CONGRATS. GRAD!

Hi there,

Well I'm back from a whirlwind visit to Scotland, Italy and back to Scotland. My eldest son Struan, graduated from St. Andrews University, so the family went over to attend the ceremony.

While we were there, we had also organized a family reunion the Sunday after we arrived on the Saturday. We got a great turnout - 56, including my parents, my three brothers, all my aunts and uncles, cousins, nephew's and nieces and one fourth generation baby! There were also 6 close family friends.

After the Graduation on the Tuesday, David, Calum and I took a week's vacation to Rome, Italy. We had a wonderful time, staying with my first landlady and landlord, visiting old friends (new for Calum), lying on the beach, checking out some old haunts and restaurants. Rome has been cleaned up considerably from when I worked there 30 years ago. It was also while some of the Euro soccer games were being played, so Calum got to watch a few games with real Italians, which was a real treat for him!

We then came back through Scotland for a few days, to pick up bags that Struan had accumulated over the four years, and flew back on the 4th of July. Mum and Dad will come out to us on the 21st of July, so it wasn't too hard to leave this time.

So that's the last three weeks in a nutshell, now back to reality! For my card today, I'd like to share what I made for Struan's Graduation.

I created the background, the St. Andrew's Cross, the Saltire, the national Scottish flag by adhering a piece of Super Adhesive Tape to white cardstock. After removing the protective backing, I lay 3/4" Tear-ific Tape down from corner to corner and applied Cobalt Glaze to the remaining sticky areas.

The backing was then removed from the two strips (I cut the backing of the top strip where it crossed over the bottom strip using an exacto blade). Then Cloud Nine was applied to the cross. This piece was layered to a blue layer, before the glossy white card base.

I used the Impression Obsession Die (DIE296-T) to cut out the graduates from black cardstock, I then covered the piece with Versamark and heat embossed with Black Detail, to give them a shinier appearance. They were attached with foam squares for dimension. The sentiment and scroll (from Graduation Set 435) were stamped together on white glossy cardstock with Versamark and then this was heat embossed with Cerulean (one of the detailed Tuscany colors, which work really well on script and detailed images).

I then cut this out as a banner and added to the finished card with Foam Squares again for dimension.

 ... and that finished off my card for my graduated boy! Here he is on graduation day:

I'd like to join in the following challenges with this card:

The Sister Hood of Crafters: Create your own background

Dream Valley Challenges: The color of your flag (Scotland)

Hope you've enjoyed my share today! Will be back again soon, have a lot of catching up to do!

Hugs,

Shona