Vintage Sympathy Card

I think if we polled card makers, they would say the most difficult cards to make are sympathy cards. And the difficulty seems to be in direct proportion to how well you know the family or cared about the person who passed away!

I wanted to make a vintage-themed condolence card for a friend, and I recently picked up the Botanical Tea designer paper by graphic 45, which helped set my direction. These toile-inspired birds were especially nice with the matching Nantucket Blue background paper.

I die cut some kraft cardstock doilies and stamped a doily pattern from Waltzingmouse Stamps on them (see upper right). I distressed edges with Vintage Photo distress ink. I created a tag by using an interesting Tammy Tutterow paper transfer technique of placing paper on the adhesive side of a Tim Holtz ideology mirror sheet, then wetting and rubbing away the back of the paper. I distressed the edges of the tag, too. Unfortunately I ended up covering up most of the mirror tag so you cannot see how cool it is - but please check out Tammy's tutorial for more info.

I tied some mottled hand-dyed seam binding around the top of the tag and some lace and paper twine around the bottom. The flowers are Spellbinders Bitty Blossoms die cuts, surrounded by assorted leaves. I added a bit of glitter to the flowers. The sentiment is a Quietfire Design stamp that I stamped in black Archival Ink, then pounced Versamark over top and clear embossed with a couple layers of clear embossing powder. I cracked the surface and then ran Broken China distress ink over the cracks to add some character. Here is the finished card, ready for a padded envelope: