Welcome to my crafty blog. Today’s card uses the Stampin’ Up! ‘pansy patch’ set that I got last year – pansies are one of my favourite spring flowers, and I must start getting my plant pots refreshed with a few. I’ve used the colours from the current challenge at Colour INKspiration, together with the sketch from The Paper Players and the elements in the central column on TicTacToe‘s grid (designer paper, spring flowers, ribbon/twine).

I strated by trimming down a piece of the ‘simply marbleous’ designer paper in the grey, attached it to a mount of ‘blackberry bliss’ card and popped the whole piece onto a 6×6 card blank. I added a white die cut oval and stamped one of the sentiments from ‘Art Gallery’ onto a banner, using ‘mint macaron’ ink.

I stamped and die cut three of the large panies from the ‘pansy patch’ set in ‘gorgeous grape’ (I don’t have highland heather, so this was my nearest colour) – I used a second generation image for the first part (ie stamped it off on a piece of scrap paper first), and then stamped in first generation with the top stamp so there was contrast in the colours. I added the middle part using ‘blackberry bliss’, with ‘mint macaron’ for the flower centres. It was interesting doing these as I don’t have any SU ink pads, just their Write markers which you can use to ink up stamps. The image isn’t as regular as you would get from an inkpad, but I quite like the texture I got on these. I arranged the three flowers around the sentiment using foam pads.

I added a bow in grey twine and was going to stop there, but it felt a little sparse so I stamped and die cut two of the small pansies just using ‘blackberry bliss’ for the outline and ‘mint macaron’ for the centres and added those to my bunch of flowers. Much better!

This card is heading off to a friend who’s struggling with post Covid syndrome and is finding life rather hard at the moment. He’s getting good care and I’m praying he starts to get some improvement soon. So many people have been left with problems after this awful virus – I’m very grateful to have escaped it so lightly.