Through the sadness… a reason to smile …

I felt sad and a little subdued whilst making today’s cards.  Two of my friends have recently lost someone very close to them.

I wanted to let them know how very sorry I was to hear their sad news, and for them to know I was thinking about them.

I  turned to a beautiful new stamp set from Stampin’ Up that will be available during August 2012 only.

Called a reason to smile, it is a two-step stamp set, so the line flower stamp comes with a complementary image to add colour with.  But this time I chose instead to do some water colouring with my aqua painter.

I stamped the flower twice in black stazon ink onto water colour paper, using my stamp-a-majig to line up and stamped the sentiment from the hopeful thoughts set.  To colour the flowers, I put a little ink into the lid of my elegant eggplant ink pad by squeezing it whilst shut – this transfers ink from the pad to the lid – and then used my aqua painter.

I added a few lines of dry embossing using the simply scored scoreboard.

I also stamped and coloured a matching flower on a small piece of very vanilla cardstock and adhered it to the inside.

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For the next card, I stamped onto a piece of very vanilla cardstock and again used the aqua brush to colour, taking care not to soak the cardstock too much.

Finally, I coloured a length of whisper white taffeta ribbon using my aqua brush and elegant eggplant ink, dipping the ribbon into the watery ink on the lid of the ink pad until I was happy with the depth of colour.  The ribbon then co-ordinated beautifullly with the cards.  Once the ribbon was dry, I tied it into teeny tiny bows and adhered to the cards with mini glue dots.*

And why a reason to smile? …  because they are fortunate to have known and loved two wonderful ladies…

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Papercraft supplies from Stampin’ Up!

Cardstock: elegant eggplant, watercolour paper. very vanilla; Inks: elegant eggplant, certainly celery, black stazon; Stamp sets: reason to smile, hopeful thoughts, teeny tiny wishes; Accessories: white taffeta ribbon, mini glue dots, aqua painter, simply scored scoreboard, word window punch, modern label punch, stampin’ dimensionals, stamp-a-majig.

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Thanks for dropping by today