Welcome to my crafty blog. I’ve been wondering how to follow my little ’12 Days of Clarity’ challenge with last year’s New Design Club stamps, and settled on the idea of starting at the beginning from when I first joined the Claritystamp club and work through all the back issues that I’ve got. I first joined the New Design Club back in December 2012, back when the project sheets were typewritten with a printed photograph attached. I did drop out for a couple of years after a while before rejoining, so I’m just going to go with the issues I’ve got and work with one of my NDC stamps in order every Sunday.

So, welcome to my first ‘Clarity Crafternoon’. I’m starting this week with the ‘funky house’, which is stamp #74 from December 2012. I have used this a couple of times over the years – it’s such a sweet little image.

I started by cutting a piece of white card to fit on a DL card blank, and then stamped the house over to the right hand side using black Archival. I had bought the masks that Clarity produced to go with this stamp and so was then easily able to cover it up, before lining up ‘Jo’s bubbles’ stencil so that the largest circle centred on the house. I had to do quite a bit of masking across the stencil, as I didn’t want to use any of the other bubbles at this stage. I then started to blend Distress Oxide in ‘speckled egg’ into the stencil using a brush. I quickly realised that I hadn’t masked off the sun, which would have turned out green if I’d put yellow down over a blue area! I added one of the Clarity moon masks under the stencil, and then finished brushing the ink through.

I removed the stencil and the moon mask, but left the one on the house in place. I positioned the outer part of the moon mask around the circle, and then brushed ‘mustard seed’ Distress Oxide across it very lightly. I repositioned the stencil and masked it with tape, so that I could add a row of small bubbles along the lower edge, using Distress Oxide in ‘mowed lawn.

I then coloured the house in using alcohol markers, picking colours that matched with the inks I’d used, and stamped the sentiment (which is from Julie Hickey’s ‘be happy’ stamp set).

I finished by edging the piece of card using a black Sharpie, and then attaching it to a DL card blank. This would work for a new home card, or just to send someone good wishes.

I’ll be sharing this post over at the Freshly Made Sketches challenge (https://freshlymadesketches.blogspot.com/), as I used this week’s design as the basis for the card.