Welcome to my crafty blog. I’ve made this card for a friend who’s going through a difficult time at work, and I wanted something to cheer her up. I recently treated myself to some new stamps from Claritystamp, the ‘Holland and buttons’ set, which includes these lovely tulips. They immediately came to mind when I saw this week’s challenge at Color Throwdown, as I could see some bright yellow tulips in my garden. The layout uses Cecile’s sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches, which I thought would also work well with the flowers.

I started with a piece of white stencil card, cut to fit on a 6×6 card blank. I’d decided to use the circle from Clarity’s ‘Tina’s flowers and butterflies’ to frame the flowers, but needed to stamp the double tulip first as it is slightly larger. I lined up my card on my squared mat and positioned the tulip to sit in the centre of what would be the top row, using a strip of masking tape to keep the images level. I then covered it using the precut mask that comes with the set and stamped the circle over the tulip, again using black Archival ink. I also stamped the circle onto a sticky note and cut out the inner part to give me a mask, which sat over the image.

I then used ‘chipped sapphire’ Distress Oxide and a blending brush to colour in the background around the tulip. Once done, I stamped two more circles across the top row, and added the small tulips from the set, again masking and blending ‘chipped sapphire’ into the backgrounds. I repeated the same process with the double tulips for the two outer circles in the middle row, leaving the centre one blank for the sentiment, and then added the bottom row.

The next step was to colour in the tulips. I used my waterbrush for this with Distress Oxides in ‘mustard seed’ and ‘mowed lawn’, and then stamped the sentiment into the centre using black Archival.

All I then needed to do was attached the topper to the 6×6 card blank. I also created another inky background from my leftover ink, for future use. A couple of people have asked me how I do these and it’s very easy. I generally use a silicone craft mat when blending or watercolouring inks, so always have patches of ink left on the mat.

I just spritz them lightly with water and then blot a piece of stencil card onto the mat to pick up the ink. It’s a bit unpredictable, but you can get some lovely results. I leave the card to dry and then put it under one of my craft boxes overnight to flatten out – I also try to remember to write the ink colours on the back so I can remember when I come to use it! Here’s the one I got from today’s card.