Handmade Sympathy Cards

2020 has sure been a sad year for us, as I know it has been for everyone on our planet.  In addition to Covid and all the political and social issues, we've lost a lot of loved ones to cancer, heart disease, and dementia.  It seems I have had to make more sympathy cards than cards to celebrate life.

If I have the time, I always prefer to send a handmade sympathy card than a store bought one.  I feel taking the extra effort to put some time into making a card is the very least I can do.  The first card is made using two old retired Stampin' Up! sets "Brighter Tomorrow" and "Happy Harmony".  I know, it's kind of ironic that I made a sympathy card from a set called "Happy Harmony" but I loved the flower image.

To make the card, using a Stampamajig I randomly stamped the flower image from the "Happy Harmony" set all over a sky blue card base.  I then cut a scalloped border out of white card stock along with a strip of "Close to Cocoa" card stock and sewed them directly onto the sky blue card base using a sewing machine. Sewing on a card seems odd to some, but I feel it adds just a little bit of interest to a card and it's so easy to do.

I then stamped the sentiment onto white card stock with an image from retired Stampin' Up! "Brighter Tomorrow" and cut it into a scalloped oval shape using a die from Spellbinder's Nestabilities.  I sponged light blue ink on the edges, then I popped it up on dimensionals.  The butterflies were cut using an old Cuttlebug die.  I glued just the bodies of the butterflies to the card to add more dimension.  Small, metallic pearls were added to some of the dots in the flower images.

My next card only uses images from the retired Stampin' Up! set "Thoughts and Prayers".  Since it's fall, I decided to create a fall sympathy card and stamped the image in fall colors.  I picked a dark purple and brown to frame the main image then I decorated the card with a bow.

I used Stampin' Up! Watercolor Markers to color different fall colors directly onto the stamp.  Then I huffed on it to remoisten the ink, and stamped.

Have A Great Day!

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