Welcome to my crafty blog. I’ve set myself a personal challenge to take me through the 12 days of Christmas, as I can’t go and see friends or go out into London. I’ve decided to make the best use of the extra time I’ve now got for crafting and blog a project (actually, 2!) every day. My sons gave me a subscription to the Claritystamp New Design stamp club for Christmas last year, and I have to confess that I haven’t actually used all of the stamps that I’ve received each month. But that’s about to change, as I’m now going to use one each day over the 12 days of Christmas. So that should keep me out of mischief! I also bought myself the Clarity dies monthly New Design Club, so that’s two blogs each day!

So onto my first card. January’s stamp was an abstract texture, which makes a lovely background. I dabbed 3 colours of Distress Oxide ink (specked egg, chipped sapphire and wilted violet) onto the stamp using a make up sponge, and the stamped it onto the lower half of square of white card. I used my stamping platform for this, so I could then just rotate the card round and stamp again onto the other end.

I then added the tall stamp from the Clarity ‘doodleology heart’ set and shaded the image using dark blue and purple Spectrum Noir pencils

I finished the topper by adding the ‘thank you’ from the ‘Barbara’s handwriting’ set, and then edged each side by dragging a black Sharpie pen around it. This is a really easy way to frame a topper without having to use another card layer.

All I then needed to do was attach it to a 5×5 card blank. I need quite a few thank you cards at this time of year, so I also made a few more using a different colour combination – mermaid lagoon, mowed lawn and ripe persimmon. I don’t usually go for orange, but was really pleased with how this turned out.

I’ll be blogging my January New Design Club die later. Thanks for dropping in – I hope you’ve had a happy Christmas Day