Simple Sympathy Card

The other day, my mom asked me for a sympathy card. The husband of a friend of hers just passed away, after 59 years of marriage. I went looking on my Pinterest board of sympathy cards for design ideas, and found this one. The popped-up "frame" inspired me.

I cut a piece of 140 lb. Canson XL watercolor paper to 5.5x4.25". After planning out where my die cut "frame" would be, I used Hero Arts Soft Granite ink to stamp the "Bird" image from Our Daily Bread Designs towards the lower left corner. I felt the upper portion of the card was a bit bare, and I knew I wouldn't be adding a greeting. So I masked off the bird part of the stamp, inked up just the one grouping of flowers in Soft Granite, & stamped it in the upper right corner. I like the way it looks like the bird is looking at those flowers.

The bird & flowers are kind of generic, so you can color them to be almost anything. It being spring here in Texas, I decided to color the bird like a mockingbird, & the flowers like dogwoods. So I used my Inktense pencils to do that, applying the color with a damp paintbrush, and using photos I got via Google as a coloring guide. I didn't like the way the branch just kind of ended at the right side, though. I suppose the stamp was designed to be used on a smaller panel. So I just picked up color from the pencil I used for the branch & painted on an extension. I don't know if it's technically "correct" from an arboreal standpoint, but I prefer the way it fills the space anyway.

After I colored the bird & flowers, I stamped the image onto a piece of masking paper, and again (just for the flowers) on a full-sticky Post It note. (I laminated the larger mask with packing tape before cutting it out, and am keeping it with that stamp. The flower mask I didn't need again, so I just recycled it.) I cut out my masks, and masked off the images on my panel. I left the branch unmasked, since I figured it was dark enough to stand on its own when I inked. Then I inked the background with Tumbled Glass Distress ink and a foam blending tool. After I removed my masks, I spritzed the panel with water droplets from a Distress Sprayer, let that sit for several seconds, and then blotted up the water with a paper towel. Since the Inktense color is (basically) permanent when dry, the towel only picked up color from the background.

I let the background dry, then taped one of the "Frame in Frame" dies from Taylored Expressions centered on the panel. I ran that through my die cutting machine. I also die cut the frame from white craft foam, and used Perfect Paper Adhesive to glue the watercolor frame to that. Then all that was left was to adhere all 3 pieces to a white A2 card base.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Our Daily Bread Designs "Anything Goes with ODBD Stamps"
Simon Says Stamp's Monday Challenge: "Things with Wings"
Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday Challenge: "Anything Goes"