With Heartfelt Sympathy. . .

My dear friend, Sandy, seems to have had a run of unhappy events in the loss of several near and dear to her, from a long-time friend of nearly 50 years, a sister-in-law, a dear friend's niece, and another friend acquired through marriage.  I wanted to send her a card to let her know I was thinking of her and wished I could have been less busy to lend her an ear and a shoulder to lean on.  Unfortunately, my daughter's wedding planning seemed to take over my life and consume every minute of the day and night to iron out many details that were slipping through the cracks as our timeline grew shorter and shorter.  So, after the wedding, but a bit belatedly, I finished a card I started at a card event hosted by Liz Thayer way back in May, 2014.  I loved the design and the colors of this card, but my creative urges challenged me to tweak it a bit here and there to make it more me.  

Liking layers, I added an Elegant Eggplant cardbase beneath the Crumb Cake layer and adhered these two pieces together.  I then adhered the card front to the Summer Starfruit layer and popped this set of layers off the cardbase set of layers.  Early on, I decided I wanted to add a second stamped flower to my card front (for me it was too much negative space) and not just a single flower as in the original design.  I had already stamped this second flower on my card front at the card event.  I also had decided I wanted them raised up a bit farther toward the top of the card than the original flower.  

I'm can't remember if the original single flower had a second fussy-cut flower layer slightly popped on top, and it was also difficult to tell from the picture I took of Liz's original card with my cell phone.  If she didn't, I must have decided that was what I wanted to do to my flowers because there were two additional flowers stamped and colored on a scrap of paper in my baggie of half finished pieces from the event.   I had also stamped the sentiment on this scrap as well, so I must have been thinking of placing the sentiment in a different location than the original card.  The original card design had the sentiment stamped directly onto the upper card front.  I'm not sure what my thoughts were at the time of the event, but in the present time, I decided I liked the sentiment stamped directly onto the card front and not added as separate layer. 

After fussy-cutting my colored flowers from the scrap of paper, I popped them up with a double layer of glue dots, I also add some glittery shimmer to the flowers with my Clear Wink of Stella glitter brush pen.  This complimented the shimmer already on the card front pieces that I had started back in 2014.  I believe this shimmer was achieved by spritzing with a now retired spritzing agent.  From the picture, I can't tell if the original design had the shimmer on the card front pieces or not, but I assume they did.

My final changes were to add a tied lace ribbon knot onto the lace ribbon band and add pearls in the four corners of the card front.  I decided not to add the petite safety pin as was on the original card, it just didn't seem to go with my changes.  As, I said, I loved the original card design and its colors, but just had the creative urge to make a few changes making the card more my own.  I'm really please with the results and hope that my card will bring my friend a bit of solace to her days as she is reminded my thoughts and prayers are with her.  

I have added my inside creation that I coordinated with the front design and my verse, which I completed with my computer.  In addition, I have added the picture of the original card design below to help clarify the changes I made.

Recipe:  Stampin' Up products:  Cardstock--Elegant Eggplant, Crumb Cake, Summer Starfruit, Very Vanilla.  Stamps--Simply Sketched, En Francaise (both retired).  Ink--Crumb Cake, Elegant Eggplant, Summer Starfruit (distressing).  Markers--Old Olive, Elegant Eggplant, Wisteria Wonder.  Pearls.  Vintage Lace.  Other products: Encore Gold Metallic Ink.  Versamark Illuminate.  Wink of Stella-Clear.  (Thank you Liz Thayer for original card design.)

This is the original card design by Liz Thayer: