Papertrey Sympathy Cards

I made these sympathy cards a few weeks back. Boy, I can tell I'm getting older because there are so many friends my age that are losing their elderly loved ones. I know that dying is part of life but it is still so hard to deal with. Sometimes the best thing you can do is send a card and just let that person know that you are thinking of them. So I needed a big stack of sympathy cards for myself and also for my stash basket. It seems lately that sympathy and get well cards are the best sellers, YKWIM?


But I do have to say that I loved the design of these cards. I literally made this batch in about 30-45 minutes. Two step stamping, where you layer lots of matching images, is about the quickest way to whip out cards in a short amount of time. Nichole's sets at Papertrey Ink are just perfect for this kind of stamping. She puts so much thought and detail into each set and the way that the images layer together makes it easy on us stampers. This set is called Beautiful Blossoms and the possibilities of *floral arranging* on your projects are endless. I also used a strip of My Mind's Eye patterned paper on each card. Just a little snippet was all that was needed because I wanted to keep the white base card clean and simple. The base is Papertrey's Stampers Select white cardstock. Sentiments are also from Papertrey. Ink is from Stampin' Up! I also had time to stamp some simple flowers on my envelopes. I am loving the white base cards if you've noticed lately. It's just a clean and simple look and really reminds me of nice stationery. To keep the look uncluttered but to add a little more detail, I used my bone folder and paper trimmer groove to create two lines of deep embossing under the patterned paper strips. Very subtle but still another design element added to the card. I love the little flower next to the sentiment also.
And for the flowers, I simply stamped the leaf image, added the orange flowers with brown outlines and then stamped the little tiny orange flowers along the stems. This reminded me of little buds that are about to bloom and you can see the color of the flowers just about to pop open.
And that's it. Simple. Clean. Easy peasy. I think I'll be making more of these types of cards soon.