Welcome to my crafty blog. Today’s card uses the same background colours as I did yesterday – I really liked the blend of them together and thought they worked well for beach colours. I’ve worked with three current challenges to produce this card. I took the layout from Freshly Made Sketches, but rotated it as it worked better with the seashells at the bottom. The Paper Players are looking for ‘signs of summer’which fits well with Addicted to CAS‘s ‘beach’ theme. I had lunch at the seaside with friends on Monday and we managed to fit in a walk along the seafront as well.

I started with a square of white card, cut to fit on a 6×6 card blank, and blended Distress Oxides in ‘broken china’ and ‘pumice stone’ onto it with a brush before adding the sentiment from Stampin’ Up!’s ‘friends are like seashells’ set.

I then stamped the shell, starfish & sand dollar in Archival ‘shadow grey’ and die cut them out – the set has individual dies for the sand dollar & starfish with the seashell part of the larger die. I then fitted the seashell into pace on the co-ordinating embossing folder and ran it through my machine to give it definition. The sand dollar & starfish aren’t on the embossing folder, so I used a ball embossing tool and a silicone mat to give them some shape. I worked down the arms of the starfish from the back, and debossed the sand dollar impressions from the front. I then lightly brushed them both with ink to colour them and added all three to the lower corner of the card below the sentiment.

I just added a few Glossies to finish – these are so useful.

It was so good to be out in the sunshine on Monday, walking along the seafront. It definitely made me feel that summer is on the way!