A Cardinal Reminder

My original intention for this card was to enter it in the bi-weekly Inky Paws Challenge. But as you read on, you’ll see that a whole other reason and inspiration came about.

**warning** lengthy blog post

Obviously since this was a color challenge, I had to incorporate all of the above colors.

For the background, I used the Newton’s Nook Music stencil and worn lipstick Distress Oxide ink.

The color was a little too vibrant for me, so I decided to put a layer of vellum over it. My vellum kinda stuck, because I was a little heavy handed with my Pixie Spray, but I was fine with that. I thought it actually worked to my advantage. 😉 I still thought my pink was to vivid, so I decided to add another layer of vellum. This time I purposely sprayed Pixie Spray on the back and adhered it to the other piece of vellum. It worked beautifully!! You can’t see the adhesive.

I know that this could be peeled off, so I did add some Glitter Art glue under the area where I knew my images would be added to hide the glue.Does that make sense?

Next I started designing my focal point. I had stamped and Copic colored some images from the Winter Birds stamp set.

After I die cut them, I decided I needed two more of the branches to create my design. So I stamped, colored and cut two more.

I then placed the branches to look like a frame around the cardinal. I stamped the sentiment and added some music notes from the Caroling Newton stamp set.

Lastly, I adhered everything together and added my card base.

I did add some foam tape to the back of the cardinal to add some more dimension to the card.

Now, to tell the rest of the story.

Yesterday, a friend from high school had posted on Facebook that she was really missing her dad; he has been gone for five years. I had commented back that I understood exactly how she felt. (My dad has been gone for about 18 years.) Later that same day, my friend saw my Instagram post where I had shown the colored up pieces to my card. In my post, I said that I wasn’t sure yet what I was going to do with these. She then commented that every time she sees a cardinal, she thinks of her dad…and she thought that me posting that,when I did, was perfect timing. So I decided that this card was going to be in memory of her dad.

Mr. Greenawalt was my band teacher. I have many sweet memories of him. I played percussion at the time with a bunch of boys. The boys never let me have any ” good parts.”I think Mr. Greenawalt realized this, so he asked me to play timpani drums on a piece that featured the timpani. This had such an impact on me. He was not only a gifted musician and teacher, he was empathetic and caring to his students. I learned so much from him. I thought the music notes and cardinal on my card would be a nice reminder of Mr. Greenawalt. I hope my friend Beth loves the card. I’ll be mailing it out to her today.