sunshine and happiness

Welcome to my crafty blog on another sweltering hot day here in the UK! I sat in the garden to eat my lunch, but got too hot so have come back indoors. I didn’t see many bees around either – they’re clearly all looking for flowers that are nicely in the shade!

Today’s card uses the retired ‘honey bee’ stamps and dies from Stampin’ Up! and I reached straight for it when I saw this week’s theme from The Paper Players! I decided to team it up with the colours from Just Us Girls and added in the ‘geometric’ theme from Addicted to CAS for good measure.

I started with a square of white card trimmed to fit a 6×6 card blank and stamped the beehive in the centre using ‘salvaged patina’ Distress Oxide. I added the sentiment around the top using ‘mustard seed’ and the popped the white honeycomb die cut across the front of the beehive (I did line up the honeycombs so the bees could still get into the little entrance to the hive!)

I then stamped the small bee from the set twice in Archival ‘shadow grey’ and added the yellow bands with a marker pen before die cutting them. All I then needed to do was add them to the card front with foam pads.

Now I wouldn’t normally stamp my bees in grey, so I did a bit of research and discovered (courtesy of the Friends of the Earth website) that there is a rare bee in the UK that has bands of grey and pale yellow! It’s called the shrill carder bee and apparently lives in grasslands in southern England & Wales that have lots of vetches, trefoils and clovers growing (although I’m not sure it’s hives will be teal coloured…) You learn something every day !

14 thoughts on “sunshine and happiness”

  3. I love the square format; it just works beautifully with the squat little hive! Nicely done with the CAS and your colors while maybe not completely real life, are lovely and soft! Thanks for sharing at The Paper Players!

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  6. Love your unconventional coloured beehive – and the geometric overlay looks great! Thanks for sharing with us over at the Paper Players this week!

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  7. I LOVE the teal beehive! What a wonderful focal point, especially with the honeycomb overlay! It’s a perfect card for our CAS Bee challenge. I am so glad you shared with The Paper Players this week!

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  8. Your honeycomb die cuts are fabulous, Deborah! I love your color palette and your curved sentiment is just perfect! Thanks so much for playing along with us at ATCAS!

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  9. I love your card, Deborah! So creative to put the honeycomb over top of your beehive! The arch greeting did it for me too! Great job with out CAS challenge at The Paper Players! Thanks for playing along. Take care!

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