Welcome to my crafty blog. Today’s card uses the ‘meadowdance’ stamp from Claritystamp. I’ve had this one for ages and it resurfaced when I was tidying out a box of stamps – it was mounted on one of the Clarity handles, and they’ve been producing them on acetate sheets for quite a few years now! I’ve taken inspiration from a couple of blog challenges for this one – the theme at Just Us Girls is ‘animals’ (spot the deer dancing with the children!) and I used the colours from Color Throwdown

I started with another of my inky mop-up backgrounds, which helpfully was sitting in my folder in just the right colours!

I then stamped the ‘meadowdance’ scene across the lower part of the card, using Archival ink in ‘shadow grey’, and added the tree from the set to the right hand side. The little scene didn’t go right across the card, so I used masking tape to line up along the bottom of the stamp image and then used the edge of the tree to fill in the landscape either side.

At this point the scene looks like it is floating in mid-air, so I used a blending brush to add ink to the lower part of the card using Adirondack ‘slate’ and the ‘shadow grey’. I wasn’t totally happy with the effect – more of that shortly…

I wanted to add a bit more interest to the background, so used the Claritystamp ‘mountains’ mask and brushed Adirondack ‘latte’ ink onto the card. I also used one of the moon masks, and brushed ‘broken china’ Distress Ink around it to give the effect of the sun. Just to say – there’s no real method in the different inks I use (apart from Archival for stamped images & sentiments), it tends to be related to the best colour match I have from my various stash!

By now, I’d decided that I really didn’t like the effect of the grey ink below the stamped image, so trimmed the card down along the bottom of the scene, and then took the same amount off the left hand side so it remained square. That looked much better, and I finished by running a black Sharpie around the card edge and then attaching it to a 6×6 card blank.

This card’s going to be winging its way to a teacher friend who’s now back in school full time, after several months of teaching online thanks to lockdown. I’m hoping she’s survived her first week without too much trouble!