'Bringing it' in a patriotic way

Hi there!  Today I would like to share with you a page that I created for today's special day, the 4th of July!!!!  Happy Birthday America!!!!!  What a true blessing it is to live in the United States!

The Get Altered Challenge is held on the first Thursday of each month and each challenge is an opportunity for you to be inspired by one our eTeam's creations.  With this month being  Mary-Ann's turn,  she chose to force you mixed media peeps into "Bringing it" (mixed media) to a layout.  WARNING:  this getting dirty thing is kinda addictive and catchy.  This layout girl is still a die-hard scrapper but has started to walk on the wild side! You HAVE to see what she created!!!  Her page ROCKS!

Here's my Mixed Media page for the Get Altered Challenge!

To create this page, I started with a plain piece of 12" x 12" Kraft paper and I painted Gesso to create a foundation.  I chose my pictures from our vacation last year when we visited Yorktown, Annapolis, Williamsburg, and Virginia Beach.  The pictures are from our day at Yorktown.  My husband and I are history fanatics, with Kevin being a former high school History teacher (he's a principal now), so we had a ball on our vacation that year!  Every year we try to go somewhere historical to not only feed our love of history but to teach our children about history and to appreciate our nation's historical events.

I was looking at the cannon picture, and I thought that it would be so cool to make it look like it fired a shot!  I took several of my sprays and created a "firing shot" by spraying at an angle. 

I sponged Tim's Barn Door Distress Ink w/  my Mini Distressed Chevron Stencil  on the opposite corners.  I also took my Mini Damask stencil and with some blue Smooch spray, created more background.

I added some corregated paper to create the flag in the top Left corner, as well as part of the frame around the pictures.  I added red paper from Authentique's Lovely stack to the background,  as well as Cosmo Cricket's letter correspondence paper inside the Sweet Disposition stack.

I sponged Tim Holtz's Distress Ink Walnut Stain around all the edges of the various papers.
I used Tim's 3-D Star Bright Bigz Die using the Sweet Disposition paper to create the star.  I swept a sponge with Tim's Salty Ocean Distress Ink to really make the dimension pop! 

To create the colors of the flag, I used white Gesso for the white layers, and Tim's Barn Door Distress Ink for the red.  I stamped the ink pad on my nonstick craft sheet, and then sprayed with water.  I took my paint brush, and painted in the creases.  I did the same thing with the blue square, which I used the Salty Ocean ink pad.  I used a white gel pen to draw the stars in a circle, which is how the flag looked in 1776.  I couldn't wait for the Salty Ocean paint to dry, so the stars aren't very bright!

Just wanted to show you my patriotic end table in my living room!  I created the American board recently, and still had it sitting out.  Pairing it with today's scrapbook page was genius!

Happy 4th of July to you and your families!