Emily Leiphart: Taylored Expressions | Stamp & Stencil Sympathy Card Ideas

It's been a tough year for so many who have lost loved ones to cancer. I know that none of us enjoy making sympathy cards but they eventually must be made. To make it easy, I decided to use some new-to-me stamp and stencil combos from Taylored Expressions that would make this process easier.

My first card features the Autumn Array Stamp & Stencil Combo which I think works beyond autumn in so many ways. If you have the Spring Array Stamp, Stencil & Clear Combo or prefer this arrangement, you can stretch the versatility of this set as well.

After stamping the base layer with Spearmint ink, I use Single and Bitty Blender Brushes to blend Rose Water, Candy Corn, Gumball and Poppy Seed inks with the coordinating stencils. After cutting out array with the coordinating Autumn Array Die, I set it aside to prepare the background layers.

I cut the A2 card base from Spearmint cardstock, and the Sugar Cube panel from both the Diamonds Piercing Plate and the Additional A2 Layer Stacklets, which I glued to the card base. Next, I cut the smallest of the Frame in Frame 3 Cutting Plate from both Gumball and three Sugar Cube layers, stacking them together and gluing them to the pierced panel.

Next, I stamped the Simple Strips - Sympathy with Sugar Cube ink on Black Licorice cardstock, heat setting it with white embossing powder. I used the coordinating Simple Stripes Die to cut out all the strips, of which three are featured in this post.

I popped the Autumn Array on to the card with foam squares and added one of the heat embossed sentiments with black foam strips. To finish, I added a few grey enamel dots to the centres of the Gumball-coloured flowers.

For my second card, I used the landscape orientation of the Flower Patch Background. The Flower Patch Layering Stencils are sold separately for this background, in case you want to do your own colouring using your favourite medium.

Since there are only three stencils, I used an ombre effect with the leaves. It's a bit harder to see the Gumball colour but the leaves were stencilled in both Gumball and Spearmint. The large buds were blended with Candy Corn and the small buds were stencilled with Rose Water ink.

I used the A2 Layer Stacklets to cut a vellum panel. Then I cut several of the Garden Variety Dies from Rose Water, Candy Corn and Gumball cardstock, and the stems from Garden Variety Bouquet Builder from Spearmint and Poppy Seed cardstock. Once I had the arrangement finalized, I used a combination of double-sided tape, foam squares and glue dots to attach the bouquet to the vellum panel.

After popping up the sentiment with black foam strips, I used double-sided tape to attach the vellum panel to the stencilled background. This time, I added a few white enamel dots to the centres of the Gumball-coloured flowers.

You can find more inspiration for the Flower Patch Background and Flower Patch Layering Stencils in this BLOG POST and you can find more inspiration for the Garden Variety Dies in this YOUTUBE VIDEO.

My last card features the Four Seasons Stamp & Stencil Combo, which is so beautiful! You can see that I used the same four colours as the two previous cards and I couldn't resist letting this shine without any distractions.

I used the Frame in Frame 2 Cutting Plate to cut out the centre and attached all three pieces to a Gumball card base, popping up the frame itself with foam strips.

I chose a sentiment from Handlettered Sympathy and white heat embossed it on Black Licorice cardstock and found the perfect pairing from the many Simple Strips - Sympathy stamped earlier.

To allow both sentiments to stand out against the busy background, I recut the Frame in Frame 2 Cutting Plate from vellum and attached the sentiments to the centre piece with foam tape. Then I attached the vellum insert to the panel with double-sided tape.

I hope you found inspiration in today's post. Since sympathy cards are hard to make, I felt that gathering a few of my stamp & stencil products with the same colour palette were a great way to make a bunch of them all at once. I plan to go back and create a few more with similar designs but switch up the colour combination.