A Bar Mitzvah Celebration

I'm still waiting to be able to unpack all my craft stuff! :( Right now, I'm literally crafting out of boxes. I have to open boxes, take stuff out, and put it all back when I'm done crafting. This makes it not so fun to get any crafting done. But, my bookshelves will be here soon, and I'll be able to get stuff unpacked and organized, and I can't wait!!

While waiting, a dear friend of ours is having the honor of giving her son a Bar Mitzvah! I've never made a Bar Mitzvah card before, so this is my first one. I asked her what her sons favorite color(s) was and she said blue.

So, this is the card I came up with for him. I went more "classy" than rugged as I do on most of my masculine cards, because this is a very special event, and I wanted to give him a very special card to show we were proud of how classy he's carried himself to make it to this point of his life. We aren't surprised, he has an AMAZING family!

Here's a preview, click below to see the rest...

I had a lot of fun making this card, but I also did a lot of fussing over it. I was having trouble picking out paper for the card...I could only open 1 box of my scrapbook paper (out of the 5 huge boxes I have), and I didn't have many sheets with blue on it. The few sheets I did have, I'm lucky that I was able to find some embellishments to match, even closely match!

The front of the card came together quickly once I picked all of the paper and embellishments to use.
I taped and glued the stripped paper to the tan cardstock and punched some holes with the crop-a-dile and used some black eyelets. Once that was done I went onto working on the main focal point of the front of the card.

For this part of the card, I used some Stampin' Up! Brilliant blue and the Stampin' Up! 'Stars of David' stamp set. I stamped it on some white cardstock and inked the edges and then attached it to brown cardstock.

The piece that it's attached to is actually a K&Company Journal Tag. It is folded in the middle and when it's unfolded there are lines to write on. It looks like the ones below...

I inked the edges of the tag, I went with SU! Chocolate Chip all the way around the border, and along the top on the fold. Around the scalloped border above the sentiment on the tag I used the SU! Brilliant Blue to ink it. Instead of using this as an actual journal tag, I used score tape and sealed the tag closed. It originally had a thin baby blue grosgrain ribbon on it, but I took that off (I saved it to use for another project later). I replaced the baby blue ribbon with the wide blue silk ribbon as seen below. I fussed with this ribbon for about an hour and a half (on and off) until I got the bow just right. It still wasn't as good as I wanted it, but as it is shown is as good as I had gotten it the whole time fussing with it.
I used a black Zig marker and went over the word Celebrate. It was on the tag in a dark blue color, but it didn't stand out at all. It needed some pop, and this is the best way that was going to happen.

I used Score tape and Glossy Accents to make sure it would stick on the front forever, and then I started to work on the inside of the card.

I didn't quite know what to put on the inside of the card because I didn't have any sentiment stamps that could be used for a Bar Mitzvah celebration, so I looked online for a printable. I downloaded the free printable and put it at the bottom of a page in a word document and resized it to fit the card. I printed it out and cut the cardstock the size needed for the inside of the card. I inked the edges in SU! Chocolate Chip and adhered it to the card.

I hope you like the card I made, this card demonstrates how you can use a pre-made embellishment for something other than it's original purpose, and how you can turn it into a completely different embellishment or a focal piece of a project. :)

Keep on Craftin'
~Melisa Marie