French Retirement Card

 This card was made for a colleague who was retiring.  Although she taught French and German, she was planning on spending some time in France after she retired, so that became my theme; the colour scheme was therefore an easy one!

 

The base card was a 20cm x 20cm white ready made card blank.  I built up the card one element at a time and then tried them in several layouts until I was happy.  The 3 smallest Labels 4 dies by Spellbinders were used to die cut the red, blue and white layers and the 'merci' stamp was added to the top white layer using black Versafine ink.  

The journey calligraphy stamp by Crafty Individuals was stamped and heat embossed using black Versafine ink and clear embossing powder onto a piece of white super smooth card; trimmed down and matted first onto the same red, then the same blue card as had been used for the 'merci' sentiment.  A narrow border was left each time.

 








I embossed a piece of white card with the Tim Holtz Postal Texture Fade embossing folder which comes in a set with a distressed frame folder.  I used Broken China and Festive Berries Distress ink to add colour - leaving a white section between to echo the French flag.  Once trimmed down, this was matted onto some black card leaving a very narrow border. 

Finally I layered blue and red card onto a piece of white and cut the whole thing out using the largest Postage Stamp die from the Marianne Craftables set.  An Eiffel Tower (also by Marianne) die cut from black card and laid over the top, completed the final element of the card.