Welcome to my crafty blog. Today’s card uses one of my favourite stamps – this beautiful flower from Julie Hickey’s ‘be happy’ set. One of the great things about it is that you really don’t need anything else on the card, it has all the impact you need.

I’ve used the colours from this week’s challenge over at Color Throwdown, together with the current ‘birthday’ theme at Addicted To CAS.

I started by stamping the flower onto a piece of white card. I used my stamping platform for this and left the stamp in place, as I knew I would want to overstamp the image again. I blended Distress Oxides in ‘picked raspberry’ and ‘tattered rose’ across the flower. It does look quite messy at this point – as the oxides are chalky they partly obscure the stamped image.

I made sure the ink was fully dry (giving it a quick blast with my heat gun), and then put the card back into my stamping platform. I then restamped the image with WOW clear embossing ink and heat embossed it with WOW ‘vanilla’ powder. I fussy cut it with scissors so I had a crisp outline. I obviously didn’t get the card absolutely straight in my stamping platform, as you can still see a little of the original black image, but I quite like the shadow effect that gives.

All I then needed to was attach it to a piece of pink card, and heat emboss the sentiment in the vanilla powder (this one is from Julie Hickey’s ‘positive wishes’ set). I added a couple of small glossies to finish it off.

I thought the pink card really brought out the colours in the flower. Thanks for dropping in – bit of a bumper day today as I’m planning to be back with another post later.