The Free & the Brave

Page 33. That is the first thing I say when I hand the new catalog to someone. Everyone in my stamping club is also an Army Wife, so this stamp set was a big hit with them. My DH looks at the new catalogs and normally just rolls his eyes when I get excited about something. He saw "The Free & the Brave" stamp set and asked when I could order it.

I started with the saying stamp first. I wanted to highlight the main words of the phrase. I also wanted a good 'ol Red, White & Blue card. I had seen several cards where the focal image was surrounded by a dry embossed shape. I tried it using some chipboard I had, but just couldn't get it to work just yet. I need a larger stylus. I did like the idea of a scallop panel to set off the phrase. I used a piece of chipboard and traced it onto the cardstock. I had to add a scallop to make it wider to fit. I simply stopped before the end and moved the piece over one loop to make it bigger. I cut the scallop out with my sissors.

The stars at the bottom are heat embossed with silver EP. I would like to have all the words embossed also, but don't have the patience to do that in three colors and make it all line up perfectly. I used my markers to color the stamp in the three colors, huffed and stamped on Whisper White cardstock.

I then sat down to color my soldier image. I pulled out my stampin' pastels and my blender pen. For the flag I used Brilliant Blue and Rose Red. There are only 11 stripes on the flag and the lower left hand side is a little tough to determine where the stripes are. I decided that the flag was curled up there and the stripes were going more up instead of across. Choosing colors for the soldier was a little more difficult. The new uniform colors are not really found in SU! pastels. I first used Black and colored in his goggles and end of his riffle. With some Mellow Moss I randomly colored in his uniform leaving many blanks. I used grey to fill in the gaps. For his face I used Apricot Appeal with some Caramel and grey to dirty up his face. Since the flag was to be tattered a little I lightly went over the stars and stripes with some grey to take the brightness off. For the large area left behind the image I used my finger and rubbed in some Creamy Caramel chalk.

The main card base in Creamy Caramel, stamper with the background "Sanded" in Basic Brown. The Mellow Moss panel is stamped in Mellow Moss with the word "Liberty" from the saying stamp in the set. The stars are also from the stamp set. I stamped them in versamark to give them some texture and then punched them out with my small star punch. It fits perfectly.