… life happens.
Aloha, all!
Yesterday a good friend called to tell me that someone she'd known for a long time had passed away. She wanted a sympathy card that had her particular touch on it. Her particular touch is to have a card with an orchid on it.
As you may know, there's nothing in the Stampin' Up! Catalog right now that has an orchid on it, at least that would be appropriate for a sympathy card. But back in a long-since retired Stampin' Up! Occasions Catalog, there was a sympathy-themed stamp set that included a perfect orchid for my friend's taste. While I've actually kept that stamp set just to use for cards she requests, I do try to make cards that you can copy if you wish. If you don't have the stamp set and you like my project, that set is available for you to purchase. So I began my project thinking it was one I would likely not share with you.
Up popped the idea to look at Stampin' Up!'s My Digital Studio digital offerings. Darned if that stamp set wasn't in the digital catalog! Woo-hoo! It's there, and you can buy it any time – digital products do NOT retire!
For this project, I could do a lot with the Stamp Brush Images that I could not do with a rubber or photopolymer stamp. First I resized the original orchid stamp. Second I flipped the stamp image for one of the prints. And I very easily recolored even the teeniest spots in even the sentiment stamp image. The digital colors I chose were Lost Lagoon and Perfect Plum, both current colors in the Stampin' Up! Catalog. Wow! How easy! Not only that, I now have the file saved for the next time my friend needs this kind of card.
Of course, this is not totally a digital card. I only printed the three digital images on Whisper White Cardstock. After that, I cut the images, matted them, and adhered them in various ways to create a card with the kind of depth and texture you would want from a "real" stamped card. The papers that I used for this are a Lost Lagoon colored sheet from the Moonlight Designer Series Paper (DSP) Stack (the background layer) and All Is Calm DSP. Yes, the latter is holiday paper. But that Lost Lagoon sheet from the set makes a perfect mat for the printed stamp images. And finally I used some Perfect Plum Cardstock to accent all that Lost Lagoon coloring.
One of the other things that I like about making stamps my own size and shape is that I can make a card that's sized perfectly to hold those shapes and sizes AND I can make an envelope to go exactly with my project. The Stampin' Up! Envelope Punch Board is a gem for this. The final card here is 3-3/4" wide by 6-3/4" tall. You won't find that exact set of measurements on the Envelope Punch Board size chart. But you are not limited to the sizes shown on the Punch Board's frame. I adjusted the numbers just a bit and came up with the perfect envelope for this card. I. Just. Love. This!
I hope you'll take the chance to do something just a bit different with your own Stampin' Up! projects this holiday season – or whenever the urge strikes you! Doing this really makes me feel much more creative than just using standard shapes and measurements. I hope you get to experience this, too!
