ADVICE: US Military Theme

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ADVICE: US Military Theme

Hi All!

I am planning to start work on a military themed kit, but it's a bit tricky for me because I have pretty much no connection to the military. My plan is to make a sort of general patriotic kit, with small addons for each of the branches (and possibly police, firefighters, etc...suggestions accepted). I could use advice for what sorts of things should be included both in the general kit, and the small add on kits. If you have knowledge of specific slogans and images for the different branches, I would really appreciate any help you can give me.

I would love to see some military themed stuff... We're a Navy family and would love to be able to scrap those memories as well as a book for DH about his career. I love the idea of a "main" kit with mini branch kits smiley

Feel free to contact me if you want to learn more about the navy.

Yay, I love this! I came from a Coast Guard family, so I can help with that branch.

General: I would say things like stars, phrases like "under way" "welcome home" "duty" "on leave" "veteran" "officer" "enlisted" "military brat" "Army/Navy/Coastie/Marine wife", a saluting silhouette, medals, yellow ribbon, dogtags
Specific: battleships or aircraft carriers, planes, helicopters, tanks
(Coast Guard specific): life-preservers, buoys, anchors, lighthouse

You could use the slogans for the branches:
Semper Paratus - Coast Guard
Semper Fidelis - Marine Corps
Non sibi sed patriae - Navy
Do Army & Air Force have Latin slogans? I only know those three.

Other suggestions for phrases, taken from their branch songs:
"Wild blue yonder"
"anchors away"
"from the halls of Montezuma..."
"Through surf and storm and howling gale, High shall our purpose be"
"Count off the cadence loud and strong"
"..and the Army goes rolling along"

I have a photo of the Vietnam Vet memorial that could be extracted and the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington Cemetary that also could be extracted. My husband and father both retired from the Marine Corps. I think that Charles still has his uniform with his ribbons and shooting medal that I could probably pull out and take a pic if you like to extract. Cannot do it this week though but if you want them maybe next week?

Will look for some other Marine type things....oh and I think I have photos of my Dad's sword too.

I don't have any ideas, but I think I remember reading somewhere that you can't use any of the official logos on anything. Other than that, the other suggestions you've gotten sound great! Much more than I would've thought of. My husband was in the Navy quite a while back, and has a few pictures I never thought to scrap. smiley He served on a submarine, so one of those would be good.

@Brandi I think you are right. I spoke to my husband last night about this and he prefers I do not share the things I have as it could be limited by the copyright laws. If it was just personal use it might be okay but I am sure CU would not be allowed. Sorry.

Both my husband and I were in the Army ... My husband was deployed both in the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars ...

Specific: For Army
"Iraqi Freedom" ( campaign name ) " Operation Enduring Freedom" (Afghanistan Campaign name )
Units: 4th ID (My hubby), 1st Calvary, 101st Air Born (I was), 82nd Air Born, 1st Infantry Div (Division), Rangers
1st Infantry

Slogans: "Army Strong", "This we will defend" (Army Official Motto), "Rangers Lead the Way", “No Mission Too
Difficult, No Sacrifice Too Great, Duty First” (1st Infantry Motto), “Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless
Service, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage”(The Army Values), “If a man does his best, what else is
there?” (-Gen.George S. Patton), “The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The
hard part is doing it.” (-Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf )

Sayings: "Welcome Home", Hero, Proud Army Wife, Proud Navy Wife, Proud Marine Wife, Proud Coast Guard Wife,
Proud Air Force Wife, (and husband, parent, child, etc.), "Hoorah" (Major Army Saying), Soldier ...

Element Ideas: Ranks: PVT (Private) PV1 (Private1) PV2 (Private2) PFC (Private First Class) (Spc (specialist), COL
(Corporal) SGT (Sergeant) SSG (Staff Sergeant) SFC (Sergeant First Class) MSG (Master
Master Sergeant) 1SG (First Sergeant) SGM (Sergeant Major) CSM (Command Sergeant
Major) SMA (Sergeant Marjor of the Army) and so on ... Here is the link that you can find all of the
ranks and their corisponding rank patches (do those to, that would be awesome!) Army Ranks
General Elements: Tanks, Dog Tags, US Army Seal, Dept of the Army Seal, Army men/woman, Army Award Coins
(could make a collage paper out of those), both the BDU pattern, ACU pattern and the MultiCam
Pattern (could make papers with those patterns), Armed Forces Humvee's, Helicopters, Armed
Forces Medical Vehicles, Jets ...
Hmmm ... That's all that I can think of at this moment (at 130am) LOL ...

