With Sincere Sympathy

Sympathy cards are always tough to make, but that's the challenge over at Heart2Heart this week.  I also combined my two favorite Clean and Simple challenge blogs: CASology (Pond) and Less is More (Colour: Blue & Green).  And in case my American friends are wondering, the Less is More folks are British which is why they have a "u" in "Colour".  (Note: I have been informed that Canadians use the same spelling.  I think we Yanks may be outnumbered!)

Those of you coming from the Heart2Heart blog who have not been around for about fifteen years will not recognize these stamp images.  The labels say D.O.T.S. with a 1989 copyright date.  Can I get someone--anyone--to tell me they still have some of their oldies but goodies?  I have drawers full.

To get the pond, I swooshed my watercolor pen through Moonstruck, Twilight, Juniper, and Pear using the "press the lid into the ink pad" method.  (I'm very technical around here.)  Once I got an even swirly look, I picked up more Moonstruck and flicked it, then more Pear and flicked it.  I had to let the paper dry before stamping the black grasses and sentiment.  Anyone want to guess how I learned that lesson?? 

I'll tell you another lesson I learned.  You can't mask off edges well enough for watercoloring.  I tried scoring my lines and masking, coloring, stamping with two long sticky notes.  Yeah...not so much.  This second attempt was done by cutting two smaller pieces of paper, watercoloring/stamping one, mounting it on a wider one, and scoring the edges with the Martha Stewart Score Board using the edge of the watercolor piece as a guide.  I scored a second line then trimmed very, very close to it.

In other news, I finished my novel!!! It has holes the size of trucks, but it's done.  I am taking today off of mine and critiquing the work of my writing partners instead.  I also need to write a summary sheet to take to the American Christian Fiction Writers conference in September.

Hi ho, hi ho...it's off to work I go.

Until next time,

Becca