Welcome to my crafty blog. I’ve been doing a spot of crafty gardening today with this card – have to confess that I’m not a big gardener, although several of my friends are. I’d much rather just sit in mine with a glass of wine! I am off to the Chelsea Flower Show in September though, so my attitude may change… I was inspired by a couple of this week’s challenges for this card – I picked up the herbaceous border from the inspiration photo over at Just Us GIrls and used the colours from Fab Friday

I started with the ‘daisy’ three way overlay set from Claritystamp and decided just to use stamp 2 (which fills in the image outline). I used a sponge to add Artistry inks in ‘terracotta’ and ‘avocado’ and then stamped it onto a piece of white card which I’d trimmed to fit on an A6 card blank.

I then restamped the image on either side, this time using ‘worn lipstick’ Distress ink and ‘juniper’ Adirondack. I used a brush to blend the ‘juniper’ around the card edges, to soften the white.

I finished by stamping the ladybird & butterfly from Claritystamp’s March craft club set and coloured them with pencils, before adding the sentiment from Clarity’s ‘garden’ stamp set which I’ve had for years and not used much recently. I really thought it fitted the image. I then mounted the topper on a piece of olive green card before attaching it to the card blank.

Now I was intrigued as to where the phrase ‘plant a garden, water your soul’ came from. I did a quick bit of research through my good friend Mr G Oogle, and it seems to be attributed to ‘After A While’, a poem from the early 1970s by an American poet, Veronica Shoffstall. Here’s the full verse – I’m quite taken by it.