Handmade Sympathy Cards

This has been a sad week. My cousin passed away from lung cancer, the same type of cancer that took my dad, her uncle. It was heartbreaking and took me to a really bad place. The entire situation happened so fast that I'm honestly still in shock. Cancer has affected too many people in our family. 

This situation left me feeling powerless and vulnerable at the same time. The only thing I COULD do was send a handmade card offering my support.

I always tell people that the time to make a sympathy card is NOT when you're in the midst of dealing with a loss. Sympathy cards are really the most important to have on hand but unfortunately, I found my card basket lacking. In this case, I needed to make six separate cards to send to the many family members affected by her passing. So I came up with a really simple design that could be replicated easily.

To start, I cut my card bases down to 4x5.25". My cousin loved her flowers so I found a sheet of floral paper and cut it into 2.5x4" pieces. I added the floral paper to the tops of the cards, followed by a 1x4" strip of coordinating paper.

I die cut and embossed two flowers from coordinating cardstock, then tucked some punched greenery behind. I finished with a printed text piece and Nuvo Drops on the flower centers.

To make the presentation a little more special, I printed the addresses on the fronts of the envelopes on my printer (not shown) using a nice font. Once printed, I added a coordinating liner to each envelope.

My advice to all of my card-making friends is to stop what you're doing and make some sympathy cards to have on hand when you need them! If you need a design, this is a super-easy one to replicate. To make it more masculine, you could use different paper (I like neutral plaids) and substitute die-cut leaves for the flowers. 

You'll be glad you have a card or two on hand for those sad occasions when you need to reach out to someone who has experienced a loss.

jp