Patriotic Challenge

It's the 20th today, and that means it's time to make a card for the Dirty Dozen Alumni Challenge. Here are the rules we had to follow.

Challenge Focus: "Inside & Out"......stamp and decorate both the inside of your card AND the outside of the envelope. (any card size is ok) Please upload two photos.
Required Element: Patriotic element - interpret this any way you like (ex. color scheme, sentiment, image, whatever)
Restricted Element: No ribbon
Optional - Send your card to the troops so that they can in turn mail it home to family or friends (all themes and occasions welcome). If you choose to do so, Beate has agreed to accept them and send them to her husband. Please include the envelope with the card and mail them to Beate. Thanks!

Now, to the construction of the card:
I realize others have made star shapes before me, and I also know that my good friend Carolyn King (Cammie on SCS) has made many cards with the centers being the actual card, but I couldn't find one to link too. So those of you who have ventured into the card shape world before me...thank you so much for the inspiration. It really helped me this week.

For the star shape, I just photocopied my Cuttlebug star diecut and magnified it a gazillion times. *grin* I then cut it out and traced it onto Kraft CS and framed it with chocolate chip. The center circle opens to the left. To make that I just folded chocolate chip cs in half and put a nestabilities circle slightly off the fold and ran it through my cuttlebug. I then put Basicgrey magnetic snaps on the inside under the cs pieces so it stays closed. I love those little magnets. They're quite flat and VERY strong. The image: Biker Bee (Stampendous), is colored with copics and is stamped over with SU's Sanded bg stamp in Creamy Caramel to further distress it. The background stamp is the Broad Stripe Backgrounder from Cornish Heritage Farms. The punched star is also cuttlebug star diecuts. I sewed (very sloppily) around the edges, and wrapped some twine around a couple of the star points. (I was told twine was okay to use instead of ribbon...no buzzers here...*grin*)



Now for this challenge, we also had to decorate an envelope and the inside of the card. This is something I rarely do because it takes me hours, sometimes a whole day, to construct a card. So the thought of doing the inside and an envelope too makes me cringe. But, alas, to follow the rules, I did. The stamps I used were: Starstruck and Sanded (Stampin' Up)

Supplies:
Stamps - Biker Bee (Stampendous), Starstruck, Sanded (Stampin' Up), Broad Stripe Backgrounder (CHF)
Paper - Kraft, Chocolate Chip, Cranberry Crisp (Stampin' Up), White (Papertrey)
Ink - Black Soot, Vintage Photo, Walnut (Ranger Distress Ink)
Accessories - Cuttlebug Star diecuts (Provocraft), Circle Nestabilities (Spellbinders), twine, sewing machine, sponge, copics, scotch mounting tape, basicgrey magnetic snaps