We Did It! End of Summer School cards

Welcome back,
My summer is flying by! Next week is the last week of the summer school program. It was 5 weeks long. The urge hit me to create mini thank you cards to give to the staff to mark the end of the program. I had so much fun creating these cards. They are almost too cute to give away!  :)
Take a look:

Each card is 3.5 inches square. I simply like this size, there is no reason I chose this size.

 I found the "YAY!" die cut free on the Cricut Design Space this month. I sized it to fit the cards, and I sent it to my cutting machine.  I cut out 30 copies out of black cardstock, and 12 copies out of my Neenah white cardstock all the same size.

Then I dug through my stash of old backgrounds that I have created from past projects and found a handful of beautiful backgrounds that I just didn't know what to do with! I really fell in love with some of the alcohol inked backgrounds that were a bit busy with odd color combinations.

With a background in mind, I used my distress inks to attempt an ombre effect on the YAYs. Some I used one color (pink and left the rest white), others I used two or even three colors, The blending on some created additional in between colors. I covered them with versamark ink and chose a sparkly or glittery heat embossing powder and heated them with my heat gun. Several of them took two coats.

I then took 3 black layers and stacked them together with glue and left them to dry. Once dry, I glued on the heat embossed layer on top and let them dry again.

I just purchased a set of the perfect layer rulers from We are memory keepers. I LOVE THEM! I can mat anything now at a one-sixteenth of an inch! I never could do that before! The tiny black border helps bring the card together! I finished each card with a "We did it!" up with foam tape to give a bit of dimension to match the die cuts that I printed from my printer. I didn't have a stamp for that particular sentiment. I created envelopes for each one.

I entered this card into a challenge:

THE PAPER PLAYERS - CELEBRATION PP400

 I cannot wait to give them to my co-workers. Thanks for stopping by! I hope my mini cards inspired you! Enjoy your nice weather!