Clean and Simple Thanks

Happy New Year!  Now that the holiday season is winding down and the new year has begun, the focus is on sending out thank you notes.  Stamp to Cope, Inc. (and me personally) was richly blessed over the last weeks of the year with donations of cash, stamps, and in kind resources.  A huge thank you to Rita Whetzel, the Lexington Lioness Club, Star Charities, and our Board of Directors.  We had a really special surprise when we received a beautiful arrangement of "candy cane" Lillies from the very first Stamp to Cope survivor recipient. It was wonderful to hear how much of an impact the STC tote bag of stamping supplies had on her continued recovery and that she is doing so well...Praises!    The flowers inspired this clean and simple card to reflect our thanks.

With a Lilly stamp, I used Memento markers to color the petals red and the stem and leaves green.  Once colored, I "huffed" over the stamp to reactivate any ink that dried (the moisture from my breath reactivates the ink) and stamped onto a cut piece of white card stock at the bottom.  I repeated this process four more times adjusting the height of the Lilly each time. Since the original Lillies were white with red stripes down the center, I thought I would reverse the look so I used a white gel pen to draw white lines down the middle of each petal. After stamping the sentiment in the center, I freehand tied a red bow and attached with a glue dot.  The whole piece was mounted onto a piece of red cardstock to showcase the red flowers. Using markers to color stamps is a great way to add variety without having to invest in lots of expensive ink pads.  By keeping the layering and dimensionals to a minimum, special postage and packaging is not necessary.

Try these techniques with other types of flowers and colors for birthday, get well, and sympathy greetings as well.  Thank you everyone for your support of Stamp to Cope, Inc. and blessings to all.  Jeannette