Flying High Graduation Card

It's graduation time again and this year I had to make a card for my friend's brilliant daughter.  She graduated with high honors from Georgia Tech and will be starting a job at Microsoft in Seattle!! She is also an outdoorsy girl who loves adventure!  I don't have a lot of outdoor adventure themed stamps but I do have MFT's Up in the Air set and thought the hot air balloons would work for my card!  I saw a card by Barbara Anders on the MFT blog using the balloons with a skyline and thought it would be perfect.  Here is a link the card on Barbara's blog, she makes beautiful, inspiring cards!!  I wanted to personalize the card so I looked on line for a clip art Seattle skyline, printed it out and then fussy cut it.  Next I used MFT's new cloud stencil and radiating rays stencil to make the sky.  I colored two sets of balloons using the colors of Microsoft's logo for the big ones and Georgia Tech colors for the small ones.

I didn't want the sentiment to block the sky so I stamped it onto acetate with black Staz-on ink.  I used a fine line glue bottle to put tiny dots behind the letters and stuck it on.  You can't see any glue at all!!

I thought I'd make the inside of the card look like the balloons had flown far, far above the city so I did a pop up card with lots and lots of clouds.  I used the card stencil again with my Clarity brushes and Ballet Blue ink from Stampin' Up.  I made a little pocket to hold my gift and stenciled it to match the clouds behind it.

 Next I cut the post to hold the big balloon.  I didn't like how it looked with the paper line showing so I snipped a piece out and replaced it with a strip of acetate, which looked better.  I wanted the smaller balloons to pop out more than they would with foam tape so I took a strip of acetate 1 7/8" x 3/8" and scored it at 3/8", 3/4", 1 1/8" and 1 1/2".  This allowed me to fold the strip into a box which I glued together to keep it's shape.  The acetate box flattens when the card is folded but pops up a lot more than foam tape when the card is open.  I like how the balloons make a shadow on the sky!!

To hide the pop up mechanisms, I used a cloud die.  I'm sorry but I don't have it labeled so I'm not sure which company makes it.  I found some that would work from Lawn Fawn and Taylored Expressions.  The top line of the inside sentiment is from the Up in the Air stamp set and the Happy Graduation is from a Stampin' Up set called, Teeny Tiny Wishes.

Thanks so much for stopping by, I hope you like my graduation card :)  Keep stamping!
Janet