Welcome to my crafty blog. Today’s card is a masculine birthday one, which any crafter will tell you is more tricky to make than female ones. I’ve been asked to make a few for a friend so had to get my thinking cap on. I’m using another one of my inky mop-up backgrounds from cleaning my craft mat, together with the ‘trees and their mantles’ set from Claritystamp. The inspiration for the design came from this week’s challenge over at CAS Colours and Sketches

I started by stamping the two trees onto the inky background. The great thing about this set is the trees are all in two parts – the truck & branches, and the leafy mantle. I stamped the tree trunks in brown and added the mantle in green. On reflection, I should have placed the trees slightly further apart from each other – I hadn’t allowed enough quite space for the overlapping mantles.

I didn’t want to leave the trees floating in mid-air, so added some ground using a piece of torn copy paper and Distress Ink in ‘peeled paint’. I used the outer part of a Clarity moon mask to add in the sun with ‘scattered straw’, picking up the tones that were already on the background.

I wanted to use the sentiment to balance out the trees on the card, and remembered this lovely verse which is also from Claritystamp. I’ve had it for quite a few years – it is still available as part of the ‘special day sentiments’ set. I finished the card by edging the topper with a black Sharpie and then mounting it on a 6×6 card blank.

Maybe the colours on this card look a bit autumnal, considering it’s nearly spring, but you can only work with what you’ve got can’t you? I’m really enjoying looking at all these backgrounds and working out how best to pop a scene onto them – more still to come.