Hello. Welcome to my little crafty blog. It’s been a very difficult week, as it has for so many people at the moment, as a very close friend died suddenly on Monday. It does throw everything into perspective, with all the restrictions on our lives at the moment, when we can’t do all the things we would normally do at a time of bereavement.

I decided to share a sympathy card this week – sadly, I think I’ll be making more of these over the coming weeks as the pandemic continues. It’s another one of the Claritystamp dies, this time the Treescape. I love this one, as it’s so versatile and works for lots of different occasions

I cut the die into a piece of the Claritystamp Shenandoah card, which has lovely purples & pinks in it. I tried to get the die positioned so the lighter part in the middle of the card would look like light coming through the trees.

I’ve found a great adhesive sheet from Stick It for when I’m cutting out intricate dies. It’s a very thin layer of adhesive, which you stick on the back before cutting out (provided you remember in time!) and it essentially turns your die cut into a label so you don’t have to fiddle with glue or tape

Having mounted it onto a 7×7 card blank, I decided it needed a frame. Unfortunately, because I’d used the Claritystamp designer cardstock, rather than the larger paper, I couldn’t cut one out of my original piece of card, as it wasn’t big enough. A navy blue frame worked, though, cut with my nested square dies

Although it looks nice now, I wanted to give the picture a bit more depth, so used a Spectrum Noir colouring pencil to add shade to the ground underneath the trees. I’m no great artist, but tried to add the shading where it would fall from the light through the trees.

A sentiment along the bottom edge completed the card. As I said before, this is a very versatile image, and would work for a male birthday card as well. I hope you all have a good week, wherever you are. Take care and stay safe