Welcome to my crafty blog. I’m back to birthday cards at the moment, and thought this one really picked up some of the colours in the beautiful afternoon sunsets we’ve had over the last few days, thanks to some autumn sunshine. I’ve used some of the gorgeous Claritystamp designer paper, with their ‘Meadow Grasses’ stamps for this card. The layout was inspired by this week’s challenge over at The Paper Players http://thepaperplayers.blogspot.com/

I started with a 10cm square of the Claritystamp ‘Antarctica’ designer paper, and cut it into three strips, before dividing them in line with the sizes in the sketch. I then stamped the three lower sections with the flowers and grasses from the stamp set, and highlighted them using my Spectrum Noir pencils in the same colours as the backing paper. I added a little flock of birds into the piece at the top corner to balance out the picture.

I mounted them onto a larger piece of white card, which I had edged using a ruler and a black Sharpie pen. I was initially going to cut a frame, but couldn’t get it narrow enough – this is a great way to get a fine edge onto an image. I finished by stamping the sentiment from the Claritystamp handwriting set, and then attached the whole thing to a 5×7 card blank.

Thanks for dropping in. This is such a lovely time of year when the sun is shining, even though the birds are heading off south ahead of winter.