A Sympathy Card for Elisa's Cousin

I think that if my stamp set "lovely as a tree" were to ever make the retirement list, I would never part with my set.

I have had a very good customer for the last 8 months.. She's returning home to France in just a few weeks. She came over to pick up some gifts for coworkers this past week and told me she needed a sympathy card for her aunt. She has only met her aunt once, but there was a very bad car crash and her male cousin of 19 years, didn't make it.

So ~ what else could we do? We sat down and made this card.I used the thumping technique to ink up this Mighty Oak.. Meaning.. I used 3 colors.

The first color (more mustard) I just colored the entire top of the tree. Then I added two other colors, ruby red and pumpkin pie and "thumped" them onto the stamp in a drumming type motion. I inked the bottom of the tree in chocolate chip and added some details to the branches that you can see in the detail of the stamp.

I "huffed" my stamp to remoisten the ink (remoisten similar to cleaning your eyeglasses) and stamped it onto very vanilla cardstock. Next, I spritzed this layer with water, and spritzed the back also so my cardstock wouldn't curl up...

***note, whenever you do something to paper that makes it warp (heat or water), if you do the same thing to the other side, it will fix the problem. :) We set that aside to dry and worked on the rest of the card.

We toyed with adding other colors to the base, but the chocolate and ruby red really pops against the vanilla.

We added ribbon, but didnt want a bow, to keep the card more on the masculine side. We used the finial press to dry emboss the front of the card after we stamped the most appropriate sentiment. I'm so going to miss my friend Elisa when she returns to France.. There's something about sitting and creating a card together for something so personal that brings a couple of crafters together.

Making a card with a friend is much better than doing it alone!