Hello crafty friends. It’s Friday and we’ve got the next letter in our Alphabet Challenge – we’re now up to ‘P’ and Caz has challenged us to include patterned paper on out cards. I’ve gone for more of an abstract look on mine, rather than a regular pattern, with a piece of the ‘Amazonia’ paper from Claritystamp.

I started by trimming down a piece of the paper to fit a 6×6 card blank. I love the effect of these designs – depending how you use it, there are all sorts of landscapes and effects to be seen in the ink patterns.

I used the ‘wild grasses’ stencil from Clarity and sponged acrylic paint through it with a sponge dabber (I used ‘snowflake’ from Paperartsy). Unfortunately, I was a bit heavy handed and so the paint seeped under the stencil to leave a rather splodgy image!

I was really fed up and started to think about plan B (while planning to file this piece in the recycling bin…!) I thought I’d then see whether I could add ink over the top of the paint, so the paint effectively because a base coat, so repositioned the stencil and sponged Distress Oxides through it (‘broken china’ and ‘mowed lawn’)

Result! I’m always telling others not to give up and keep on going until it’s finished, so it was about time I took my own advice! Once dry I attached it to the card blank and added one of the Clarity word stickers to finish.

I had a great afternoon yesterday leading a craft group with my friend Jean – we were doing this same technique with acrylic paints which was why I was so cross with myself with myself when doing this card as a practice run. Still, every day is a learning experience!