Welcome to my crafty blog. Today’s card uses a background from my stash, that I made by mopping up ink from my blending mat. Like all crafters I can’t bear to waste anything, so always mop up the leftover ink after I’ve done some watercolouring. It’s really useful to have a stash of these to then make a quick card from.

I went back to another of my favourite stamps – the ‘birdhouse garden’ from Claritystamp. It’s such a great set for creating scenes. I started by stamping the bird table on the lower part of the card, and then added some leafy branches in the top corner from the ‘fly away’ stamp set

I added a sun by using a mask and brushing yellow ink through it. The repositionable mask material from Clarity is perfect for this – I’ve got several circles of difference sizes cut out, so I can use the outer part or the inner circle.

I then grounded the bird table using a piece of torn copy paper and dragged ink across it with a make up sponge. I used Adirondack ‘mountain rose’ to start with, but it was a bit too vibrant against the rest of the card so I toned it down with some ‘latte’.

I finished the cards with a flock of birds flying across the sun, and the verse from one of the Clarity poetry stamp sets. My grandmother used to quote this a lot, and I remember that she wrote it in my autograph book when I was younger: The kiss of the sun for pardon the song of the birds for mirth you are nearer God’s heart in the garden than anywhere else on earth

Perfect for the weekend!