Paper Squirrel: July 4th, 1776

Happy Independence Day

to my fellow Americans!

Sorry for the extended time between posts lately, but summer has sung her siren's song and I find myself drawn to the sun and warmth and away from the basement craft room. I do sneak down now and then and have some projects to share, they just won't come as often as usual until the weather turns. :-)

To celebrate America's birthday, I'm sharing a little wall art piece I made using layers of cardboard and lots of K&Co. elements.

The Details:

The base is two sheets of cardboard glued together with spray adhesive and covered with blue decorative paper. To create a frame, I used metallic border stickers and Tim Holtz metal corners. The border stickers were bright gold...TOO bright. To color them more to my liking, I stuck the strips to my craft mat and pounced on several caramel and metallic colors of alcohol ink. I pounced the same colors onto the metal corners so that everything coordinated. The edges were heavily distressed and accented with Frayed Burlap Distress Ink.

The inset section is also two sheets of cardboard covered with linen star paper. The edges were lightly distressed and accented with Old Paper DI. To this base, I layered a flag from K&Co's "Americana" diecuts and Uncle Sam poster. I didn't want the U.S. Army portion of the poster to show, so I ran a strip of glittered ribbon across those words, then added a piece of vintage lace trim below that and layered up more "Americana" diecut elements.

I got the red glitter letters on clearance because several of them had fallen off the backing and were clumped up at the bottom of the package. (I'm a thrifty squirrel!) Given their poor performance in their own packaging, I gave these a good coat of glue to make sure they stay put! TIP: tweezers are your friend when positioning letter stickers and small embellishments of any kind...if you don't have craft tweezers in your toolbox, trust me, you need them!
The metal label holder was a dull silver color, so I whipped out the same AI's and made it match the rest of my metal elements.

Challenges:
Unique Crafters Challenge Blog: July - Patriotic
Going Grey with Scrap-Creations: 4th of July
Party Time Tuesdays: PTT#75 - Be Patriotic...Show Your Country's Colors (USA)
My Craft Spot: Monday Challenge #62 - 4th of July & Canada Day
Inspiration Emporium: July Monthly Challenge - For the Love of Red, White, and Blue

Supplies:
Cardstock:	Stampin’ Up! ‘Ultrasmooth Vanilla’
Patterned Paper:	K&Co. ‘American Flag Gold Star’
Inks:	Distress Ink ‘Frayed Burlap’, ‘Old Paper’; Alcohol Ink ‘Copper Mixative’, ‘Gold Mixative’, ‘Silver Mixative’, ‘Ginger’, ‘Mushroom’, ‘Latte’
Embellishments:	K&Co. diecuts ‘Americana’, Clearly Yours ‘Patriotic Sayings’; vintage lace; Starform stickers ‘Outline’; Distress Stickles ‘Old Paper’; Stickles ‘Xmas Red’; SU! label plate, brads; Tim Holtz corners; Bo-Bunny combo stickers ‘Et Cetera’; Paper Studio chipboard letter stickers; ribbon
Tools:	TH paper distresser; Glue dots ‘Pop Up’; 3M spray adhesive; Making Memories ribbon glue; Tombow Mono Aqua Glue
Misc:	cardboard