Welcome to my crafty blog. It’s been a bit of a busy day today, so I’ve just got a quick card to share with you. I was inspired by the fab Julie Hickey – I joined her Facebook live class last week, which was about making your own stencils using dies. I didn’t have any stencil plastic, so used Claritystamp’s reusable mask material instead which worked well.

I started by cutting the two smallest stars from a nested set of dies into the mask material. The easiest way to do this is to put a piece of the mask onto some scrap paper and then run it through your die cutting machine. That way the mask’s backing paper remains intact for storing it on.

I then positioned the star mask onto a slimline card blank, and used a blending brush to add Distress Oxide ink. I did the three larger stars first, in ‘mermaid lagoon’, ‘speckled egg’ and ‘evergreen bough’, then added the little stars inbetween.

I finished the card by adding some little Glossies around the stars in co-ordinating colours, and stamped the sentiment in Archival ‘watering can’ (from Julie Hickey’s ‘positive wishes’ stamp set).

This would make a great card for a little boy (or anyone who likes blue tones – not wanting to stereotype!) You may have noticed there are 7 stars on the card – that’s because I’m going to share it over at this week’s Time Out Challenge, where they’re celebrating their 7th birthday.