Welcome to my crafty blog. I’m still holding out for the arrival of spring flowers (there’s a crocus peeping through in a pot on my windowsill), so today’s card is designed to bring some early colour. I’ve used background stamps a few times recently, so this week’s theme over at TGIF challenges was a good excuse to use up a print I’d got sitting in my stash.

I started with Claritystamp’s ‘wild flowers’ mixed impression background stamp. I used sponges to add Distress Oxides (Mermaid Lagoon, Mowed Lawn & Mustard Seed) to the large A5 stamp, so that the different parts of the image were highlighted. The great thing about the oxides is that you can get more than one print pulled from just inking the stamp once, provided you spritz it with water again. This background is the second generation print – I like the fainter image

Next step was to stamp ‘Tina’s Floral Spray’ in Archival ‘Watering Can’ onto the lower left hand side of the background. I wanted it to feel like the flowers were turning their heads towards the sun, so positioned it just below the yellow of the flower in the background image.

I finished by shading the flowers and leaves with Spectrum Noir pencils, and adding the sentiment, again using ‘Watering Can’. Once coloured, I trimmed the card down, so it fitted onto a 5×7 card blank.

This year is going fast – it’s already the middle of January, so hopefully spring is not too far away.