Hello crafty friends. Well, here we are at the start of another week and the sun’s still shining here in the UK. I decided to use another of my favourite Claritystamp sets today – the ‘birdhouse garden’. I took the layout from the sketch over at Global Design Project and the colours from TGIF, then added in the ‘grid’ theme from Addicted to CAS and ‘mammals’ from Just Us Girls. Not bad to get all that on a one layer card?!

I started by lining up Clarity’s ‘abstract squares’ stencil on a 6×6 card blank, and then fixed the circle stencil over it. I blended the three colours into the aperture to give me the background, using ‘willow’ & ‘salmon’ Adirondacks and ‘spun sugar’ Distress Ink.

I then stamped the shrub, cat and squirrel from the ‘birdhouse garden’ set using ‘shadow grey’ Archival ink, together with the flock of birds. I was using my stamping platform, so was able to double stamp the squirrel, to give him a darker tone against the shrub. I added the ground under the cat by sponging the ‘shadow grey’ along the edge of a torn piece of copy paper, and sponged a little under the squirrel to soften the line against the plants.

The final touch was the sentiment along the bottom, using one of Julie Hickey’s ‘just a note’ stamps.

Thanks for dropping in. This little pair do make me smile – there’s a squirrel who’s often in our garden and makes Benji-cat cross when he thinks his territory is being invaded!