Welcome to my crafty blog. I’ve been very excited as my order of new Stampin’ Up! stamps finally arrived a couple of days ago (there have been major delays in shipping to the UK thanks to Brexit!) My biggest decision today was to choose which ones to play with first – in the end I went for the ‘Art Gallery’ set. I wasn’t totally certain about this one when I first saw it in the catalogue, but I’ve now fallen in love with it!

I took the colours for this card from the challenge over at the Color Throwdown challenge. I wasn’t sure about how best to combine pink and red to start with, but decided they would work as tones in the flower head.

I started by stamping the flower onto a piece of white card. The background petals were first in ‘picked raspberry’ Distress Oxide, and I then added the accent petals in ‘festive berries’. Thirdly, I stamped the stem and leaves in ‘black soot’ Distress Ink.

I felt at this point that the card needed something additional and, given that the set is called ‘art gallery’, a frame seemed totally appropriate. I cut a narrow rectangular one in white card using nested dies, and then glued that to sit around the flower.

I then added the sentiment in black Archival along the bottom of the frame. I really like the font in this set – it has a very contemporary look.

I finished the card by mounting the topper on a 5×7 card blank, and added three black pearls along the top of the frame to balance the sentiment.

Thanks for dropping in. I’m feeling very fortunate today, as I’ve now had the first dose of my Covid vaccination, and grateful for the hope that’s on the horizon of this pandemic.