Serene Sympathy

Today's card was inspired by the June Sketch @ Stamplorations and uses the "Stamps and Family" theme. It will also be entered @ Craftyhazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge  and @ Simon Says Stamp for their Wednesday "Use Patterned Paper" challenge. My son-in-law lost his grandma last weekend, so I have been busy making sympathy cards for them this week. 

The patterned paper I used for this card was a quarter sheet piece I got in a variety pack from winning a newsletter contest through Stampinton and Company last year. The sympathy stamp set is from Stampin' Up! and the leaf set is retired from The Angel Company.

I trimmed the patterned paper so that there was a small white border around the edge of my white A2 side folding card base but cut the sage green textured panel the same size as the card front. Using Versamark ink and my Stamp Perfect stamping tool I double stamped (to get a good impression over the texture of the paper) then heat embossed with Platinum embossing powder. Using the Perfect Crafting Pouch helped me to get a nice crisp image and the Perfect Cleaning Cloth took away any remaining dust out of the grooves in the textured cardstock once the embossing was cool.

I then stamped and embossed the leaf three times and fussy cut them out. To get the round shape around the sentiment I simply traced the outside edge of a circle template using a pencil and then cut it out by hand.

I adhered the sentiment flat to the card front with my ATG gun and then did the same with the top and bottom leaf along the edge of the curve...the middle leaf I popped up on foam dots to add some dimension. The mini sprigs were diecut from vellum and tucked behind the leaves along the border between the sentiment and the patterned paper using The Best Glue Ever.

The last step to completing the card front was to create some dry embossing along the bottom right corner using the tip of my bone folder -simply tracing along the the border of the underlying patterned paper added the tiny bit of definition that was missing.

The inside sentiment was stamped in gray ink and kept simple with a tiny piece of left over paper adhered along the bottom.

Until later,