Home of the Brave

Happy Birthday, America!  This week, we are celebrating Independence Day with the Craft Squad monthly blog hop!  Our theme for the month is “Home of the Brave” and we have some really cute projects to share with you!  We have a short hop this month, as many of our bloggers are on vacation, but I hope you’ll stick around anyway!  It looks like I am the start of this hop, so if you came here from Roxie’s Stamping Room, you are in the right place.

When I think “Home of the Brave,” a lot of great people come to mind.  I’ve known a lot of firefighters and policemen, doctors and nurses, and, of course military veterans.  I even think teachers are brave (and before you tsk tsk that, you just go coral about 30 Third Graders!).  But the one group of people who are most prominently on my mind right now are our young men and women currently serving on active duty in the military.  I have a small handful of them that I like to send cards and letters to, so I thought I would share one of those with you today.  The other card is a general “Happy 4^th of July” sort of card that I will be sending to my son who is away at college doing physics research.  I miss him, so I’m sending him a card.

The construction of these cards was pretty simple.  For “Land of the Free”, I used a series of die cuts from the Cricut Stand and Salute cartridge.  The patterned paper was a scrap left over from a Stampin’ Up DSP pack.

For “Home of the Brave”, I used the USA outline from Close to My Heart’s Adventure USA and black Staz-on to stamp on an old scrap of stary vellum before cutting it out.  I started with a white background, but didn’t like the way the map looked on it, so I switched to Stampin’ Up’s Not Quite Navy, which I think looks much better.  The loop-d’ loop (CTMH Sightseer) and star (Adventure USA) were stamped with white pigment ink and embossed.  “Home of the Brave” and the fireworks came from the Cricut Stand and Salute cartridge.

I wanted to stamp a sentiment into the “Home of the Brave” card, and I didn’t want to have to emboss it, so instead I inserted a piece of white cardstock and stamped on that.  The star and sentiment both came from Stampin’ Up’s Service and Sacrifice set, which was retired a few years ago.

That’s it for me.  Now it’s time to hop on over to Treasure Chest of Memories where Laura has another great project for you!  And be sure to comment on our pages to let us know how you liked our projects!