Fond Farewell

These days, when you buy a voucher for someone, particularly if it’s purchased online, you get an emailed voucher for you to print out.  Giving someone a sheet of paper for a gift is not very inspiring!  So, when my friend and colleague, Stu, retired recently, I was asked to create a presentation folder for said sheet of paper.  Inspired by the London skyline pop-up card I made my friend a few weeks ago, I decided to try an air traffic pop-up card.  I made it airfield themed, even though we are Area Controllers, as an Area Control building is not quite as interesting or recognisable as a control tower!

First, for the front of the card, I repeat stamped and heat embossed the bi-plane and clouds from Avery Elle’s ‘Fly By’ stamp set and stacked several die-cut ‘congrats’.  I popped one of the bi-planes up on foam tape.

To begin the inside, I cut out a control tower, some random airport buildings, a city skyline, some fighter aircraft, smoke trails, an airliner and my sentiment using my Cricut Maker.

I used my homemade cloud stencil and ink blending brushes to create a sky background for the fighter planes.

The display aircraft, smoke trails, greeting and city skyline were cut from vinyl and stuck onto the background.

After cutting the card to create the pop-up mechanism, I attached the airport buildings as the central layer and the control tower as the front.

Stu had done an Open University course and part of that included a project for running his own airline, which he’d named Skylark, hence the Skylark airliner parked by the tower.

Finally, where to put the sheet of paper containing the voucher?  Since an airfield is not complete without a runway, I thought a lift up runway would be just the job for a voucher holder.  Using the Cricut Maker again, I cut some piano keys (the white stripes at the start of the runway), some centreline markers and numbers for the runway designation.  Runways are named according to the compass bearing, rounded to the nearest 10˚, so I used Stu’s 34 years in air traffic to make Runway 34.  I popped a tiny magnet under the end of the runway to keep it down.

Enjoy your retirement Stu!