Sympathy card

 A couple of weeks ago I found out that a lady (G) I had worked with for 6 years had passed away. She was one of the best, an absolutely wonderful, kindhearted and caring woman, and she had been fighting cancer for over a year. It was devastating to hear that she was ill, and even more heartbreaking to find out that it was incurable. Due to the pandemic I didn't go to her funeral. I wanted to but when you are only allowed 30 people inside the Church and knowing there would be so many people outside I felt it unwise to attend. That didn't mean I wasn't thinking about her or the family she left behind.

My work colleague was going - she had known this lady longer than me and had been told she could go in for the service. I made a card which she took with her.

Now, we found out that G had requested people to wear yellow, so that was where I started with the card. I cut a rectangle of yellow paper slightly smaller than the size of the card to act as a backing. I then cut a smaller piece of white card and blended green ink across the bottom to resemble grass. I didn't want this to be an overtly sad card as G was such a bright spark in my office, I didn't use any dark colours except for the words.

While I was waiting for the green to dry, I took out two butterfly cut-outs and stuck them together down the centre to give it a 3D effect. I used Dovecrafts 3D Pearl Effects pastel colours (blue, cream, green and pink) to give the top layer butterfly some colour and pattern. Unfortunately the two that I attempted did not come out very well, luckily I had one I made several weeks ago that did not look like I had just attacked it with massive blobs of colour thinking it was pretty... I grabbed a small square of orange paper and stamped the traditional "With Sympathy" message on and used black glittery embossing powder to melp it stand out. I also grabbed my small butterfly craft punch and cut a butterfly out from beneath the words.

When the ink had dried on the card, I glued it down and began to arrange my big butterfly, message, and I pulled out some small butterflies I had cut out one day to save paper waste in pink, purple and cream. Once in position I stuck them all down and left the card blank for me to write in when I was at work and had a bit of inspiration of what to write.

I didn't take any photos during the make of this card, I did a time-lapse video which I posted on my Instagram stories. I couldn't help a little laugh when the 40 minutes it took me to make this card was shrunk down into 26 seconds! I did however take a photo of the finished product.