Tinkerin In Ink with Tanya: Creative Crew: Sympathy

Often times when we need a sympathy card, we are just not in a creative state of mind. For that reason, I like to have a stash of sympathy cards available at all times. And they are my biggest sellers at work. So when the Creative Crew Holiday Focus for August was Sympathy cards, I was all over that!

I had bought the Heartfelt Sympathy set this spring, I think, with the thought that it would be a marvelous set for all of those sympathy cards I should crank out. And I paired it with Gorgeous Grunge this time, which is a must-have set in my opinion :) Here is how I made it:

Cut a panel of watercolor paper to 4"x5¼". Create a 4¼"x5½" Soft Sky card base.
Squeeze your Soft Sky and Peekaboo Peach ink pads to create a puddle of ink on the lids. Use your Aqua-painter to dilute the inks and watercolor a puddle of Soft Sky. Heat set, then repeat in a different but overlapping pattern with the Peekaboo Peach. Heat set again.
Splash clean water on the panel, then dab the water off with a relatively clean cloth. This removes some of the ink in a spatter pattern.
Then either load your Aqua-painter with leftover diluted ink from the inkpad lids and spatter onto panel by tapping the brush over the watercolor paper, or use the fine spatter image from Gorgeous Grunge to apply some spatters. Dry again.
Use Embossing Buddy over the water color panel, then test to see if any embossing powder sticks. If it sticks, brush off, then heat with heat tool and test again.
When the embossing powder no longer sticks, use the embossing buddy again, stamp the sentiment in Versamark ink, sprinkle with Copper embossing powder, and heat set.
Stitch around the panel with sewing machine and thread.
Apply dimensionals, (or trimmed coasters if you have a big stash of them like I do), to the back of the watercolor panel and adhere to the front of the cardbase.
Stamp the second part of the sentiment in Soft Suede inside the card, then stamp the fine spatter image in Soft Sky and Peekaboo Peach from the right lower corner up towards the center. All Done!

Soft Suede was about as close as I could get to the Copper embossing powder color for ink. Embossing inside the card on the cardbase tends to warp the card a bit, and I just did not want that for this card :)

What is your go-to stamp set for sympathy cards? And do you keep a stash of them?

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