Welcome to my crafty blog – here’s a card I made today to send to a friend. I’m a Trustee of Epilepsy Society, a national charity (you can find out more about them here – http://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk), and Chris has just finished his term as a trustee. He’s been a real advocate for people who live with epilepsy, as well as becoming a good friend and buying me breakfast in a fab little local deli before each Board meeting! This card will be winging its way to him to say ‘thank you’ (it’s OK, he doesn’t read my blog, so no risk of spoilers!)

I started with one of the Claritystamp poetry frames, which has this great verse from Maya Angelou. Before doing anything with the stamps, though, I created my background. I knew I wanted purple as that’s the charity’s brand colour, and I’d read Barbara Gray’s blog yesterday where she used a background stamp and Distress Oxides (http://www.barbaragrayblog.com), so off I went.

I went for the largest A5 stamp in the ‘dots and spots’ textured background set, and sponged Distress oxides onto it (speckled egg, wilted violet & chipped sapphire). I started with the ‘speckled egg’, as that’s the lightest colour, and then gradually added the others to blend into it. I’d kept the stamp on the acetate mount, so spritzed it lightly with water and then pressed it down onto a piece of stencil card . As there was still some ink left on the stamp, I spritzed it with water again and then pressed it onto another piece of stencil card. Two backgrounds for the price of one!

Next step was to stamp the frame and verse onto the background, using black Archival ink.

Then it was out with my Spectrum Noir pencils – I found two co-ordinating shades of purple and used them to colour in the frame design. All I then needed to do was trim the card down to fit onto a 5×7 card blank, and edge the topper with a black Sharpie before attaching it to the card front.

I’m going to share this blog over at the current CASology challenge where the theme is ‘memories’ – http://www.casology.blogspot.com