You're in the army now

A colleague got a new job in the air force, so a goodbye card was in order. I wanted to include the planes in the design in some way, so it didn't take me long to come up with this design and I truly like this card.

I did some research in the internet, trying to make a really simplified sketch (only the most essential features/shape) of a Hornet (because it's so well known here in Finland). I then made templates from the sketch and paperpieced the plane together. A bit of ink to the edges and tiniest bit of detail with a white gel pen and it was ready to soar into the sky, i.e. a panel of blue paper with inked edges.

I decided to make a "textual" card, so to add interest I needed different types of lettering. The white rub-ons were a must, nice and loopy, reminiscent of the streaks planes leave in the sky. I also wanted chipboard letters to add 3D feel, but didn't have any, so I made my own.

I cut the letters with Cricut (option "Shadow") from a piece of thin chipboard that had in its earlier life been the backing board of a note pad. It took a couple of trials and errors, keeping the chipboard in place with fingers (the sticky mat didn't hold it properly) and multi-cut (3 times) to get the letters, but in the end I managed to make them. Then I glued the letters diagonally on the back side of red-and-white stripy paper (to mimic those pouch-like flags in the airports), cut them out with a craft knife and sanded the edges smooth with an emery board. The paper was too bright and clean, so I distressed the letters by dabbing them with brown inkpad to tone them down. I added a punched clover leaf with a foam pad (on the card, not on the letter) for extra luck and drew the veins with gel pen.

The rest of the greeting went perfectly into a banner. I made a wavy banner shape using Word and changed the outline insivisible. I typed the greeting using wordart and tried to match the wave of the banner as close as possible, this involved a bit of tweaking and rotating. I added a slight shadow to the text, then printed it, cut it out and added it after the plane. A line of dots attached it to the plane.