Floral Sympathy Card

The husband of one of my mom's friends recently passed away, so she asked me to make a sympathy card to send to her. My background was inspired by a tutorial by Lydia Fiedler on faux verdigris. I decided to try that for this card.

I stamped the "Wood Plank Background" from My Favorite Things onto a panel of 140 lb. watercolor paper with Lawn Fawn Doe ink. I used my MISTI stamp positioning tool so I could stamp in the same place again. Without removing the stamp or my paper, I cleaned the stamp & then inked it with Peacock Feathers Distress ink. I stamped that directly over the brown. I removed the panel from my MISTI, and used a wet paintbrush to wet the paper, which activated the Peacock Feathers and tinted the panel. I didn't feel it was quite dark enough, so I smooshed some more Peacock Feathers ink onto an acrylic block & then used my paintbrush to paint it over the whole panel. That deepened the teal without overpowering the wood image.

For the flowers and leaves, I used Altenew's "Vintage Flowers" & "Vintage Roses" stamp sets.I stamped all 3 base layers for the flowers with Memento Angel Pink ink. I used Lawn Fawn's Ballet Slippers & Wild Rose, and Hero Arts Bubble Gum & Pale Tomato inks for the remaining layers. I stamped the leaves with Hero Arts Lime Green & Moss inks, and Ranger Leaf Green Archival ink for the final layer. After I'd finished stamping, I die cut all the images with the coordinating dies.

I die cut the main part of the greeting with Avery Elle's "With Sympathy" die. I used a dark green cardstock first, but felt that got lost on the background. So I die cut another layer from white, and added that as a "shadow" layer. I glued all the flowers & leaves in place, tucking everything into an arrangement. I glued the "sympathy" down, overlapping the flower arrangement. I stamped the "with" from the coordinating Avery Elle "With Sympathy" set in Leaf Green ink onto white cardstock. I cut that into a label, & adhered it above the sympathy die cut. Finally, I adhered the whole panel to a white card base.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Dies R Us Challenge #128: "Nature"
Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday Challenge: "Stamp It"
613 Avenue Create Challenge #225: "Anything Goes" (not playing the twist)