We often say, “Stamping is therapy” and it certainly is, like with this Path of Petals Thank You Card and many other cards! Sometimes you just need to stop and sit down and stamp.

It’s been such a busy week and everywhere I went traffic, traffic, traffic! I think everybody is in town with all the schools back in session so no one is on vacation anymore. Everybody is home and going to work and on the roads! Not to mention construction everywhere which causes backups and slowdowns! I think I need to allow an hour to get anywhere I go just to keep the drive less stressful! I don’t know when it’s been quite like this in all the years I have lived here.

So what is the best thing to do to alleviate a little stress?? Stamp, of course! This card uses the Pressed Petals Specialty Designer Series Paper and stamping with the Path of Petals Stamp Set. Although I have used the Pressed Petals DSP on lots of cards, I had difficulty stamping the flowers and leaves with this stamp set so this is the first time I actually used the flowers and stems! Here is a card I made with a piece of the Pressed Petals Designer Paper. I love these dark-colored flowers so much!

The card base is Mossy Meadow, one of the coordinating colors of the Pressed Petals Designer Paper. I started with the design with the leaves and ferns (I guess!), although originally I had the top and bottom designs reversed. This is actually the same paper, the leaves on one side and the cloth-looking design on the other.

The die-cut piece going across the front of the card is from the Flourish Dies using Merry Merlot Cardstock. I like to have something, usually ribbon, where I have two different patterns of paper coming together. It just finishes off that edge nicely. But this time I thought of using some kind of border die or something and finally, I found this one. It is a little bit fancy but doesn’t overwhelm the card. The secret is that the piece is not long enough to reach all the way across the card. But since part of the die-cut was going underneath the stamped piece, I was able to cut it, leaving a space underneath the stamping making the ends reach to each side of the card, and no one will be the wiser!

Maybe you won’t have trouble stamping the flowers, but just in case, this is what I found out. I think it was easier to stamp the flower stems and leaves first. I stamped these in Pear Pizzazz Ink. Next, I stamped the flowers in Merry Merlot Ink. I think you will have to move the stamp around until you feel like the flower blossoms are fitting with the stems. Past stamps we have had had a notch on each of the stamps that were to be stamped in the same direction so you could tell how to line them up. These stamps do not, so you just have to line them up as best you can. I could not get the other leafy stamp to line up correctly, so I just stopped with what I had as you see on the card.

For a little pizzazz on the stamping, I used the Clear Wink of Stella Glitter Brush to brush on a little Merry Merlot ink from the ink pad onto each flower, trying to keep it fairly light, which also added a bit of glimmer. Then I did the same with the leaves with the Pear Pizzazz ink. As much trouble as these stamps were to line up, I really liked the stamped image after adding a little bit of color and the glimmer from the Wink of Stella brush!

The greeting is from the same stamp set. It is stamped on Very Vanilla Cardstock in Merry Merlot Ink and then punched out with the Classic Label Punch. However, I snipped off the pointy ends of the punched piece to just make it plain. I could have layered it on a piece of Merry Merlot but I liked it just adhered to the card by itself.

So there you have it! A little stress relief from the demands of the week and a simple card design that you could vary in many different ways!