Golden Sunshine – Childhood Cancer Awareness Card

I made this card for Lee’s “Stamp Out Cancer – Challenge #8 – Many Colors” for StampTV. For this challenge, we are to make a card using colors to bring awareness to and honor those affected by cancer other than breast cancer, BUT we may NOT use any pink…..not at all!  (Sadly, this site is no longer active.)

September was Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and the ribbon for childhood cancer is gold.

My daughter. Kelly, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer three years ago, when she was 12. She was successfully treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and continues to be cancer-free today. I wanted to do a project with the thyroid cancer colors (blue, teal, and pink), but we are not permitted to use pink for this challenge! So I decided to use the color for all childhood cancers instead.

The cheery, yellow paper I used is really a great color for a card inspired by Kelly. She was so strong throughout her treatment and always had such a positive, cheery attitude which I find remarkable for a child going through all that she did!

This card is also being entered in the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – Use Watercolors.  For this challenge, we could “use watercolor paints, pencils, crayons, gelatos, distress inks, whatever we can think of.”  We could “create backgrounds, color stamped images or die cuts, or color a stamp, spritz with water and use the direct to paper technique.”(http://www.simonsaysstampblog.com/wednesdaychallenge/simon-says-use-watercolors/)

For my card, I used stamps from the Gina K Designs “Sunkissed Autumn” set, and stamped them in black archival ink on watercolor paper. I needed a waterproof ink since I planned to watercolor the background, and I didn’t want the ink to smear.

I masked my stamped image with Frisket masking liquid. I applied the Frisket with a fine liner paint brush and allowed it to dry. Frisket is a watery substance that dries like rubber cement and creates a mask on the image.

For the background, I used Tim Holtz faded jeans, broken china, peeled paint, and mowed lawn distress inks. I wiped some of each on my craft mat, spritzed the ink with water, and painted it on the card with a brush. (I am not at all good at watercoloring!!! It took several tries, and it’s still not exactly what I was going for. I need to practice this technique since I really like the watercolored look!)

After my background was watercolored, the frisket mask was rubbed off with a rubber cement eraser (or you can use your finger). I colored the image using Tim Holtz distress markers: tattered rose (for her skin) and vintage photo, tea dye, wild honey, and mustard seed (for her hair). I tried to blend these hair colors and discovered it is next to impossible to blend markers on watercolor paper! After coloring, I paper pieced her dress and the sun balloon with the same yellow paper I used for my mat.

My watercolored panel was mounted on a small white mat. This was then adhered to a wider yellow mat using a piece of printed paper from a Recollections paper pack (not sure which one since the cover came off a while ago), and then all was attached to a white card base.

Here is the thank you note I made to thank people for their support and gifts while Kelly was undergoing treatment.  She loves giraffes and had surgery on her throat, so …

Thanks for checking out my card projects!

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