Freshly Made Sketch #454

I was so busy with setting up and holding my "Stamp-arage Sale" on Saturday that the weekend just went by in a blur and although I was handling stamps a lot, I didn't actually get any stamping time in.   So, here it is after midnight on Sunday evening and I'm trying to be creative because I really wanted to play with the Freshly Made Sketches #454 and post it before their challenge closes on Monday morning.    Love this sketch by Jacquie, it's so clean and simple.

Here's my entry: 

Because of my time limitations and lack of imagination I grabbed stamps and inks that were close at hand on my desk.   I planned to make a Sympathy Card, so I wanted those clean lines and chose to stay pretty close to the sketch outline. I could have simply cut a 4 x 4 strip of designer paper, but I decided to simply stamp a strip of Whisper White card stock with a variety of leaves from the Stampin' Ups! Forever Fern set, that is on loan to me. 

This stamp set has Distinktive stamp images which are deeply etched and have a special texture that gives added depth and dimension in a single step, creating photo-realistic images. I used 1st and 2nd generation stamping to get a layered leaf effect.  

This was the first time I've used this stamp set, and I am totally impressed with the images it creates.  The leaves are so realistic that as long as you don't super saturate your stamp with ink, the detail really shows through.  I stamped with a combination of Just Jade, Mango Melody and Shaded Spruce inks.  I think I'll be playing with this set for a while and creating some background papers.  

I used a combination of sentiments from the Forever Fern and the  Peaceful Moments Cling stamp set. Peaceful Moments is one of my all time favourite sentiment sets because I like each of the sayings and I really like the mixed font style.  Because this is a sympathy card for a friend who's just going through a loss I chose "you can do this" from the Forever Fern set for the front of the card and for the inside "thinking of you with all my heart", from Peaceful Moments.  Both were stamped in Early Espresso ink.  

For the inside of the card I added a vertical strip of leaves with a small border of Mango Melody card stock.  

Happy Stamping!

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