Welcome to my crafty blog. Here’s the card I had planned to share yesterday – I missed blogging for the first time since Christmas as I had a day out meeting friends, which was so lovely. You don’t realise how much you have missed things until you can go back and do them again.

Today’s card doesn’t quite capture that vibe, as it’s more a card of encouragement & support. I took inspiration from several challenges for this one – the layout is the current sketch at Freshly Made Sketches, the colours are this week’s at CAS Colours and Sketches and the sentiment is thanks to the current WOW Facebook challenge of friendship/encouragement.

I started with one of Claritystamp’s ‘floral frame’ dies. I just cut out the lower edge of the frame in a light grey card, as I only wanted the small embellishment, and then die cut a frame for it to sit behind.

I then glued the frame over the die cut and attached them both to a 5×7 card blank.

I then stamped one of the butterflies from Clarity’s ‘butterflies and moths’ set in a dark grey (Archival ‘watering can’) and then overstamped it with WOW embossing ink pad so I could add some of their clear sparkle powder to the image. Once heated, I coloured it in with a waterbrush and ‘mustard seed’ Distress Oxide ink. I fussy cut the butterfly and sat it on the top corner of the frame with a foam pad. I managed to take this photo at an angle so you can see the sparkle!

I’ve kept this very simple, and just finished the card with a phrase from Julie Hickey’s ‘everyday sentiments’ set in the ‘watering can’ grey.

Sometimes less is definitely more!