Hello and welcome to my crafty blog. It’s been a busy week at work, but I’m getting ready to finish next week and have another try at retirement after going back to work through these last few months of the pandemic! I’ve had some great colleagues, and wanted to share a card I’ve made for one of them to say thank you. He loves country walks, and so I thought this would really suit him.

I started with a piece of card that I’d previously used to mop up left over ink from my blending mat. I’ve got a folder of these, as I can’t bear to waste the ink on a blending mat when I’ve been watercolouring, and they’re great for making backgrounds, etc, especially if you need one quickly. This one was done with brown & blue inks.

I used the Claritystamp ‘Two trees’ panoramic aperture die to get the image out of the scrap card. I then cut it into a square with a 1cm border all round. I love the subtle colours on the die cut

I then mounted it onto a square of the Claritystamp ‘Shenandoah’ designer paper, using the reverse side. I often forget to look at the other side of these papers – they are vibrant on the front side, but have much more muted colours on the back, which worked well against the colours of the image.

I just stuck the die cut down around the outer border, and left the centre sitting free. You get a slight shadow from the cut image, which gives a really nice 3D effect. I also added a tab of white card at the bottom for the sentiment, as I was following this week’s sketch on Freshly Made Sketches by Jen T https://freshlymadesketches.blogspot.com/

At this point, I have to say I was pretty thrilled last week to be one of the top picks in the challenge (see my blog ‘Happily Embossed’) – thanks so much ladies, especially Amy who picked my design!