My Sympathies

As promised, I've returned today with my sympathy card, though I have to admit, I'm not happy with it. I hesitated to even share it with you all, but I did say that I would, and besides, sometimes it's good to see others mistakes so we don't have to make the same ones ourselves.

The bottom half of the card isn't too bad, but the ribbon is just awful, in my opinion. I found this beautiful navy velvet ribbon and I thought it'd lend the card a formal elegance. I wanted to tie it in a bow, but the ribbon was so thick that it stuck way off the page and just looked heavy and wrong. Even just knotted as it is now doesn't really improve anything.


Unfortunately, I don't have any other ribbon that matches and I've already spent my meager crafting budget for this week (thanks to a one-day sale at Michael's on Sunday) so I don't know if I can do anything about it. The card has to be done by Thursday so that my writers group can all sign it (the friend who lost his daughter is a member) so that doesn't leave me much time. I might just scrap the whole thing and try to come up with something else.

I rolled up the edges of the petals with a pen to give it some dimention. I do like that effect. Maybe I can salvage the flower if I remake the card.

I also don't like how the sentiment almost blends in with the pattern on the paper.


You'll notice I darkened up the center of the flower quite a bit to try to get it to match the ribbon. I think I liked it the first way better though. I don't have any real deep blue copics, so I had to go with something in the blue violet family.

flower petals: B21 (Baby Blue), B06 (Peacock Blue), and BV13 (Blue Hydrangea)
center: Y11 (Pale Yellow), Y15 (Cadmium Yellow)
stem: G24 (Willow), YG03 (Yellowish Green), and G05 (Emerald Green)

I finished this up late last night, then spent this afternoon making another card to send from just myself. I'm fairly pleased with how this one turned out, though at one point I nearly threw the while thing in the trash! I wrestled with that stinkin' bow for like 20 minutes. Ever have one of those days? Anyway, the bow finally got tied decently and the card got finished.


I first picked out my papers -- I chose this yellow print from Cosmo Cricket, gray cardstock for my focal piece and yellow for the card base. I arranged the hydrangea stamp and the sentiment how I wanted them on the gray, then picked them up together with a large acrylic block and stamped them with Versamark ink. Then I sprinkled the whole thing with white embossing powder and embossed it using my heat tool. I wrestled with the silly ribbon until I was satisfied, and popped it off the card using 3D dimentionals.


I really like the effect from the white embossing powder. You could use that in so many different ways. It took a little bit for me to get the hang of -- at first I couldn't tell which part was melted and which was still powder, but I caught on. As with anything, you get better with a little practice.

Well, that's it for me tonight. If any of you out there have had to make a sympathy card, I'd love it if you could post a link in the comments section. I'm interested in seeing what other people have done with a card that requires such sensitivity.

Now go spend some time with your loved ones!