Welcome to my crafty blog. I’ve had another play today with some of the new dies designed by Hazel Eaton for Julie Hickey Designs – these are fantastically detailed ferns. I’ve mamanged to work three challenges into this one card, as well. The Paper Players have got ‘love and friendship’ as this week’s theme, which ties in well with Just Us Girls‘ word week of ‘friends. I put them together with the gorgeous colours from Global Design Project

I started with a black 6×6 card blank , stamped the ‘happy birthday’ sentiments from the ‘more about the boys’ set in clear ink and heat embossed it with clear powder. I cut a narrow frame in white card from Julie’s square ‘layers, frames & banners’ set, blended ‘dried marigold’ Distress Oxide onto it and glued it onto the card front.

I then blended Distress Oxides in ‘chipped sapphire’, ‘picked raspberry’ and ‘dried marigold’ (the nearest I’d pot to GDP’s challenge colours) onto some scrap piece of white card, so that I could cut the ferns out of it. I mixed the colours round so that they would . spread nicely across the die cuts.

I cut two of the medium ferns and two small ones from the blended card pieces and then glued them onto the card front. I love how the colours look much more soft and muted than they appear on the whole pieces of card – I deliberately placed the dies across two or three colours to get a tonal effect.

I finished by stamping two of the words from the ‘more about the girls’ set onto the card front and heat embossed them with WOW’s ‘gold satin pearl’ powder. Now I know all you crafters are shouting at me as I should have done that before I stuck the ferns on, but my original plan of putting a sentiment on a topper didn’t look right so I went with plan B!

I’d seen something similar to this that Hazel produced when she first launched these so I CASE’d (copy and selectively edit) her design. I’m so pleased with how it turned out – my son was at work today, so it was lovely to be able to escape from isolating in my bedroom for a short while and play with my crafting goodies.