Welcome to my crafty blog. I’ve tried to go for a bit more of a spring look on today’s card – hoping that the brighter days and flowers are only just around the corner. Claritystamp’s ‘Tina’s Wild Flower Spray’ stamp completely fitted the bill!

I started with the ‘Dots and Spots’ A5 texture background stamp, which I’ve used quite a few times recently. I sponged Distress Oxides in ‘mustard seed’ and ‘speckled egg’ onto it, trying to keep them fairly separate as I didn’t want them blending into green in the centre. Once the stamp was covered with ink, I spritzed it with water and stamped it onto a large square of card. I then stamped the flower spray onto the card, using Archival ink in ‘watering can’.

Next was to colour in the flowers. The stamp set does come with smaller stamps that fill in the flowers and leaves, but I opted to go with my current favourite technique and watercolour them with the Distress Oxides instead (plus I don’t always manage to get the smaller stamps totally line up on the image!). I used the same colours as for the background, but then added the dark purple for the little highlight dots and the centre of the flowers – I was thinking of those beautiful yellow and purple pansies at the time.

I added the sentiment by using a couple of the stamps from Clarity’s ‘Barbara’s Christmas Sentiments’ set. I find it easiest to line up two stamps using a stamping platform, so they are level.

I finished the card by trimming down the stamped image and edging it with a black Sharpie before mounting it onto a 5×7 card blank. The sentiment then sat nicely across the bottom of the floral spray, mounted on foam pads.

I’ll be sharing this card on a couple of blog challenges this week: TIGF challenges (http://www.tgifchallenges.blogspot.com) and The Paper Players (http://www.thepaperplayers.blogspot.com)