Medallion Sympathy

I never like making sympathy cards, but this one was particularly difficult to create. My brother-in-law's sister, only 44, died Tuesday morning. When you live far away from your loved ones, it's more challenging to communicate adequately your care and concern, so I wanted to get this right.

I thumbed through my archive of cards for inspiration and came across one I'd made using the Medallion background stamp inked in earth tones. Finding a suitable color palette for a sympathy card is a struggle for me, so I took this as direction and pulled out More Mustard, Cajun Craze, and Bravo Burgundy, all from the Regals Collection. I patted each pad directly on the stamp, layering color and creating some interesting texture. I used Very Vanilla card stock for this image.

I chose More Mustard for the card base because the darker colors are harder to read handwriting on, and pulled out my retired Linen background stamp and added Bravo Burgundy to it to give the card base a textured look.

I only had 3 scraps of Cajun Craze and none of Bravo Burgundy, so I went with a simple layout. I crumpled the strip of CC and then ran it over the same color ink pad. I like that it looks a bit like leather. At the last minute, I felt it need something to soften it a bit, so I added some Victoria Crochet Trim.

The sentiment is from Word Play and it said just what I wanted to say. I used Bravo Burgundy ink to coordinate with the rest of the color palette.