A woman I used to work with on our local psychiatric crisis and trauma response teams died in a car accident last weekend. She was just a little older than me (late 40s, maybe). It was so sudden it’s still hard to believe. I continue to work closely with the crisis team, which is part of the agency I work with, and remember from having spent about a year with them what a close, tight-knit family they are. I think you have to be to do that kind of work.
I made this card to send the team, and am also going to enter it in a couple challenges. I think the clean and simple look works well for sympathy cards (and for crisis teams, for that matter), but it’s something that I’m not necessarily used to doing. I’m finding that I really do like it, even though it can be a real challenge not to overdo it. Here are the challenges where I’m submitting it to:
http://cleanandsimpleonsunday.blogspot.com/2013/08/challenge-14-tag-it.html – This was the one I was originally planning to contribute to, and their clean and simple motif fit perfectly.
http://stampotiquedesignerschallenge.blogspot.com/2013/07/sdc109-clean-simple.html – Clean and simple is not the typical style for this blog, but I’m glad they’re trying it. The contributions to this challenge are amazing and it’s so cool to see people playing “outside of their comfort zones” a bit. (Oops! I missed this one by a few minutes. Maybe next month.)
http://thedynamicduoschallenge.blogspot.com/2013/08/dynamic-duos-64-strawberry-slush-and.html – This challenge was a somewhat interesting choice for this card, as the colors this week are “Strawberry Slush and Daffodil Delight”. They’re described as a “bright and cheerful color duo”. I’ve found that when making (and receiving) sympathy cards, the use of color can really be a nice way to add some light and brightness into what can be a really dark time.
I used unmounted stamps on my new stamp-press, and liked that they could be laid out so precisely around the tag I had already secured to the card and then pressed on all at once. However, I couldn’t figure out how to get the ink on the stamps once they were stuck on without getting ink all over the press, as well. I tried to wipe it off, but I was worried about the ink on the stamps drying. Some of the excess ink got on the card, so I covered up the smudges with a couple more little leaf stamps. Any ideas on how to make this work better?