Welcome to my crafty blog. Today’s card picks up a technique from Barbara Gray over on her blog, using these great new backdrop stamps from Clarity. You can find her detailed step by step here.

I started with the larger of the square backdrop stamps and dabbed Distress Oxides onto it in ‘chipped sapphire’ and ‘tattered rose’. I then gave it a quick spritz with water and stamped it down onto a piece of stencil card. I managed to get another image without reinking the stamp, just by spritzing it with more water, which I can used later. On reflection, I should have brought the blue ink right across the bottom of the square, but never mind.

Next was to stamp ‘Tina’s floral spray’ onto the background. I didn’t want a strong image on there so used my new Archival ink pad in ‘shadow grey’, which worked really well. I then used the infill stamps that are part of the set to colour in the flower heads and the leaves – I have to confess that I don’t usually use these as I’m not always very good at lining them up against the image. I decided today that I really should try though – not a bad outcome really. I used the same ink colours as the background, to keep the whole card toned together.

I then trimmed that card down so it fitted on a 6×6 card blank, and edged it with a black Sharpie pen. For the sentiment, I blended ink onto a couple of small pieces of card (one in the blue and the other in the rose), and stamped ‘happy birthday’ in the ‘shadow grey’ onto the blue piece before adding a narrow strip of the pink underneath it for contrast.

I have to confess that this is one of my favourite Clarity stamps – I know I’ve blogged cards with it previously and I expect I will do so again! I’m sharing this card with two blog challenges, both of which helped to inspire it – CAS Colours and Sketches and Fab Friday