Deepest Sympathy

So I am into day 5 of the flu and while I have some lucid times, by the afternoon I am tired and aching. So before lunch yesterday I got a call from a very dear friend who also had the flu. She called to tell me her husband had passed away after a long illness. So of course I had no sympathy cards ready to go. On my desk was the Simon Says Layered Chrysanthemum stamp set. I don't think I had ever used the flowers but I used one of the sentiments in a card a few days ago. So I thought I would use my MISTI to make a sympathy card using this stamp set. And since I was making one card why not make several so that I would have some in stock for later, right? That was my first mistake.
So I played around with ink combinations and wrote down the ones I liked. That took a bunch of time. Then I started stamping and tried to make three cards at the same time. It became apparent that I was going to have to mask. So I remembered I bought masking paper that had never been opened. I got that out. Stamped the image and then realized I had stamped on the wrong side of the paper. So I had to do it again. All of this is taking up a lot of time and I am feeling worse as the day goes on. Long story short. It took me the rest of the day just to finish the fronts of the cards. If anyone has any tips for using layering stamps and how to correctly line them up, I'd be really grateful to know. I watched several videos using this stamp set but not one of them showed how to line these up.

I think you have to get pretty close to notice the flowers being off but the leaves are very noticeable. The Deepest Sympathy sentiment is from Hero Arts called Everyday Sayings and Sending Prayers and Hugs is from another new set that I hadn't used yet from Simon Says Stamps called Prayers. The sentiment strips are MFT Essential Sentiment Fishtail Sentiment Strips. I did pop up one flower on each of the cards. 

I used the Tuesday Morning Sketch as inspiration. 

I am entering these challenges:

• Tuesday Morning Sketch: sketch above
• Simon Says Work it Wednesday: use new stuff
• Through the Craft Room Door: anything goes
• Sunday Outlawz CAS: use something new
• Scrapping 4 Fun: anything goes

That's it for me. My headache is back so it's time to get off the computer. Thanks for stopping by. Any tips on masking or layered stamping would be very much appreciated. I need to figure out how to make those techniques easier! Have a super day.

Donna