Friends with Flair....shhh.... a little early....

I'm determined not to miss posting on Unity's Friends with Flair Friday so here I am, early this time.

After decades of racking our gift-giving brains, my family seems to have come to the conclusion that gift cards and cash are the most fun. I try to design my cards around that thought sometimes. So in honor of my middle brother's 50th, a Ulysses S. Grant bill is tucked into his card in a fun way. Here's how.

I started by stamping my Unity wood slide postcard stamp on a parchment looking paper from DCWV's Once Upon a Time Stack. I then embellished it with two stamps from the June '11 KOTM (All Smiles): the cancelled stamp and the "sending wishes" block.

The fun part came from cutting out the inside of the cancelled stamp. By using foam tape only around three of the back edges of my postcard, I could insert a precisely folded bill back there so that Ulysses' face peeks out of the hole and he appears to be the stamp. The dilemma was what would happen once my bro removed the bill? I didn't want an empty space to show so I positioned more of my K&Co patterned paper underneath so that another postal stamp image would appear once Ulysses was gone, like so:

In keeping with the postal theme, I used a little twine on the lower panel of my easel card so it looks like a package. Adding the bevy of small butterflies from the Nov '10 KOTM (Picture Perfect) and the larger butterfly from the March '11 KOTM (Just You) gave a little more interest to the scene and, what do you know, now the card qualifies for the All Things Unity Challenge #34... *smile*

This weekend, I wish you packages tied up with string and a fun-filled holiday!

Cindy (aka Scrapcollectr)