My husband and I just celebrated a kind of “mini milestone” wedding anniversary.  We’ve been married for 20 years now.  We’ve had some ups and downs over the years but it’s hard for me to imagine riding the roller coaster of life with anyone else.

He isn’t really into mushy cards, but I didn’t want to go humorous for this event.  And there were a few cardmaking challenges I wanted to get in on this week.  So I went sentimental in less obvious ways.  I knew I wanted some red on the card, and since the current Dynamic Duos color challenge is to use Cherry Cobbler and any other color, I decided to use Cherry Cobbler for my red.  I’d remembered seeing lists of “what you’re supposed to give for anniversary gifts” – i.e. first anniversary, paper; 25th anniversary, silver; 50th anniversary, gold; etc., but didn’t recall what the 20th anniversary was.  I did a little researching online and found that for the 20th anniversary, the traditional gift is china and the modern gift is platinum.  So I thought, “platinum = gray” and decided to use Going Gray for the second color of my color combo – which also worked out perfectly for one of the Splitcoaststampers.com Hope You Can Cling To challenges, to create a card that’s mostly gray with a splash of another color. (OK, I understand Dynamic Duos doesn’t like their challenges combined with other color challenges and normally I wouldn’t do that, but IMO since one of the DD colors was “participant’s choice” a little leeway should be allowed.)  I sneaked in some more sentimentality by putting 20 hearts on the tree, one for each year.  Ten are in full strength Cherry Cobbler ink and ten were stamped off once, to represent the two of us being partners in our relationship.  I opted for a very straightforward, simple sentiment.  The embossed panel started out white, but then I swiped my Cherry Cobbler ink cube over it to make the embossing show off and to add some more color to the card.  The layout is one of my all-time favorite Operation Write Home Stars & Stamps sketches, #93.

Then after I had the card all assembled, I was looking at it, and remembered that the color of the dresses our bridesmaids wore was called “ruby” – not quite as dark as Cherry Cobbler, but similar to it.  And my husband and his groomsmen wore charcoal grey.  Yes, really.  Coincidence?  Who knows.

My husband doesn’t often say much about my cardmaking.  But when he pulled this one out of the envelope, the first words out of his mouth were, “Oh, I like the colors!”  Yay.  🙂

Here’s to the next 20 years!

I also made a “twin” of this card for my Hope You Can Cling To stash.

All supplies for this card are from Stampin’ Up unless otherwise noted:
Stamps: Branch Out, Three Little Words, Small Sayings
Cardstock: Going Gray textured, Basic Gray, Whisper White
Ink: Going Gray, Cherry Cobbler, Basic Gray
Other: D’Vine Swirls embossing folder (ProvoCraft); small scallop border die (Papertrey Ink); sponge