Welcome to my crafty blog – I’m back in my comfort zone today with this floral birthday card, using Stampin’ Up!’s ‘artistically inked’ stamp set. The Paper Players have got a tic tac toe board for their challenge this week, so I went straight down the left hand column with feminine-birthday-florals (thank you very much, Jaydee!) I’ve combined it with the sketch from InspireCreate challenges to create a card with a masked panel, so read on…

I started with a piece of white card trimmed to fit on an A6 card blank, and masked off a panel using low tack tape. I then stamped the inky background image across the top and bottom in ‘speckled egg’ Distress Oxide to frame the panel.

I kept the tape in place and stamped the flowers and leaves using ‘dried marigold’ and ‘bundled sage’. After removing the tape, I added the sentiment in black Archival ink and attached the whole piece to the card front.

My original plan had been to finish there, but I thought the panel looked a bit bare so I stamped and die cut the small flower and a couple of leaves. I glued them together and then added them by the sentiment with a foam pad.

I’ve got quite a few friends with birthdays this month, so this card will soon get put to good use.