In Sympathy – The Art of Cobwebs

In my last post I said how difficult I found making ‘Sympathy’ cards, I think because it’s so difficult to accurately gauge the deep, all-encompassing pain which descends upon someone when they suffer the loss of a loved one. So it came as quite a surprise to find myself making yet another ‘sympathy’ card, – this one very much different from the last one.

I had my Ranger Melting Pot (aka The Cauldron) out the other day and made a few things, putting most of them on one side for projects at some other point. One of the things I made was the Angel Wings you see on the card above. I got the little box out where I’d stored them along with the other items I’d made and the moment I picked up the Angel Wings and held them in my hand … I knew I should make another sympathy card, this time using them as the feature embellishment on the front.

I laid the wings onto my desk and looked at them for a minute or so. They were lovely – but there was something missing. Took me a moment to figure it out. Wax. They needed high-lighting in pearl wax so that the individual feathers came to life and caught the light. It took just a minute to do – but they looked so lovely once I’d polished them to a shine. (Nicer than in the photographs – but sadly I’m not a great photographer so please make allowances for me being rubbish with a camera!)

I went through my stamps to find the right one which would be suitable to use – and although I stamped out several of them (wasting card like it was going out of fashion) – none of them were right. They were either the wrong sentiment, or they were the wrong type face for the words. In the end I decided that I’d print my own words, using my computer and my printer. That’s when the ‘fun’ began.

It took me a very hot one and a half frustrating [insert appropriate swear word] hours just to get that sentiment from the computer to my card! I had to work out where I needed to place the typed words on a word type document that I was looking at on the ‘puter screen – which would mean it would be in the right place when I put my card through the printer.

(Again – this resulted in more card being put into the ‘trim off the rubbish bits and put the rest into the ‘scraps’ draw’ pile. Grrrr!)

Seriously – it was frustrating to the point that my sensible mind telling me to: “just give up woman, you’re not going to get this right!” – the problem was → – I was determined that it wasn’t going to beat me.

Then suddenly all the planets aligned. There was a Star to the East. My Lottery Numbers came up and …. well no, actually that didn’t happen . . . but it certainly felt like it did when the printer delivered the perfectly placed sentiment, with the right font, right place and right colour. Ta DAHHHH! (Was that a choir of Angels I heard singing? At this point I really wouldn’t have been surprised.)

I attached the wings to the card using a mix of two glues – one an ‘instant’ fix – which was the hot glue gun. The other one a glue which needs time to dry, but dries clear and holds well. Then it was time to deal with the inside.

I didn’t feel it needed me to add words to the inside of the card, but instead leave it blank inside so that the sender could write a short, or long note of condolence depending upon how they themselves felt.

Instead I decided upon a single creamy white Angels feather, tied with a bow of satin ribbon, attached to the inside of the card.

And that was it.

It’s quite a simple card (or would have been, was I not so technically challenged!) and once I’d got the positioning right of the sentiment, it was easy to pull it all together. However – I think it’s perfect in its unfussy, simplicity. It conveys the right feeling, in the right way, but it doesn’t go over-board. I think I got the balance just right on this one and I love the finished card.

I think I got the balance just right on this one. I really love the finished card and hope you like it too.

Have a happy Sunday. I hope the weather is kind to you and that peace rests in your heart and soul today, where ever you are.

Have a truly blessed day, all.

I love making cards, it’s one of my favourite things to do, however, there is one type of card that I find ‘difficult’ to make – and that’s ‘In Sympathy’ cards.

How do you second guess someone’s pain? How do you know what they’re going through, so know how to address the traumatic time they’ve found themselves in?

I realised today that I hadn’t made a ‘sympathy’ card for my blog, so thought I’d put myself to the test and make one.

I wanted to make something which would be the right card for several options. If someone wasn’t a believer, then I didn’t want to push a religion upon them by saying that I was praying for that person – as some folks are so anti-religion that a card of that type could cause the person concerned to feel offended – so in the end I decided to opt with the sentiment you see on the card above.

The card is (was) based around those little blue flowers you see running down the card on the right hand side. If you’ve already seen my post in the ‘Ranger Melt Pot’ category, then you’ll know that I made those flowers especially for this card. I wanted to make Forget me Not flowers to put on this card, and I wanted them to be blue. So I set about making them using the Ranger Melt Pot. Once made, and with the addition of a little gilding wax (and a polish) – the flowers were perfect, so I set about making a very simple card – but one which you could feel the love which the card was made with.

Made on a brilliant white 6″x 6″ scored and folded card; I partially embossed the front of the card using an embossing folder from the Sheena Douglass range.

The sentiment is a stamped image from a collection of Stamps made by Heartfelt Creations, which I stamped in black, then die cut (using a Spellbinders die) and gently inked around the very outer edge, using the same black ink as the sentiment was stamped with.

The butterflies were die cut using Tonic Dies.

The addition of a short length of black satin ribbon and the card was made.

click on the picture ↑ to make it bigger so that you can read it.

Thank you SO much for visiting. I hope you like the card, and the post too!

If you’d like to leave me a comment, it’s easy to do: Just scroll up to where you see the title of this post (Forget me Nots on ~ An ‘In Sympathy’ card.) and look just to the right of that title. You should be able to see a grey speech bubble. If you can’t see it, just move your mouse cursor to the left of the title – the speech bubble turns red when you roll your cursor over it. Click that speech bubble, it will open up any comments that have been made already – so that you can read them if you wish, and it will also give you a comment box where you can type your own comment.