Hello there. Today’s card has yet another die cut on it, although it’s not quite as obvious at first glance as some of my other recent makes. Claritystamp’s ‘deerscape’ die is perfect for masculine cards and I thought of it as soon as I saw the theme at The Card Concept – I haven’t used their colour palette but hope I’ve captured the spirit of their photo. I’ve also picked up the sketch from TGIF challenges and added in one of my favourite techniques (inky mop-up backgrounds and blending) thanks to the new theme at Seize the Birthday

I haven’t used any of my inky backgrounds for a while (and there are plenty in my stash folder!) I found one that I thought would work with the deer and trimmed it down to fit a 6×6 card blank. I blended a little ‘chipped sapphire’ Distress Oxide’ around the sky and added ‘mowed lawn’ to the ground (as usual I hadn’t written the ink colours on the back of the card at the time!) I ran a black Sharpie around the edge of the card and attached it to the card blank.

I cut the deerscape out of white card, trimmed it out of the frame and then fussy cut it along the lower edge to follow the shape of the ground, as I didn’t want a straight line. I used a brush to blend ‘pumice stone’ onto the deer and a mixture of ‘shaded spruce’ and ‘mowed lawn’ along the ground.

I stamped a few of Clarity’s ‘wee trees’ on either side of the card in ‘watering can’ Archival ink, then glued the deerscape across the centre of the card.

The final step was to add the sentiment, again in ‘watering can’. I also popped a little more texture into the ground by sponging ‘shaded spruce’ lightly across a torn piece of copy paper.

It’s a beautiful day here again – I’m going to try to get to the local park for a walk later (no deer here, though)