Shoe Box Swap

Because so many in my crafting circle of friends are involved in education, we have {somewhat} annually had a Shoebox Swap in the summer.  For this, we design a card or two and prep all the materials needed for the persons involved to create two cards.  This year I opted for one design.  In previous years I have done more than one.  I seem to never have sympathy cards when I need them, so I used my new So Sorry set from SU! and some patterned paper from SU! that I had sorted in with my other papers...and could not believe I had forgotten about it!  I LOVE the colors and designs.

This card is a wee smaller than A7: it's 5.25" x 4".  It would still fit fine in a standard invitation envelope.  It is smaller because I uses the Cuttlebug embossing folder and it just did not cover the whole area.  And that drives me nuts.  It is important to note that the So Sorry sentiment comes separately from the other sentiments you can choose for your sorrow.  You want to have slightly different darkness of inks for this to work out without being illegible.  I used SU! River Rock and Sahara Sand.  I started to use Basic Gray, but I could not find my Going Gray pad (I think I gave it away, in truth), so that did not work out.  Plus, the Basic Gray was pretty harsh, and I like how these colors soften the sentiment. I have the main sentiment oval (cut out with Nestabilities) in some SU! version of yellow and inked on the sides with Sahara Sand.  This is raised with Dimensionals.  Then, a snip of ribbon is placed above the next oval of patterned paper.  I am taking all of my sentiments to the swap, as well as several choices for the inside sentiment.  The one I used is a Hero Arts stamp I bought years ago that never gets old with me.

I am really liking this design as well as the colors of this card!