Welcome to my crafty blog and a second post of the day! I made this card and scheduled this post a couple of days ago, and it feels that so much has changed in that short time with the death of HM The Queen yesterday. Despite that, I’m thrilled to have been invited to join the lovely design team over at As You See It challenge, which has been a favourite of mine to play along with for some time. That’s the good news – the bad news is that the new theme for my first creation has been a bit challenging, to say the least (thanks team!!)

Not only is it a speed challenge, so the card has to be made in no more than 10 minutes, but I don’t own any pumpkin related stamps! Fortunately, I had a (very rare) flash of inspiration – the new ‘seed pods’ from Claritystamp’s bijou collection look a bit like pumpkins, so off I went.

Now with a speed challenge, there’s no time to be deciding on what to use as you go along (my usual method!) so I had to get everything together before I started. Obviously there are no ‘work in progress’ photos either… Here’s everything I had ready before starting my stopwatch.

I worked on a small square of Clarity’s stencil card and first stamped the single seed pod (sorry, pumpkin!) three times in ‘walnut stain’ Distress Oxide. I’d cut a couple of masks beforehand so I could overlay them. I then sponged the tree with the ‘walnut stain, ‘rustic wilderness’ & ‘ripe persimon’ and stamped it into place beside the pumpkins. I used a couple of Pergaliner pencils in orange & brown to shade the pumpkins and the tree trunk, then brushed the green & orange inks over the leaves to bring out the colour a bit more (I would have coloured the individual leaves in with pencils if this hadn’t been a speed challenge).

Finally, I had a piece of torn copy paper to hand and used it to blend ink under the tree & pumpkins to ground them. I quickly ran a black Sharpie round the edge of the card and then attached it to a 5×5 kraft card blank.

And now you’re wondering how long this took me to make? 9 minutes & 6 seconds – not bad, eh? I think it took me longer to clear up afterwards, if I’m honest!

Thanks so much for dropping in. Do come and join our speedy pumpkin theme over at As You See It – check out the fab inspiration from the rest of the team and don’t forget to tell us how long your card took. Meanwhile, I’m popping over to Global Design Project to share my card with them as well.