This is an overview of the techniques and process I used while designing the memorial cards that were at Steffi’s memorial service in March.  It is not meant to be an all-encompassing explanation, but if you have basic familiarity with stamping techniques and Stampin’ Up!® supplies, it should be enough to make sense. 

But before I begin I need to thank all the many hands who helped me color and assemble the 95 of these we made.  Given the total production hours put into this project, I calculate that each card took about 1-1/4 hours to assemble – not counting the layout time of the inside pages.  So while I will refer to “I” throughout this article as I describe my “creating” process, I also wish to acknowledge all those who helped for so many hours to bring these into reality.  Without all that help, this project would have been impossible.

I began with 2 of Steffi’s favorite colors (green and yellow) – interpretted in Certainly Celery and Barely Banana.  Steffi also loved the Big Shot (especially for its texture capabilities) and border punches.  And her favorite ribbon was our Organza ribbon (which only comes in Whisper White).  So I knew right away that those elements would play significant parts in these projects. 

The idea for daisies came from the main floral arrangement that her husband Rick had selected….. a big gorgeous basket of yellow and white daisies.  One of his requirements was that the overall effect be of a happy tone, rather than dark and sad.  Which was fine with me; I like to stamp “happy” – and that was much more “Steffi” anyway.

The base of this card needed to be bigger and command more “presence” than a traditional 1/4 sheet size card, so I experimented with various height and width combos until I settled on 5-7/8 x 5″ (when folded).  That meant that it would require an entire sheet of cardstock for each card base.

Two additional layers were used on the front – a narrow strip of Barely Banana near the left folded edge, and the main layer, Whisper White.  Both were texturized along their left edges with Stampin’ Up!’s cutter kit, another of Steffi’s favorite tools.  The Certainly Celery card base was cut and folded so that the front section was a little narrower than the back.  This allowed the scalloped (punched) edge of the white layer to lay against the green of the base (inside back of the card) – and give a lace-like feel to the edge.

The most unique part of the design was the technique I used for embossing the daisies.  It began by cutting out a whole bunch of the smallest daisies available on the Flower Daisies #2 Bigz die from Naturals cardstock.  (I wanted a fairly thick cardstock for this project.)  I then stacked up and adhered 3 together to make an even thicker daisy….. repeating this for a total of seven 3-layer daisies.  Then I played and played and played around with spacing until I ended up with the arrangement at the right.  Specifically, I wanted to make sure I captured the centers of each of the daisies (for best visual balance), and I needed to leave exactly enough room at the lower right side for the words.  Once satisfied with the layout, I adhered the daisies onto a piece of scrap CS (which just coincidentally happened to be yellow, although the color was irrelevent).

The rectangle outline is where my white layer (with prepunched right-hand border) would lay – face up. Then I made a “sandwich” for the Big Shot that stacked up in this order:

• Texturz Impressions Pad (top element)
• Texturz Silicone Rubber pad
• Whisper White CS (scallop border already punched) – face up
• Homemade daisy die (shown at right)
• 2 layers of CS for shims
• 1 layer longboard chipboard
• Multipurpose platform (bottom element)

This sandwich was then passed through the Big Shot (one-card-at-a-time, of course) to emboss the daisies onto the white cardstock.  

The next step was to color the daisy’s centers.  For that process I created a custom template from the same daisy image cut from a piece of window sheet, and then used a sponge dauber to ink the centers of each daisy – again, one daisy at a time.

The next step was to sponge green around each daisy to make it “pop”.  At first I began by making a mask of regular cardstock cut with the same Bigz daisy die.  But those daisy masks were only lasting long enough to sponge one or two daisies before falling apart, so I quickly changed to window sheet material for those masks as well.  I used a stamping sponge and Certainly Celery ink – and only stroked color outwards from the centers of each daisy.  It was important to make sure the daisy mask was properly aligned with the image on the card front – and held tightly in place so it would not slip.  This meant perpetual green fingers for several days, lol!  Each card ended up colored slightly different from any other of course, but the goal was to leave white in the upper right-hand corner (for “white space”), and blend gradually downwards into the area where the words would later be stamped.

The words were kinda custom, too.  The “We Remember” stamp didn’t really start out saying that.  Rather, it was an old, old Stampin’ Up! stamp that I’d kept in my “stash” for years (still unmounted), and it originally said the words: “Remember when”.  (Intended by SU many years ago to be used for scrapbooking.)  Well, I wanted something that read “Remembering” or “We Remember”, yet I had nothing of those exact words.  A stamp-by-stamp search through my entire collection revealed that I didn’t even have the word “We” in a size large enough to work.  So I cut up the “when” part of this as-yet-unmounted stamp into 4 letters and fashioned my own “We” in front of the word “Remember”.  (And then I patted myself on the back for my cleverness, lol!)

I’d also ordered a custom stamp through Stampin’ Up! for Steffi’s name (“Yours and Mine” 3-line text, although obviously only needed 1 line), and then used Certainly Celery craft ink with clear embossing powder for all the words.  (And a Stamp-a-ma-jig, too, of course!)

The final step to finish up the cover was to wrap the ribbon around and tie in a flat knot.

Perhaps I’ll scan and show more of the inside of these sometime, and share about the guest book, too – but this article has grown plenty long for now.  Again, many thanks to the many loving hands that helped make this “from the heart” project possible!  What a lovely way to honor a stamper we’ll never forget!