The Rabbit Hole Designs: Masculine Sympathy Card

Welcome to today's The Rabbit Hole Designs blog. We all know creating masculine cards can be a challenge. It can even become more challenging when it is also a theme specific card, like a sympathy card.

This card uses the new Hold My Flowers stamp set (illustrated by Tatsiana Zayats). As I mentioned in a previous blog, this is my new go to set for sympathy cards and get-well cards. I love the images and the sentiments they are simple and heartfelt.

It is easier to create and color joyful flowers, but sometimes, it is more appropriate to tone down the image. Here is my solution to for this instance.

My focus starts with a printed brown plaid cardstock I have chosen to use as the background. The muted color is the inspiration for my color theme.

The image is stamped in a black ink and first colored using Copic markers in a brown-gray scale with no color added. The added color is created using colored pencils over top of the grey scale image using light pressure. This technique similar to early photograph portrait color tinting. My grandfather was a portrait photographer. He used this technique. All of my baby portraits are hand tinted by my Grandpa George (aka - Gramps and Bumpa)

I treated the lower righthand side of plaid print cardstock with the Cottontail Embossing Powder Tool. This will create a barrier that discourages the embossing powder from stick to your cardstock. It will only adhere to where you stamp the image leaving you a crisp and clean sentiment. I stamped the sentiment with VersaMark Watermark clear ink. I added a fine white embossing powder and heat set the sentiment.

Here is a tip I think will help when you need to create a masculine card. Always keep masculine style printed paper and cardstock in your stash. It does not need to be a large amount of paper, maybe one 6x6 or 12x12 printed pack. This gives you a go print for your masculine inspiration and creations.

TRHD Products Used

Hold My Flower stamp set