In Sympathy

Aloha, all!

     A good friend of a neighbor and customer of mine passed away this week, and she asked me to make a special card for his family.  As we went through the stamps that I thought might be appropriate, she decided that she needed two cards rather than one – that's easy to do because there are so many beautiful Stampin' Up! stamp sets and colors that I can use to make lovely sympathy cards. 

     For the first card, I used the appropriately named stamp set, Love and Sympathy.  I particularly like the flower in this stamp set as it makes a beautiful watercolor-style image and all I have to do is color the stems and flower with different colored Stampin' Write Markers.  For this card, I used Lucky Limeade and Wisteria Wonder for the flower, and carried the Wisteria Wonder color through the rest of the card.  The ribbon is the Wisteria Wonder 3/8" Ruffled Ribbon, and I used Wisteria Wonder Card Stock for the card front, texturizing it with the Perfect Polka Dots Embossing Folder.  To mat and accent both the stamped layer and the main card front layer, I used Concord Crush Card Stock.  The light colored card stock is Confetti White, which adds a natural look to the card overall.  Before I put the card together, I printed a personal message from my neighbor to her friends on the inside.  (You might recall that I made a lovely Sympathy Card not too long ago, and that might have been a perfect card for this occasion – except that my neighbor wanted to have that personal message printed on the inside of the card and there was already a message on the inside of the other card.)

     The second card has several of the same features of the first card, but an entirely different feeling to it.  It's a bit less subdued than the first card, and I think that's because of the large amount of white space on the stamped layer.  I fussed around with this a bit, using some stamps on a vellum overlay to give me an idea of how the finished product might look if I added a stamp or some embellishments in that empty space.  But when it was all over, I decided I just liked the little sentiment from Teeny Tiny Wishes out there all by itself.  The flowers from the stamp set, Bordering on Romance, and using Bashful Blue and Pretty in Pink, with a bit of Certainly Celery for the leaves, seemed to be a nice bouquet of solace under the sentiment.

     The features that I repeated from the first card were the dark mat, in this case Night of Navy, and the main layer texturized with the Perfect Polka Dots Embossing Folder.  I stamped this card on the inside with a sentiment from Petite Pairs and the smallest flower from this stamp set to carry the design from the card front to the inside.

     I hope that, for the rest of this week leading up to Easter, I'll be making cards that are much more cheerful!