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