Welcome to my crafty blog, and another birthday card. Today I’ve used the ‘Sam’s shapes 1’ set from Claritystamp, which were designed by the brilliant Sam Crowe. This set has the diamond, jigsaw, oval and rectangle stamps, each of which has an outline and a matching infill. I first saw the set demo’ed at a Claritystamp Open Day a few years ago and was instantly hooked. It just seemed the obvious set to use for the current ‘shapes’ challenge over at Addicted to CAS

I started by stamping a series of diamond outlines down the left hand side of a 6×6 card blank. The top tip here is to start with the middle one and then work outwards, so the pattern is roughly equal at top and bottom.

I’m not always very good at getting an accurate image with infill stamps, so opted for this one to use a mask instead. I just stamped the diamond into the centre of a piece of paper and cut it out. All I then needed to do as to sit it over each diamond and just brush inks across the diamonds – I used Artistry inks in ‘wild bilberry’ and ‘lush lilac’.

The next step was to add the images, again popping the mask over each diamond to stamp through it. I used the Claritystamp ‘wee trees’ and ‘wee foliage’ set, plus the little flock of birds that I’ve had for years.

It just needed a sentiment to finish, and this one from ‘Tina’s flowers and butterflies’ was the perfect size.

Job done! I’ve made a few of these cards over the years – it’s such a versatile design, just change the colours and the images and it can fit just about any occasion.