Thoughts & Prayers Beautiful Tree…

For my monthly swap club this month, we had to come up with a sympathy card and so I reached for my Thoughts & Prayers stamp set – it has beautiful sentiments along with that gorgeous tree making it perfect to use for this…you can find it on pg 52 of the Catalog…

I colored the tree using my Old Olive ink pad for the leaves and my Chocolate Chip Marker for the trunk and I stamped it onto Very Vanilla. I then cut it to size and cut it in three equal pieces. I matted these pieces onto Old Olive and trimmed it. I took my Paper Piercing Tool and made holes around the edge – you can now purchase this tool in the new Catalog – it is on pg 191 and costs just $3.50 – I reach for mine all the time to make holes for brads, faux stitching and simple paper piercing – it is a must have part of my kit :-)

I then matted these layers onto a piece of Certainly Celery and tied around a piece of Celery 1/4″ Grosgrain Ribbon and finished with a knot. I wanted lots of layers on this card, so matted them again onto a piece of Chocolate Chip and finally onto a piece of Always Artichoke that I had run through my Big Shot using a Texturz Plate from the Stampin’ Up! Backgrounds 1 pack that you can find on pg 195 – I love the texture, feature and dimension that these plates give to cardstock…

Finally I stamped my sentiment and punched it out using my Large Oval Punch – I then matted it onto a piece of Chocolate Chip that I punched out using my Scallop Oval Punch and adhered this to the card using Dimensionals.

This is a card front that I made for my swap club – to make it into a full card, I would simply attach it to a piece of Chocolate Chip that is the standard card size – half a sheet of 8 1/2″ x 11″ cardstock – isnt that tree gorgeous and elegant? :-)