Floriography Sympathy Card

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since the last blog post, as I have been really busy getting to grips with my new job but things are settling a bit now so I have got a bit of time to blog.  This card was made for me to send to the mother of a friend of mine who so sadly passed away at the very young age of 41 two years ago this week. She truly was a beautiful soul and had the biggest smile I have ever seen.  At her funeral a tenor sang Bring Her Home (instead of Bring Him Home) from Les Mis, and I have never been able to listen to it since without a tear in my eye.

I didn't want to do a traditional dark card so looked through my favourite floral CD, My Craft Studio Floriography and found the image above.  The card base is A5 and once I had found the images I wanted I merged them together and then moved it about until the cream flower was in the middle.  I used the text tool to print the message at the top and the bottom and then printed it off as a whole piece and also printed another version without the cream flower so I could die cut the embellishment to match the card front. Although it looks like a butterfly it is actually the Large Lace Faerie Queen die from Cheery Lynn, I cut two of them and stuck the body and bottom swirls together but kept the wings separate so I could give the card a bit of dimension.  I decided to keep it simple and not put pearls or gems on the body of the butterfly but added a tiny bit of glitter here and there on the die cut and also a fine line round the edge of the flower.  

All that was left to do was the inner which is also on the CD, you can just see it on the picture above.  The whole card was actually quite simple, but I was happy with the end result and hope Debs would have liked it too.

Thanks for reading and stopping by.

Feminine Sympathy Card

Another absolutely lovely week. I know this probably makes me a big old moaner but it's a bit too hot for me ... I can cope with the heat, but the humidity makes me feel like a limp lettuce leaf!

Anyway this is a card that I made for my aunt who sadly passed away after a short illness last year.  I didn't want to do a very dark or fussy sympathy card as this lady was always so full of the joys, could organise anything at the drop of a hat and was always on the go, so I kept it fairly plain but used pink rather than grey or black ink.

More apologies here for my photography, I made this card round at my mums house rather than in my usual crafting spot so the photos aren't that great and I just propped it up on one of my mums chairs!

I started off with an 8x8 card and did a plain mat of centura pearl white card.  Next up I embossed a plain white piece of super smooth card using my Regal Mbossability embossing folder.  I usually use MCS super smooth when doing matt white or centura pearl when I want a bit of sheen to the card.

I had already printed the sentiment off in Word, which I printed off several time on the sheet in slightly different colours, matching it as closely to the Jenny Bowlin Chewing Gum pink ink pad I used on the die cuts as I could.   The dies I used are Moroccan Accents for the long borders and the piece behind the sentiment and Spellbinders Crosses 2 for the centre.

All that was left to do was to ink the cross and the edges of everything else with my Ink Dusters and I was finished.  I was quite glad that I did this at mums, as I would probably have carried on adding pearls and things if I was in my usual crafty spot - knowing when to stop with cards is definitely one of my failings!

Anyway that's it for this week, let me know what you think and thanks for stopping by.

Leafy Sympathy Card

Hello, I hope everyone had a good and crafty week.

As I have had the day off work to take my mum to the hospital, I am trying not to watch Create and Craft so I wont order any Christmas dies.  I really must use up some of my Christmas stash before getting ANYTHING else.  Only crafty people wont be shocked that I am talking about Christmas in June!

This card is about as different as you can get from my usual flowery cards, as it is obviously for a sad occasion and also took very little 'putting together' but longer to design on the PC.  It was done a while ago for OHs family as his aunt had sadly passed away.

The card was designed in My Craft Studio Elite (I can't remember which CD as I have so many).  I use MCS for inserts all the time, and some of their images are just beautiful like the ones on their Floriography CD, but there are lots of others that I use regularly (which is why I try so hard not to buy paper when I go to craft shows!).  It is 5.5 x 5.5 and I also made a co-ordinating envelope using the Enveloper and an insert using MCS.

I always struggle to find sentiments for this sort of occasion, but I did find this poem when I was looking for verses for my great aunts memorial cards, and thought it appropriate for this card too.  

As the card is fairly simple to put together there wasn't even a blooper!  For me any combination of wet glue, glitter glue, double sided tape, glitter and a hot glue gun usually have blooper written all over them, I couldn't tell you how many times I have put something down on top of something that is drying!!

Anyway, that's all from me for today.  Thanks for stopping by.