Welcome to my crafty blog. I’m sharing a card I’ve made for a friend’s birthday in a couple of weeks. I always find it tricky to make birthday cards near Christmas – I try to avoid winter scenes as they just look like amended Christmas cards, and flowers, etc, can look very summery. I went for the floral option on this one, though, using the colours in this week’s Color Throwdown challenge https://colorthrowdown.blogspot.com/

I have to confess I didn’t find these the easiest colours to combine, and had a couple of false starts. In the end I used the Stampin Up ‘beautiful friendship’ set that I got earlier in the year, I started by stamping the large and small flowers (are they roses?) with ‘peacock feathers’ Distress Ink, and then added the buds and sprays in ‘fired brick’. The leaves were stamped in ‘meadow’ Adirondack ink, as were the centres of the flowers.

I added the sentiment using Archival ink ‘watering can’ (seems appropriate for flowers!), and picked up the silver element of the challenge by scattering a few gems around the bouquet.

I haven’t used this stamp set as much as I thought I would – it’s so great for building up floral arrangements. I must remember to get it out more.