A Hint for Making Sympathy Cards!

Aloha, all!

     One of the hardest kinds of cards to make is a Sympathy Card, especially if you've waited until you actually need one.  The absolutely best time to make a sympathy card is when there is no thought in your mind that you or one of your friends might need it any time soon.  This came to mind when I was going through my brand-new issue of Paper Crafts Magazine and I saw a card design that seemed to me would be perfect as a sympathy card.  And, since there is no one at the moment to whom I need to send one, I took my own advice and got to work CASEing the card in the magazine.

     What caught my eye about this card was that it looked like there was a layer on top of those flowers, but at the same time, it was obvious that there wasn't!  The card in the magazine was a very simple example of a beautifully effective no-layer card.  As I wanted to use the Stampin' Up! Whisper White Patterns paper for my card, and I knew that I'd probably need some brads to spiff things up, I needed to add in some layers.  But all those stamped flowers were actually on a single layer stamped on top of the sentiment!  What I did to make that possible was to mask the sentiment (and the lines above and below) with a piece of paper (plain copy paper, not card stock) all the way across the Patterns Paper.

     This is the order in which I stamped the images:

• I stamped the sentiment, from the stamp set Loving Thoughts, with Rich Razzleberry.
• I drew the lines at the top and bottom of the sentiment with the thick end of my Rich Razzleberry Stampin' Write Marker.

Then I masked what I'd already stamped (see below for a bit more information about the masking), before stamping the rest.

• I stamped the vines (this stamp and the flowers and leaf are from the stamp set, Vintage Vogue) with Old Olive.
• I stamped the small flowers with Regal Rose.
• I stamped the large flowers with Rich Razzleberry.
• I stamped the small leaves with Old Olive.

     The real key to this whole layout is the masking.  I cut the mask so that it came just short of covering the lines drawn with the marker.  Even when you're using plain copy paper as a mask, there's a little bit of unstamped space just beyond the edge of the masking paper.  Making the mask just a teensy bit smaller than the area bordered by the lines kept that from showing.

     Also, to make this layout work well, you should mask across the entire width of the layer.  The first time I tried this I only masked the center greeting area, and some of the flower and leaf images ended up on the side of the greeting.  The result was that I lost the whole effect of the flowers seeming to be behind the sentiment "layer."

     After I finished all the stamping, I adhered the stamped layer onto Rich Razzleberry Card Stock, and added two Pear Pizzazz Glimmer Brads (they really do look good with the Old Olive Ink!) and two of the larger pearls from the Basic Pearls embellishment pack.  Finally I adhered this all to a Regal Rose Card.

     Have you noticed that I've been doing a lot of "CASE"ing (Copy And Share Everything) lately?  Some of that has to do with my seeing something and really wanting to copy it, changing it a bit using the stamps and embellishments I have in stock.  But some of it also has to do with my having been away from my stamping for so long that I really need something to jump start me!  And it's working!  I'm really feeling like I'm back in the swing of things and I'm having a blast with all this paper crafting!

     I hope you're having fun with your paper crafting, too.  It really does do wonders for one's temperament!!