Up in the sky

 Happy Friday!!!  It's time for a new challenge from the Cut It Up Challenge Blog.  This week, the challenge is: Look Up In the Sky

Here is my card for your inspiration:

I thought outside the box on this one and interpreted the theme differently from the way my teammates did.  My oldest daughter is graduating from High School and we threw her a big party a couple week ends ago.  A lot of people came to help celebrate and now she needs to write "thank you" cards to all those who gave her gifts.  (I've not been good about requiring my children to do this for birthdays and such, but I thought this was a bigger deal and involved more than just family--so it needed to be done).  So, I envisioned stamping several graduation caps as if they had been thrown up in the air in celebration and were now falling down through the sky.  They are all at different angles, flipping and falling all over themselves.  I used my Misti and created a little template for my self of where I wanted each cap to be stamped.  Then, I placed the stamp in the first position and stamped all 20 cards, before moving on to the next position, and the next, and  . . . well, you get the point.  I wanted to use a die cut sentiment (seeing as how we are a die cutting challenge) but knew it was going to be very tedious to die cut each letter and then try to adhere them one by one in a semi-straight line with correct spacing and all that.  So, I created a template for placing the letters as well.  I took a piece of card stock cut to an A2 size and carefully lined up the letters (in a straight line) with the spacing I wanted and then die cut them.  Then I used my cutting mat which has grid lines to make sure everything got on nice and straight (because I accidently cut my "template" word at a very slight angle.  I wanted to be able to create a "hinge" for the template so I could easily place a stamped card front on the mat, flip the template into place and not have to worry about placing it correctly each time.  So, I drew little pink notches on the grid lines that formed the corners of where I would place my card base.  I circled them with white in the photo below.  Then I laid the template over top of the card base and taped it in place using some washi tape.  You can also see that on the bottom (or actually top) right corner in the photo below:

                                                 

So, here is a card base in place with the template flipped over it ready to go.  I decided the easiest way to add glue was to place it on the card base within the cut out letters rather than putting the glue on the back of the die cut letters and probably dropping them and getting glue everywhere!

Then I could just pick up the black die cut letters and place them into the negative space on the template.  It worked really well for a while and then I think the template got a bit of glue on it and it got harder and harder to keep the letters in place while peeling the template back.  But it was still MUCH easier than placing each letter individually!

Once all the letters were placed, I peeled back the template (leaving it attached to the grid mat with washi tape.  Then I could just place the next card base within the pink corners and repeat the process.  It was still a little bit tedious, but I think it was much easier and faster than it would have been without the template.

                                          

To finish it up, I adhered a gold die cut "you" beneath the die cut letters and sprinkled a few gold stars around the graduation caps for a bit of interest.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you will hop over to the Cut It Up blog for the full details of the challenge and to see what the rest of the Design Team has created. 

Supplies:

Stamps: Repeat Impressions graduation cap

Dies: Papertrey Ink "Bookprint lower case alphabet"; Simon Says Stamp "you"; Sizzix/Stephanie Barnard "Framelets Flipits--stars"

Challenges:

Cards Galore #113--anything goes

Through the Purple Haze #206--anything goes

Unicorn Challenge #89--no patterned paper

Crafty Calendar--anything goes

Crafting Happiness #144--anything goes

Lil' Patch of Crafty Friends #209--anything goes

Penny's Challenge #550--anything goes

Fab 'n Funky #377--monochrome with a POP (I hope my gold counts as a pop of color)