Sympathy Cards Part One

Today it's Jemma's turn to share a card kit with you: for Sympathy cards.  I have to admit I have never made a sympathy card before and was wondering how to make them slightly serious, but still pretty, so I turned to Google for inspiration!  I found lots of beautifully stamped cards with heartfelt sentiments such as this one from Diane Cramer in the Splitcoastsatmpers' Gallery:

I love the clean lines and the subtle touch of colour in this soothing card.  However, I'm not a stamper and have neither the right sort of images nor sentiments.  So I knew that my card kit would have to feature patterned papers and I would have to find a solution for the wording.  I decided a mix of black, white and grey patterns with a couple of sheets of coloured patterns to add a little cheer would be the way to go:

A few toning ribbons and trims plus my Martha Stewart butterfly punches would add texture and form.  Grey and white card will form the base with some black for matting.

That left me the problem of the wording.  I used a MS Word to create a table of sentiments in a variety of fonts and added a sentiments to circle shapes.  I printed this out onto white card:

And here is the first card that I made with my kit - using a 1.5" circle punch for one of the sentiments and adding a couple of blue gems from my stash to brighten up the butterflies.

I'll be back tomorrow with a few more of the cards made from my kit and some links to inspiration on the web.