Hello! welcome to my little crafty blog. Tomorrow, Sunday 22 March, is Mothering Sunday/Mother’s Day here in the UK, and I’m reflecting on how different it will be from last year, in several ways.

First, my lovely Mum sadly died last year, so this is our first Mother’s Day without her. It was so strange to be making cards for other people, knowing I wouldn’t be sending one myself. I do get to spend the day with my lovely two sons, though.

In addition, we’re all in social isolation here in the UK, thanks to Coronavirus, and so the plans for us to spend the day with my sister and nieces, having afternoon tea and visiting the place where we scattered Mum’s ashes have had to be cancelled.

These are scary times, but I have a lot to be thankful for. If you’re a crafter reading this, then you’ll already know that there’s a fantastic online community of support out there, banding together to get everyone through these difficult days. So I thought I’d share a card I made for Mothering Sunday, using a stencil with inks and shaving foam (one of my favourite techniques, which I learned from the fab Barbara Gray over at Claritystamp – have a look at her demo video over on YouTube). I’ve listed the step by step below

First, you’ll need a paper or plastic plate and a can of shaving foam (the cheap ones are the best). Spray a small amount of foam onto the plate and spread it so it’s flat on top (a bit like icing a cake). I used a ruler, mainly because it was easily available! Then take 3 or 4 bottles of Distress Ink and put a few drops of each across the shaving foam. I used Chipped Sapphire, Peeled Paint, Peacock Feathers & Tattered Rose.

Now use a coffee stirrer, an embossing tool or similar and swirl the colours together through the foam. Don’t worry if it looks really grungy – that will work well

At this point I like to pull the colour with a piece of card so I can check that I’ve got a good mix, or decide if I want to add a bit more of any of the colours. I generally use a piece of the Claritystamp stencil card cut into 4. Push it well down into the foam, then lift it off and scrape the excess foam off with your ruler. (tip- make sure you’ve got some paper towel handy at this point as well!). The shaving foam acts as the carrier for the ink, which is then absorbed by the card, and you’ll get some amazing patterns

Now you can really start to get creative, by using a stencil and spreading the inky shaving foam across it. I used the poppies stencil from Claritystamp for this card – fix the stencil to the card using low tack masking tape, then load some of the shaving foam across the top and use your ruler or spreader to drag it down across the stencil. Wipe the excess off with paper towel, and lift the stencil to reveal the image

All you then need to do is trim your stencil card down to the right size for your card, layer it onto a slightly larger piece of co-ordinating card and mount it onto a card blank. The sentiment is one that I’ve had for several years.

Take care everyone and I hope you all manage to stay safe over the coming weeks. I retired as a senior nurse last December, but am returning to full time work back at the hospital from Monday, so this new blog is just going to be weekly for now.