Hello and welcome! This is Shanna from Caffeinated Craftiness here today with a pair of cards featuring Crackerbox Stamps!
My least favorite card to have to make but one of the most meaningful cards I gift is a sympathy card. When I make sympathy cards to have on hand, I try and keep the "theme" if you will fairly neutral. A safe zone for me is always florals. Crackerbox Stamps has a variety of lovely floral stamps, but one of my all time favorites is the Large Peony stamp. It is a beautiful stamp to color, but for these cards I let it become more of a muted background.
For the first card, I stamped the Large Peony in pale gray ink. The sentiment, Grief, was then heat embossed in silver onto vellum. I tore the top and bottom edges of the strip of vellum for a distressed look and then wrapped the sides to the back of my card panel to glue. I like using the adhesive on the vellum on the backside of the panel, where no one can see it. I finished off with a few silver baubles.
My second card was the same layout, except I lightened the gray even further with the Pony stamp by using second generation stamping. That means I inked the stamp, then stamped off some of the ink onto a scrap of paper before stamping the card panel. This provided an even more muted background for my sentiment. I chose to stamp the sentiment directly to the card this time using a brighter pink ink. Some pink baubles finished off the look.
Do you make sympathy cards ahead to have on hand, or do you prefer to make them only when the occasion arises and crafted to suit the person it's intended for? I would love to hear your thoughts on this!
Take care and stay Crafty!
~Shanna
ReplyDeleteI only make one when the need arises. Though at my age I seem to need them more than I like these days.