Welcome to my crafty blog on day 11 of my ’12 Days of Clarity’ challenge. Today’s card uses the November ‘sing your song’ stamp from Claritystamp’s New Design Club. A friend had asked me to make her some new year cards to send to people she hadn’t managed to get Christmas cards for, and I thought this cheery little image was just perfect.

It’s a very simple card. I started by cutting a piece of Clarity’s stencil card into quarters, and then masked the lower third using a piece of torn copy paper before brushing ‘mustard seed’ Distress Oxide across the upper central part. I added the sun with the smallest of the moon masks – I used the outer part of the mask and brushed the ‘mustard seed’ into it together with a little ‘ripe persimmon’.

I stamped the image and the sentiment onto the card using black Archival ink. The little bird was then watercoloured using the ‘ripe persimmon’ Distress Oxide.

All I then needed to do was run a black Sharpie around the edge of the card and mount it onto a 5×5 card blank. Really simple and easy, and could be done in a range of colours.

Finally, regular readers of my blog will know that I can’t bear to waste anything. I had put the Distress Oxides onto a blending mat when using them, so I just spritzed the mat with water and then kept blotting a spare piece of card into the colour patches to make a background I can use in future. I’ve got a folder full of these!

I’m entering this card in the Paper Players challenge over at http://www.thepaperplayers.blogspot.com – it definitely meets the criteria of ‘using something new’