Most people have seen the Stampin’ Up! Lotus Blossom set by now. It’s a great 3 stamp set but I was struggling with it a little trying to make happy cards. I decided to try and make a monochrome version. A bit arty, if you will. And it looked great except I thought it looked like sympathy card. I showed it to my brother Martin. “Ah, a sympathy card”, he said. Oops. But I liked the card so I kept it.

I stamped the 3 flowers in sahara sand on sahara sand. I liked the monochrome look but, as I mentioned previously, it looked funereal. As did a lot of my other  lotus blossom flowers in various colours. This one I liked and gave in to, adding a sentiment from Teeny Tiny Wishes in Early Espresso. The base of the card is also Early Espresso – not a colour that I tend to use as a card base. It’s good, I guess, to use different colours. I lined the envelope in the backgrounds DSP in the sahara sand colour. It doesn’t feel quite right to have sympathy cards ready to go, but when you need them, you need them RIGHT NOW and might not have time to make them, so maybe it’s not a bad thing. Let me know what you think on that issue.

The name of the stamp set, Lotus Blossom, reminds me of The Teahouse of The August Moon since there is a geisha called Lotus Blossom in it. It’s an hilarious film with Marlon Brandon and Glenn Ford and very much worth watching.  My father and I watched it just the other night and I had forgotten how hysterically funny it really is. Watch it. You’ll thank me for it!