A Sympathy Card with an Interesting “Background” Story
If we “have” to create a Sympathy card - it might as well be pretty…
Creating a Sympathy card is likely one of my least favorite cards to create. The need for the card in itself indicates that someone has suffered a loss, someone’s heart is broken, someone needs to be lifted up and surrounded by loving thoughts and to know that we care.
We want to give this support - so, we need to make the card. And… if we “have” to make the card we might as well enjoy the artistic process that comes with creating it.
This is how we put our heart, soul and deepest sympathy into the card…
For this Sympathy card I wanted it to feel light and airy and had already planned to use a few cooler pastel ink colors in the background with the dandelion fluff. There is just something so soothing about those fluffy little bits of seed floating through the air in a gentle breeze.
This alone would have been a great concept for the card, I wanted to add something just a little bit more. Something that still felt light and serene. A Bokeh affect would be nice, however I don’t actually have a Bokeh stencil -why I wonder?. That’s a question for another day.
With thoughts of a Bokeh affect in the background, I grabbed 2 hole punches and a sticky note or two. I proceeded to punch holes of 2 different sizes and using my pick tool I wrestled with each circular sticky piece until I captured it from the punch each time and placed it onto my card background as a mask. I continued the process until I had several placed onto what would be the background.
This was a bit of a tedious way to go about things and probably the most time consuming part of creating the card. My plan was to overlap a few of the circle masks, however time ran short so I continued with what I had. You can bet I will revisit this background to see if I can come up with a truer Bokeh look.
Continuing with the few circles that I had, I ink blended in the 3 swatches of color with a blending brush.
Do I want to go back and do this correctly? I sure do… with everything in me. But the card I had sitting before me looked beautiful and brought with it a sense of peace… and that was absolutely what I had intended, which made this card just perfect .It had a certain beauty of it’s own.
If I’m happy with it, that’s all the boxes checked.
Why fix something that’s not broke, right?!
The Stamped Image
I used a retired Stampin Up image from the stamp set - Dandelion Wishes. Maybe you have that image or a similar stamp that you have acquired at some point.
This dandelion blowing fluff image used to be a pretty popular image and though a quick search told me that it is still used as an image on many types of prints it seemed to be rather scant when it came to finding it as a stamp image.
A search through several popular stamp companies uncovered these findings:
Make a Wish Dandelion Stamp Set - Inkylicious
Michaels Craft store once sold this image on a wood block.
Simon Says Stamp had a card kit in May 2021 containing a very similar image.
Walmart apparently sold a stamp set with similar images at one point (though I have never seen a stamp set in my local Walmart ever).
This Altenew stamp set is currently available and it seems this look could be achieved using this set.
The Inks
One of my favorite ink blending combinations. These ink colors just look so pretty together and give off such a dreamy background.
Nice sale price right now!
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These large ink blending brushes currently have a nice single sale price of $2.49
I desperately need new brushes, so maybe I will grab a few of these. I have been on a search for great blending brushes with an equally great price!
I just want to touch base on the sentiment for a minute as well as the inside greeting.
I simply love these inside sentiment stamps from Scrapbook.com. The words are truly beautiful for the inside of any sympathy card.
THE LINKS IN THIS POST CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS - WHICH MEANS THAT IF YOU CHOOSE TO PURCHASE A PRODUCT FROM ONE OF THESE LINKS THAT I WILL MAKE A SMALL COMMISION. THIS DOESN'T COST YOU ANY EXTRA TO PURCHASE. THE SMALL COMMISION HELPS ME TO CONTINUE TO SHARE CARD IDEAS AND EXAMPLES WITH YOU.
HEARTFELT THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT.
Supplies for this card are not plenty - which is great.
A beautiful card created without a large supply list, and most of which we may already have in our stash.
While allowing our imagination to flow, with soft colors and simple techniques that will inevitably leave us with a beautiful and serene Sympathy card…
What are your favorite inks to use for ink blending?