My nephew is currently a Marine serving overseas. I'd love to be able to put something together for my sister. Such a great idea!!

The other gals have given so many great ideas that would work for any branch of the military...so I'll focus on just the marines.

- Semper Fidelis or Semper Fi (the official USMC motto)
- Oorah (a battle cry common in the USMC since the mid-20th century - most commonly used to respond to a verbal greeting or as an expression of enthusiasm)
- First to Fight (Adopted slogan from the U.S. Media during WW1)
- Once a Marine, Always a Marine (Official Marine Corps League Motto)
- The Few, The Proud, The Marines (Current Marines Advertising Slogan)
- Devil Dog
- Leatherneck (The Marines' long-standing nickname)
- Semper Fi, Do or Die
- Jarhead (A slang term used by sailors as early as World War II to refer to members of the Marine Corps)

You can use the seal images but that's about it! You can use the Official Motto's and Slogans to without getting into trouble as long as you quote them. Ranks are not considered Official Images what not so you can use them as well.

Thanks everyone for all the input! I'll be back with some specific questions I'm sure!

Wow! The ladies here have this covered, LOL! There's not much I can add to what's already been said, except for this - when I was searching for a military(and more specifically, Army) themed kit to scrap about my brother's deployment to Afghanistan recently, there were very, very few I could use and be happy actually showing my brother... Why? Because all the kits used the wrong colors! The Army hasn't used the older forest green uniforms since, like, before Desert Storm, which was in the early '90s. Wikipedia has info on the current colors of Army uniforms.

You know, I'm actually kind of excited for this kit, LOL!

@ Emily ... and again they are changing the uniform LOL ... It seems they think it's more efficient to use the same uniforms as the Multicam rather than the ACU's! They quit using BDU back in 2004/2005 ... it took them almost 6 months to implement the ACU's. I was wearing BDU and my husband was wearing ACU LOL ... You are right though ... I haven't found a scrap kit online that use the right colors either. Paper scraping I have through the PX on base but that's about it. I'm trying to make my husband a album for when he was in Iraq, Afghanistan and just plain service years. It's proving to be quite hard to find the right papers and elements to complete my mission smiley LOL

Thanks for the input on the uniforms and palettes. If anyone could advise me on the usefulness of these palettes, I tried my best to find the correct uniforms using wikipedia....but I would really appreciate some confirmation that I got it right, or not.


palette-airforce by Chasing Donguri, on Flickr


palette-navy by Chasing Donguri, on Flickr


palette-marines by Chasing Donguri, on Flickr


palette-cg by Chasing Donguri, on Flickr


palette-army by Chasing Donguri, on Flickr

I believe the Marine palatte is pretty accurate. Just for info....the lighter khaki is for desert operations (came into being with Desert Storm) and the darker was traditionally for jungle operations.

CG looks good! I would suggest adding a splash of orange, as that's another identifying color, especially for search/rescue.
Some samples:

For Army there is a second or rather 3rd used uniform that I know that people are looking for papers and embellies to go with pics. It's the Multicam Uniform ... Used for Afghanistan. I have lots of pics that I want to scrap but no papers or elements to go with them! Here:

Ok, I don't know if it's showing my photo or not, I did the links right. I think it might be my internet, it's running rather slow!! Please let me know if it's not showing up! Here's the link anyways: Multicam

Thanks everyone, this is really helpful!

Updated Palettes:


palette-cg02 by Chasing Donguri, on Flickr

palette-army02 by Chasing Donguri, on Flickr

Yay, thanks. Looking good! I am so excited to see what you create!!

oh my husband is a pilot in the USCG and it's so hard to find stuff related to his branch of service, especially digital!! I can't WAIT to see what you create!!!!! smiley

Yay!! I can't wait to see what you come up with ... I'm so excited!!! smiley I'll be able to finally do some pages for my husbands scrapbook, he'll be so excited!!!