Love and Sympathy

It's only the seventh day of the month and I'm all caught up on the first two weeks of February's Viva la Verve challenges.

Here’s my card for February’s first Viva la Verve sketch. I went with muted earth tones for a simple, soothing sympathy card. I used images from Verve’s Kind Words set for my focal image panel. I stamped the flower pair in green ink, then stamped the sympathy sentiment over the stems in brown ink. I added a small pearl at the center of each flower.

The panels behind the image are made from two different patterns from Papertrey Ink’s Turning a New Leaf paper pad. I machine stitched around the edges to add interest before layering the panel on a kraft mat, then on a square moss card base. A piece of avocado green satin ribbon is knotted around the cardfront. Once the ribbon was in place, I attached the image panel to the card.

Materials Used:
Kind Words stamp set (Verve Stamps); Spring Moss and Dark Chocolate inks, Spring Moss, Ripe Avocado, and Kraft cardstock, Turning a New Leaf patterned paper, Ripe Avocado satin ribbon (Papertrey Ink); white cardstock (Stampin’ Up!); circle dies (Spellbinders); self-adhesive pearls (Queen & Co.); sewing machine

And, here's my card for this month's second sketch. There's almost no stamping, but at the last minute, I managed to squeeze in a teeny, tiny bit.

I used a felt heart made with Verve's Jotted Heart die as my focal image. The heart is dressed up with a deep red button that's tied with twine.

The heart is set on a pair of patterned panels from the State of the Heart Collection Kit from My Mind's Eye. I picked a text patterned paper for directly underneath the heart so that the heart didn't need any sentiment stamped on it. The others are simpler papers to keep the attention on the heart. I used my sewing machine to stitch the edges of the dotted paper to the kraft card base--and in the process, discovered that my new sewing machine's zig zag stitch isn't working. Guess there's a trip to Hancock Fabrics to return the machine in my plans for today . . . Anyway, once everything was in place, I realized that I'd omitted the trio of embellishments under the small panel that runs across the card. I considered using brads, but they didn't lok right with my dotted paper. That's when I decided to stamp the "xoxo" image from Love Notes instead. It worked perfectly as a replacement for the embellishments--and got in a little stamping, too.

Materials Used:

Love Notes stamp set, Jotted Heart die (Verve Stamps); Cranberry Crisp Classic ink, Crumb Cake cardstock (Stampin' Up!); State of the Heart Collection Kit (My Mind's Eye); Fine Linen felt, Scarlet Jewel button, twine (Papertrey Ink); brown twill (Martha Stewart); sewing machine