Hello!  Sorry it’s been so long — my son’s been ill, so it’s taken me awhile to get back into things.  When someone’s under the weather or going through a hard time, it’s always nice  to do a random act of kindness for them.  My favorite way to let someone know I’m thinking about them is to send them an encouragement card.  Here’s one I recently made for a friend:

I used Spectrum Noir Markers to color the image, which is from Unity Stamp Company.  Using a stitched square die, I cut the image out with my die cutting machine and mounted it onto a shimmery lilac cardstock, which I then offset with a dark purplish-navy card.  I mounted the sentiment using the same materials.  The background paper is from Paper Wishes (I think it’s the Roses and Lace paper pack, which might be discontinued, but they have a lot of gorgeous background papers).  To me, she still needed a little sparkle (but of course!), so I used some sequins, pearls and bits of glitter from 28 Lilac Lane’s Embellishment Bottle, Winter Blues, and added a bit of ribbon from my stash.

The inside of the card features a sentiment also from Unity Stamp Company and two backing papers — a shiny gold and more of that dark purplish-navy card.  Since the sentiment read, “A certain darkness is needed to see the stars,” I wanted to create a starry night effect.  I did this by mounting the gold cardstock on the inside first.  Then, I used a star cluster punch-around-the-page punch to create the stars in the dark card.  Using dries clear glue, I adhered it to the gold cardstock.  The sentiment was then glued that to the center of the card.  Before sending it, I wrote my message on the opposite side (inside left of the opened card).

I hope it brought some brightness to my friend’s day when she received it.

What do you like to do for loved ones when they need some encouragement?