Welcome to my crafty blog, and another quick post after a busy day – clearly I’m not very good at this retirement lark! I’ve used Julie Hickey’s ‘florals for you’ stamp set today – I love the contemporary look of these flowers and they worked really well with some paper piecing.

I started by just stamping the flower three times onto a piece of card that I’d trimmed to fit on a 5×7 card blank. I added some grass along the bottom edge with one of Claritystamp’s ‘wee foliage’ stamps in ‘mowed lawn’ Distress Oxide, and used a Pergamano blending nib to add the ink to the flower stems.

I then stamped the flower heads and leaves onto polka dot patterned paper and fussy cut them, before gluing them over the stamped images. I finished by adding one of Julie’s ‘vertical sentiments’ to a banner die cut, which I attached with foam pads.

I don’t do a lot of paper piecing, but it is a very satisfying way to add colour to larger stamps. I’ve combined three challenges for this card as well – the colours are from Color Throwdown and the layout is from Freshly Made Sketches. The third challenge is Inspired by – I picked up the flowers and spots from the flip-flops in this week’s photo.