A Goodbye Card

It is a sad day in my world. Well, sad for ME, but very good for the other person. A co-worker has been promoted and is moving out of our group and on to head up a different group in another location. This is very good for him - he's worked hard for it and very much deserves it. *I* am sad because he is an incredible resource, very smart, very funny, a great lunch companion, and ... I may never have FroYo again. :( So I haz a sad.

I was asked if I could make him a card (of course I could!), so I made this:

I grabbed all the appropriate Paper Smooches sentiments and made them into "flags" to celebrate the joy of his accomplishment. The "manly" paper is from a pack of ancient papers I re-discovered in my collection, and I paired it with Night of Navy. Very guy-ish. I had the idea for banners, but when I wrapped some baker's twine around the layers, it took on a very flag-waving look, and I loved it!

I still wanted to weep, so I put this on the inside:

I KNOW! So not like me. My co-workers loved it, and we've all written our little blurbs in there. We have lunch scheduled for Friday. *sniff*

Several people have asked about my buttons, and even though SCS did a way better job than I could with a tutorial, I thought I'd show you my process.

For the round buttons, choose two punches one step off of each other. These are 1/2" and ~1/4". My other button was 1" and 3/4". As long as one is smaller, it works:

Punch 5 of the larger circles and 2 of the smaller ones:

You will discard the two smaller circles, or put them in your UFO pile for later. Next, line up the larger circle punch over the small hole:

Center it and punch it out, giving you a ring. Do this for both small circles, so you'll end up with 5 big circles and 2 rings:

Stack the big circles, one at a time. I use my 2-way glue pen for adhesive, as it lets me pick up the stack and center the circles as I go. Once they are all stacked, you have a button:

Next add the two rings, one at a time, to the top of the button, adjusting them as you go. Ta-da: a button:

I skip the Crystal Effects layer, partly because it's a mess (although it does look fabulous), partly because it takes several hours to dry properly (where's the instant gratification in that?!), but mostly because I'm lazy, and I've convinced myself the matte look is just fine.

For the hole, I take a pencil, make a dot in the center of the button, then use my Crop-a-dile to punch a hole. For a bigger button - say, 1", I'd do 2 holes. If you're going to do the Crystal Effects step, you'd do that after you'd punched the holes.

This time I used some Vintage Brads for the centers. Since the banners were popped up on Dimensionals, I put the brad through the button and the banner so the legs of the brad wouldn't show. Here's the finished card again:

I hope he likes it. I also hope we go to PF Chang's for lunch. It will help me get over the big empty in our aisle.

Thanks for stopping by!