Distress Ink Backgrounds, Sympathy Cards, and Envelopes

Quick post!  Unfortunately I had a need to make a Sympathy card this week and these are hardest to make for me... I'm sure for everybody.  But I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out.  I think it's pretty but not too much ... I started by blending some Tim Holtz Distress Inks.  Then I took my Tim Holtz Sunray stencil and sponged a little more of the yellow ink over to create some subtle rays.

After my inking, I splattered some water over the ink and then when it was dry I dropped some gold droplets on it.   After it was mostly dry, I stamped and heat embossed the leaves from the CTMH Fallen Leaves set.

Love the sentiments on this old CTMH set... they say just what I want to say.  I used my CDD Stitched Labels dies to cut the oval and heat embossed the sentiment in gold.  I kept the embellishments fairly low profile and simple... for me.

And there's no rule you can't decorate your envelope a bit... I made mine match the card.  I used a label die from CDD to mask off the area where my address will go and ink distressed to match the card.  I added a few extra stamps from the September Stamp of the Month since I can't embellish the envelope so it will go through the mail ok.

I'm entering this envelope into the cool October challenge over on the Stamp Junkies Facebook page.... very cool prizes for this one!  You should play along!

So thanks for stopping by and be sure to check out all of the awesome Paper Sweeties projects over the next few days!