With Heartfelt Sympathy

A friend of ours recently had to have her dog, Lucy, put down. While Lucy was older and had been having physical problems, this was still pretty sudden and unexpected. It's never easy losing a friend, especially one you've known for so long. But when you have to make the decision to let your friend go in this way, it can be doubly difficult. So I decided to make her a sympathy card, just to let her know we're thinking about her.

I got my inspiration from this card on Splitcoaststampers. I started by finding a bone template online. I resized that in Photoshop, then printed it on a piece of tan cardstock (on the back side so the lines wouldn't show after I cut it out). I fussy cut that, and printed the greeting (created in Photoshop) directly on the bone. I then glued it to a piece of dark brown cardstock, and cut around that, to create a mat for the bone. Then I inked around the bone itself with Antique Linen Distress ink, to add some shading & dimension. (This was admittedly an afterthought.) I also inked around the mat with Walnut Stain Distress ink, to camouflage the white core of the cardstock.

For the heart, I punched the paw print out of a piece of red cardstock, using a Fiskars punch. I positioned one of the dies from Little B's "Hearts" set, so the paw print would be in the upper left, and ran that through my Grand Calibur machine. I traced around that heart on to another piece of dark brown cardstock, then cut out that heart, leaving about an 1/8" border. After erasing my pencil lines, I inked around that with Walnut Stain. I inked the edges of the red heart with Antique Linen, to add some shading to that, and adhered that to the brown heart with foam tape. (The idea is that there is a "paw-shaped" hole in her heart now.)

I ran a piece of pink cardstock through my Grand Calibur with the "Dotted Flower Rings" embossing folder by Sizzix. I inked around that with more Antique Linen, then adhered it to a white A2 card base. I glued down the bone & heart, and this card was finished.