Get Carded: A Birthday Card For A Chemist

Hello! Yesterday was our daughter's 20th birthday, so of course I needed to make her a card. Technically she's not a chemist yet, as she's a chemistry major, but already has two years of college lab research work under her belt, plus has an internship doing more research this summer. So a birthday card with a chemist theme seemed appropriate:

Materials used:

• white card stock
• page cut from college-level chemistry textbook
• scrap of page from same textbook, "aged" with Tim Holz's "old paper" Distress Ink
• woman image cut from 1947 Sears catalog
• "Maria" cut from an old grade school folder (the birthday girl's handwriting when she was in 4th grade)
• "You Experiment" and "The Scientist Observes" cut from a 1950's children's science textbook
• "junior" cut from 1947 Sears catalog
• "CHEMIST" stamped on white card stock scrap
• "at" stamped on white card stock scrap
• "large" cut from 1960's children's dictionary

I've been using the phrase "junior chemist at large" affectionately all summer in reference to our daughter's internship at a local facility. She thinks it's funny, so she laughed when I used those words on her birthday card. 

A couple of close-ups:

Above, the aging effect of that "old paper" Distress Ink is noticeable, as the paper with molecular structures on it looks darker and, well, older than the text behind it, even though both were from the same 1990-issue chemistry textbook. 

I prefer to work with vintage books in my crafting, but didn't have one on hand with a chemistry theme. 1990 may seem like a long time ago by now, but still not old enough for me. Thus, I "aged" a page scrap from the textbook for contrast. 

The technique was easy: I just crumpled up the page scrap, smoothed it out, rubbed the "old paper" ink pad directly onto the page and then wiped off the excess. 

The page with all the text on it discussed the various careers chemists can have, which I thought was very fitting for our "junior chemist".

She enjoyed her card, and I enjoyed making it for her!