Happy Retirement Chris and the Anatomy of a Card

Well June 29 th has finally arrived and it's a bittersweet day at my Dialysis unit. After many, many years as a nurse, my boss, Christine, has retired. She had a fabulous send off with lots of presents, cards and well wishes for the future.

 Of course I couldn't let an event like this go by without making some little gift to commemorate it...here's a pic of the framed LO I gave her today.

There's a bit of a story behind this photo. Christine is actually an English lady and though she's been in Canada for many years now, she still holds her native land and the Royal family in high regard. { and yes,her nickname at work is MOTHER!} . Chris was all excited about the upcoming nuptuals between Prince William and Kate Middleton { obviously this was last year}. My co-worker , Carolyn got the brilliant idea that we should make Chris a fancy hat to wear while she was watching the wedding! So we took a facepan, covered it with a lovely blue linen saver and tied a ribbon of medical gauze around it. I then proceeded to make some pink roses from our disposable paper washclothes , and cut green leaves from the back of an x-ray requistion form. See how handy my scrapbooking skills are in real life!!!  We brought Chris into the center of our unit { the better to expose her to EVERYONE ---  patients and all }  and sat her down . We then made a little speech about the royal wedding, her english roots, blah blah blah...and presented her with her lovely wedding hat and a matching set of blue latex free gloves{ can't go to a royal wedding without your gloves!}. Chris is such a good sport! She loved her wedding attire and more than willingly posed  with a teacup for a photo. I really wanted to use this photo  for my goodby gift...and many thanks to Regina  for A} taking the photo to begin with and B} sending me ANOTHER copy of it last night when I was all in a panic because Rob had revamped my computer and I couldn't find the photo anywhere! BTW, the little limerick down in the corner reads:
        " From across the pond,Christine once came,
           English nurse was her claim to fame.
           There'll never be another
           Like our dear Mother
           And dialysis will never be the same."

And of course I had to make a homemade card to go with my gift. I'm currently involved with a card swap over at Crop Circles ... a Facebook group of Nfld girls . We had to make 18 identical cards to exchange. This design is what I came up with ...so I made one extra and just swapped out the "On Your Special Day " sentiment for "Happy Retirement".
 So here's the card:

and here's a quick little photo tutorial on how I made it.

Here are all my beginning pieces:

 The leaves were stamped on white cardstock with Versamark watermark ink using my all time fav leaf stamp from Heartfelt Creations , then sprinkled with clear emboss powder and heat set. I then rubbed in distress ink in "Shabby Shutters". Then I wiped the leaves with a paper towel thus removing the ink form the embossed areas and creating this pretty white and green leaf.

The banner pieces were punched using this awesome punch from Stampin' Up.

The punched egde center strip is also from Stampin' Up and the butterflies are from  Martha Stewart using this triple punch that I picked up recently.

The flower was made by first embossing a scrap of pink paper with the "Textile' folder and my Cuttle bug.

I then punched two circles , 1.5" and 2" and cut them as follows:

These are very similiar to the Tim Holtz Tattered flowers die cuts.  I then rounded them by cupping them in my hand and pressing the rounded edge of a paper piercer into it and then used the pointy end
to roll the edges. Add a little ink in colour of your choice  to the petal edges. Glue together , alternating the petals and finish with a pearl in the center.

 Start by adding your punched and inked edge strip to the bottom third of your card. Draw the black line around the perimeter of the card next { it actually added a lot to the card and helped to draw the eye in}. Now add one branch of the leaves to the rt hand side of the card and top with your handmade flower. Cut the other leaves apart and slip two under the flower as shown in the photo.

Now adhere your three banner pieces...don't worry if the corners overlap a little as you'll be covering them with the smallest butterflies.

Adhere the banner strip { I rounded mine a little but flat looks just as nice} and adhere the larger three burreflies /pearls as shown in the photo.

 Here's a little tip if you don't have a lot of sentiment stamps...use your COMPUTER! I simply typed out my sentiment in a Microsoft Office document using the font and script size of my choice. I double spaced the sentiment and just filled the page{ I think I fit nine to a page} . I then printed it on cardstock  and trimmed them all into the banner shape and inked the edges . It is amazing all the things you can create in Microsoft if you just play around with the fonts and stuff! Who needs stamps? GASP...no! scratch that! I cannot believe I just said that! LOL My Stampin' Up Rep, KATHY would kill me if she heard me say that!

Anyway, I finally come to the end of my rather long winded blog posting for today. Thanks for popping by and I hope you all have a great long weekend. Happy Birthday Canada and Happy Retiremnet to my dear friend , Christine!  Toodles