My friend Melinda recently asked me to make a special birthday card for her sister, who was diagnosed with breast cancer early last year and is now in remission and doing well.  She gave me a list of things she wanted me to incorporate into the design of the card: it needed to have an uplifting message, her sister loves sunflowers, loves to dance, loves the color pink (which of course is also the color of the breast cancer ribbon), wanted to have the ribbon somewhere on the card and it also needed a birthday greeting. Oh, by the way, she wanted the card size to be 5″ x 7″ rather than our standard 4 1/4″ x   5 1/2 ” sized card, which meant more space to fill up. I didn’t have a clue how this mishmash would end up looking in the final product but I was really pleased with how it turned out and within a minute of texting Melinda a photo of the card, she called me to say how excited she was, it was exactly what she was looking for and that she knew her sister would love it!

Initially, I met with Melinda and showed her a selection of stamp sets with both images and greetings and when she saw the Beautiful You set, with the image of the dancing woman and the inspirational words, that was the clincher.  I wasn’t sure how I was going to incorporate the sunflower theme until I remembered that the Painted Harvest stamp set includes sunflowers.  I pulled out whatever paper I had left from the Painted Autumn designer paper set from the 2017 Holiday Catalog and had enough of the big sunflower print left to use on the card.   I went with Blushing Bride and So Saffron as my color selections but still wasn’t quite sure how they would work with the designer paper until it all came together. 

I started by stamping the image of the woman with Memento Ink on Whisper White cardstock and used an aquapainter to watercolor the image.  To tie the image in with the designer paper, which has a Soft Sky background, I did a watercolor wash around the image of the woman using Soft Sky ink, now retired, and the aquapainter.   I used one of the larger circles from the Layering Circles Framelits set to die cut the image and also die cut a piece of Blushing Bride cardstock using the largest scallop circle in the set and attached the pieces together. I used my Blushing Bride and Black Stampin’ Write Markers to color the greeting and used smaller sized framelits to die cut the greeting and Blushing Bride scallop circle and attached them together.  For the background, I cut a piece of So Saffron cardstock at 4 3/4″ by 6 3/4″ and did two-step stamping with So Saffron and Daffodil Delight ink all over the paper and for the centers of the sunflowers I used Soft Suede ink and stamped off before stamping onto the cardstsock.  I cut a piece of the designer paper at 1 3/4″ x 6 3/4″ and attached it to the background.  I cut a piece of retired Blushing Bride ribbon and tied a bow towards the top of the card, attached both circle pieces and attached the background piece to the Blushing Bride card front. 

For the inside greeting, I cut a piece of So Saffron cardstock at 4 3/4″ x 6 3/4″ and a piece of Whisper White cardstock at 4 1/2″ by 6 1/2″ for the greeting and attached them together. I chose three of the greetings from the Beautiful You stamp set and used the Stamparatus to position the words in a staggered design, stamping with Blushing Bride ink.  I added a band of the designer paper to the bottom.  I used a retired breast cancer ribbon single stamp we had years ago to do tone-on-tone stamping with Blushing Bride ink on the back of the card as a way to incorporate the ribbon. The birthday party for Melinda’s sister took place this past Saturday evening and I anxiously awaited feedback from her.  Here is what she wrote me: “I wanted to let you know that my sister loved the card.  It actually made her cry.” Her sister is planning to post a picture to her Facebook page.  “That is how much she loves it.”

Every once in a while, my Stampin’ Up! upline, Janet Wakeland, poses the question, “What is your why?”  meaning why do you do what you do?  In this world of canned email greeting cards and tweets, I believe that people crave more personalized messages.  For me, as much as I love our products, making cards and teaching classes, ultimately, it is about bringing joy to someone in the form of a beautiful card that someone took the time to lovingly put together!

Thanks for stopping by today!