All Aboard the Polar Express!!

Toot tooooooot!!!!!

I have to admit, I've never seen the movie. I probably should. Pretty soon my kids will be to the age where they'd find that mesmerizing! In fact, not too far from our town, there's a place that reenacts the Polar Express, complete with a train ride to the North Pole (you can check that out here). I'm sure they'll love that in the coming years.

A friend of mine wanted to take her three grandchildren to this Polar Express event, and asked if I would make tickets for them.

Would I???

OF COURSE!!

Now remember, I've never seen the movie (I'm pretty sure the book had been read to me once upon a time, but that wasn't enough at this point). I Googled away, and came upon this great packet someone else had already made up, and it included the images of the actual tickets used in the movie! I'm not one to reinvent the wheel (why make more work for yourself!?) so I used these:

Reproducible Image from http://www.hmhbooks.com/features/thepolarexpress/pdf/polarpartykit.pdf

Now, here come the part I lllooooooovvvveeee!! Print it on paper? These will be given to kids. Torn and wrinkled in two seconds. Nooo, no, no, no. I had a better idea:

Grungepaper.

Yup, this is going to be awesome.

So. Grungepaper. Never heard of it? It's in the Tim Holtz line of Grungeboard, described as "a thinner form of Grungeboard with the same grungeable properties". Love. It. Completely pliable, able to alter in tons of ways, including writing, sewing, stamping and inking it (like printer ink?? You see where my mind's heading here...)

Off to the printer I went! I used a laser printer, if that matters to you folks, and this is what I came out with:

(I am in love)

I knew that my Stampin' Write markers from Stampin' Up! worked really well on Grungeboard (no pen lines, blends perfectly!), so I tested it on a scrap of the Grungepaper: worked like a charm!! I cut the ticket out and colored it to appear gold (like in the movie, I'm told) and then did some Christmas-y colors on the holly and ivy. The bell got a little daub of Champagne Mist Shimmer Paint. 

I added a rolled up letter from Santa and some awesomely huge jingle bells to finish it off.

I can't wait to make these for my own kids someday soon!!

Make sure you stop back by tomorrow...I'm giving out one of my favorite creations tomorrow, so I can finally blog about it!! (Can you say MIXED MEDIA?!?)