Hello crafty friends. I’ve had a lovely day today visiting a local Christmas craft fair with a friend, which has cleared my head after spending the last four days in online meetings and barely leaving the house! Even though it’s been a grey and damp day it felt so good to be properly out in the fresh air – and I love checking out other people’s creativity.

Today’s card carries on with my Christmas theme – this time using Claritystamp’s ‘madonna’ aperture die and some gilding flakes. I took inspiration from the new grid at TicTacToe challenge, using the central column of inlaid die cutting, free & gold/silver. I’m also going to share this as a second offering for Time Out‘s ‘precious’ theme, as it features the Christ child plus gold and silver gilding.

I started by cutting the madonna die into the front of a black 6×6 card blank.

I then put a piece of Clarity’s double sided adhesive behind the die cut and attached a piece of white card to it (otherwise the inside of my card would have been stuck together!!) I die cut the backing sheet from the adhesive and covered up the madonna and child part of the image.

I then pressed gold gilding flakes onto the adhesive to cover the whole background, rubbing the surplus off with a rough sponge.

I lifted the backing paper off the madonna and child and then pressed silver gilding flakes onto the adhesive, again removing the excess with a sponge.

I finished by die cutting a frame in gold card, using two of Clarity’s nested arch dies. I’d remembered to put a Stick It adhesive layer onto the back of the card before cutting it, so it was easy to attach to the card front.

I decided it didn’t need a sentiment – that beautiful image says it all.