Welcome to my crafty blog where I’m now on day 9 of my ’12 Days of Clarity’ challenge, using the ‘gothic key’ stamp from Claritystamp’s September New Design Club. Yet another one that hadn’t been out of it’s packet until today. I needed to make another new home card, and took the inspiration from Dee Paramour’s design on the project sheet that came with the stamp, although hers had birds perched on it, not a house!

I started by trimming down a piece of ‘Barb’s favourite’ designer paper from the ‘Antarctica’ suite to fit a 6×6 card blank, and then stamped the key along the lower part of the paper to form the edge of a frame. I then drew in the other three sides of the frame using a micron pen and a ruler (measuring carefully).

Next was to stamp the house and tree from the ‘wee village’ set, again in black Archival. I stamped the tree first, and then covered it with the precut mask that comes with the set before adding the house, so the tree sits in front.

Then I masked the frame off with sticky notes and started to add colour to the little picture. I used the outer part of a circle moon mask in the top corner and lightly sponged yellow & orange ink for the sun. The house and tree were coloured with Spectrum Noir pencils – my shading is getting better, but using a dry Pergamano blending nib over the pencil colours definitely helps. I used a small piece of torn copy paper and green inks to lightly sponge in a couple of hills behind the house and tree. The flock of birds is another Claritystamp that I’ve had for years.

All I then needed to do was run a black Sharpie around the edge of the designer paper before attaching it to the card blank. I’m really pleased with how this turned out – definitely a design to repeat for other new home cards.