pen stitching with a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen around the outside of the card, as well as to the America title.

Here is the second card I created.



This card is an A2 size card. Usually I make my cards 5x7 because I like the bigger size for adding lots of embellishments and I buy the pre-made cards and envelopes in bulk. But for this card I really wanted to use my Stars embossing folder and that is designed for the smaller A2 card. I used blue cardstock for the background and then sanded the embossed areas to expose the white core. The eagle and the word freedom are from Visual Designs by Chris. The eagle is adhered with pop dots. I added K & Company pillow stickers to two of the embossed stars. Finally, I added some pen stitching around the outside of the card with a blue marker.

I hope you enjoyed the cards I shared with you today. Be sure to stop by Getting Cricky to see what the Design Team has created for this week's challenge.

Thanks for stopping by!