When I Grow Up - Military

Hannah Rubenstahl, the crafter at www.FancifulSpaces.com, is a mother to a lovely 5-year-old girl and wife to an amazingly supportive husband. She is a life-long crafter who has recently begun to focus on and hone her talents in the world of card crafting. Using the skills she learned as a scenic artist and in her formal education in technical theater, she comes to the world of paper crafting with unique experience and perspective. When not crafting or playing Paw Patrol with her daughter, she can frequently be found playing board games and watching Star Trek.  

When I Grow Up - Military

Hi there! Welcome to Fanciful Spaces, if you’re new here. 😉 I was given the beautiful, and amazing, opportunity to create a few cards for Brutus Monroe before the stamp sets were even released yet. The “When I Grow Up” line that they produce is very near and dear to my heart!

I have a 5-year-old daughter, she is our one and only, and I REALLY wanted a daughter. If we’d have had a boy first we probably would have tried again for a girl. I had visions of ballerinas and dancing when I dreamt of having a girl, pink and all that frufru stuff. The reality of our life is something completely different. We strive to provide gender-neutral ideas for her. The clothing stores are not separated in to “girls” and “boys” sections but rather “pink” and “blues.” We spend a lot of time in the “blue and green” sections and I get really frustrated when store clerks try to steer us into the “correct” section.

My daughter isn’t the typical doll playing girl. In fact, dolls aren’t high on her list of toys she likes to play with. For our daughter’s first real trick or treating Halloween experience she wanted to be an “Army Truck.” Not a “army person” not a “bride” or any typical “girls character” she wanted to be an “Army Truck.”

Fortunately, a friend shared a Pinterest idea on how to turn a diaper box into a vehicle, and I was able to alter it to suit our needs, including working headlights!

With this experience in mind, I was eager to play with the military set. I REALLY wanted to create a camouflage background which was a lot of fun and really easy to do especially with Zig Clean Color Brush Markers.

I colored the background of my card, with the Zigs, and cut it out, as well as an A2 card base in pink using some stitched dies. I don’t have the stitched dies from Brutus Monroe, but if you are looking for some really great ones I suggest trying these out! When I need to replace mine I’ll be buying the Foundation Die Set Stitched Rectangles which would provide the same look as above.

I then colored and fussy cut the girl out, I used Copic Markers to do the coloring, and I LOVE that she’s holding onto a puppy dog, yet another connection to my dog loving daughter! To create the pink outline I took my fussy cut image, laid it onto a piece of pink cardstock and then traced around the image trying to keep an equal distance apart from the whole design. Die cutting isn’t perfect, sometimes an image is slightly off center, so while I tried to keep it looking as good as possible, I didn’t overly stress.

Once these layers were adhered together they were missing something. I like the combination gold and pink, additionally, I thought that the warmth of the gold I thought would work well with the greens. I decided to wrap single strands of gold embroidery floss around one of the card panels. It still needed something more, which is when I was fortunate to find some star woodcuts in my stash! I stained these gold with a Delicata ink pad and glued them down. Hopefully, the string and the stars give a “Stars and Stripes” feeling.

Lastly, I used some Glossy Accents on her goggles, in real life, they shine a touch.

I love that this card features a girl that breaks traditional gender stereotypes. I love that this line of stamps features girls wishing that they could truly be anything they want to be when they grow up. Little girls of all ages need to be able to find themselves reflected in whatever their dreams may be. It is so important to support not only “gender appropriate” visions but to also provide glimpses that they can be so much more than what society tells them they can be!

As a mom with a growing daughter, I simply can’t thank Christopher Alan of Brutus Monroe enough for providing the world with these sets! He has changed and touched this family’s life and for that, I will forever be grateful to him!