Welcome to my crafty blog and another sunflower card. This one uses the new set from Claritystamp, who are donating 50% of the proceeds from them to the British Red Cross appeal for Ukraine. They were the obvious set to use when I saw the new colours from CAS Colours and Sketches and I’m also sharing it as a second offering for Just Add Ink‘s ‘masking’ theme.

It won’t surprise you to know that I started by stamping the sunflowers! I stamped the large one first in ‘watering can’ Archival ink and then stamped it onto an all-over sticky note so that I could cut a mask for it. With that in place, I then stamped the smaller sunflower either side, so they sat behind the larger one.

I put the mask back over the larger flower and then brushed ‘broken china’ Distress Oxide across Clarity’s ‘clouds’ mask for the sky. I then coloured the flowers using a waterbrush and ‘mustard seed’, ‘chipped sapphire’ and ‘weathered wood’ Distress Oxides.

I grounded the flowers by lightly sponging the ‘watering can’ Archival across a torn piece of copy paper and added the sentiment from Clarity’s December 2021 Craft Club set. I mounted the topper onto a layer of ‘night of navy’ card and then attached it to a 6×6 card blank. At this poiont, I decided the sunflower seed heads would look better in the navy rather than grey, so went over them with the waterbrush & ‘chipped sapphire’ ink (I left the stems grey). Definitely the right decision.

I’ve never visited Ukraine, but I have been to Romania a few times – one of the highlights there were the amazing fields of sunflowers. Here’s a blurry photo (taken from the car) of a sunflower field with a rainbow. We’re all praying for brighter days for Ukraine.