A Time of Sadness

Aloha, all!

Last week a dear friend died after a long battle with cancer. I'd only known Diane for a couple of years. But in that time, we became close enough that she quickly felt almost as if she was an old friend. We comfortably and quickly settled into a relationship that allowed us to share not only moments of happiness, small irritations, jokes and just general views on life, but also to share some vehement disagreements on such inconsequential things as where to shop for groceries or whether baking bread with a machine is really baking bread.

As you might imagine, it's taken me a long time to write what I have so far as I stop and cry with the completion of each phrase. So I won't be writing much. But as in every other facet of my life, when something happens and I want to share my thoughts, I turn to making cards. And a card for Diane's family went out in yesterday's mail.

As always, I am amazed at what I can find in my Stampin' Up! stash that is perfect for what I want to make. I had yet to open all my Designer Series Paper sets when I started out. It's hard to see what the papers really look like the way they're displayed in this year's Stampin' Up! catalog, so I needed to open the packs one by one to see what was there. It wasn't until I got to the Park Lane Designer Series Paper set that I found the perfect design. Blackberry Bliss is such a beautifully rich color, and the way it's displayed in this print is so elegant. And the simplicity of the flowers from the Stamp Set, Too Kind, goes perfectly with the color of the paper. Once I decided on the sentiment from the Stamp Set, Thoughts and Prayers, the layout pretty much made itself up.

One quick note on how I made the flowers. Too Kind has two images for each of the flowers in the set so that we can include either two different colors or two shades of the same color to make a richer image. I used Blackberry Bliss for both stamps. For the ligher color (in the background), I inked up my stamp and then stamped it off on scrap paper THREE times. The ink is plenty dark for a 4th stamping to be clear enough for an image on the Very Vanilla Cardstock. For the darker color, I stamped the image off twice before stamping on my cardstock. I'm still using the older version of the Old Olive classic stampin' pad, so I did not need to stamp it off as the older pads aren't as "juicy" as the current stamp pads.

Thanks for reading today and sharing in my few thoughts about Diane. I'm so glad I have something creative to do to help me through this!