Welcome to my crafty blog. Today’s card had ‘get well’ wishes for a friend – the UK may be coming out of our second national lockdown tomorrow, but there are still thousands of people testing positive for coronavirus every day, and we have some way to go yet before we are through all this.

I’ve used this week’s challenge from The Paper Players for my card. It’s a Tic-Tac-Toe challenge – you take one line of the suggestions from the grid (either across, vertical or diagonal) for a card. I’ve gone with the top row of patterned paper, die cut and embossing.

Before I go any further, though, I must say a huge thank you to The Paper Players Team (and especially Joanne), as my submission for last week’s challenge (see my ‘meadow grasses’ post) was one of the top picks! I was so thrilled!

On to my card. I started with the ‘Casablanca lilies’ fresh cut die from Claritystamp and cut it into a 6×6 card blank. I didn’t want the whole design, as I wanted space to stamp my sentiment, so I snipped the flower out of the top corner. This is fairly easy around the other flowers – the tricky bit is getting the edge of the square straight. I used a ruler and craft knife to cut it along the top and side of the square.

I then cut a square and a frame from a piece of the Claritystamp ‘Rainbow River’ designer paper, using nested dies. I did it this way as I wanted a narrow frame on the card that matched the background paper.

I attached the square of designer paper behind the die cut, on the inside of the card front, and then stamped the sentiment and embossed it with white powder.

Finally, I glued the paper frame onto the front of the card, to highlight the image. This is a really nice way to outline the die cut, as it’s cut directly into the card front not on a separate piece of card.

I love these dies – they are a quick and easy way to make a card when you’re in a hurry.