Welcome to my crafty blog. It’s the hottest day of the year so far here today, so I thought the ideal card would take me to the beach! Amazingly, the next stamp in my Sunday journey back through Claritystamp’s new design club is the shell from May 2015 – I love it when a plan comes together😎

I decided to team it up with one of Clarity’s newest stamps – the linocut landscape background. I stamped it in black Archival onto a white 6×6 card blank and then masked off the edges with low tack tape before blending ‘pumice stone’ and ‘salvaged patina’ Distress Oxides across it to give me the effect of a sandy beach and sky.

Next was to stamp the shell onto an offcut of stencil card using ‘slate’ Adirondack ink. I then used Stampin’ Up! alcohol blending pens in ‘coastal cabana’ and ‘smoky slate’ to add colour before fussy cutting it.

I attached the shell to the bottom corner of the landscape using foam pads, and then stamped the little Clarity flock of birds into the sky. To finish I added three of the word stickers from Leonie Pujol’s Clarity set, which I thought nicely summed up exactly what kids love doing at the beach.

This scene has taken me right back to seaside holidays when I was small, and my sister and I would go to check out the rock pools or build sandcastles. This was an obvious card to pick up this week’s theme of ‘vacation vibes’ over at TGIF challenges, together with The Card Concept‘s of ‘long summer days’ – I also picked up their colour scheme and the word ‘beach’ on the mug at the bottom.