Welcome to my crafty blog. Barbara Gray showcased Clarity’s ‘townhouse’ products the other day, so I thought it was time my die came out for an airing (plus I needed a ‘new home’ card!). I took the lovely colour palette from Creative Colour Challenges and teamed it with the layout at Freshly Made Sketches, adding in the ‘new/welcome’ theme from Inkspirational as this will be heading to friends who’ve just moved house.

I started with the large square in Clarity’s backdrop stamps and inked it up with SU ‘fresh freesia’ and ‘bundled sage’ Distress Oxide, spreading the ink out of the stamp with small sponges. I gave it a quick spritz with a water spray and stamped it onto a piece of Clarity’s stencil card. The colours are really subtle and it was difficult to get them to show in up well in the photo!

I cut the card down and attached it to a 6×6 card blank. I cut the ‘townhouse’ die in ‘night of navy’ card, then used a small pair of scissors to trim part of the die cut away leaving the lower three houses and the ground, before gluing it onto the card front. I stamped the sentiment from Julie Hickey’s ‘be happy’ set in navy.

I had originally intended to finish here, but it all looked way too pale. Instead, I used my waterbrush and added ink to the detail of the die cut – ‘fresh freesia’ to the houses, navy for the roofs and doors and ‘bundled sage’ to the ground area. Much better!

Now, I need to explain the interesting choice of sentiment – can you believe that in the whole of my craft stash (which is larger than I care to admit…) I haven’t got a single ‘new home’ or ‘welcome’ stamp?! I decieded that this one fitted what I wanted to say (a wish for happy days in their new home) but I clearly need to go shopping for more craft goodies!