Welcome to my weekly dip back into Clarity’s Craft Club with the ‘room with a view’ aperture die from January 2021.

I went for a slightly more ambitious card than I usually make, picking up the palette from Creative Colour Challenges, with fancy fold, friendship statement and something shiny from the inspo list at Festive Friday Challenge

I started with a 6×6 gatefold card blank and covered the two front panels with one of Clarity’s companion ‘Waimea Falls’ papers. I wanted to see through the window in the die cut, so lined the die up on the card front, popped some pencil marks in the corners of the window and trimmed the card away from the two panels.

I then cut the die into a square of black card, leaving a narrow frame around the edge. Now regular readers will know that I don’t always remember to put an adhesive layer on the card for my die cuts, but I did today! However…. that gave me a teeny problem, as of course that meant the back of the window frame was sticky (and obviously I didn’t want to to stick to the inside of the card!) I cut the die cut in half, attached it to the front panels and then rubbed a little talc over the back of the window frame, which nicely solved the problem.

I used a couple of scraps of dark green card to die cut the two plants, trimmed the extra bits of the die away and glued them over the image. I heat embossed a scrap of ‘starry sky’ card with clear powder, die cut the pots and pieced them onto the card (I love those dark blue glazed meditteranean style plant pots). I also pieced in the two parts of the table from the original die cut.

I wanted to have a view through the window (that’s what the die’s called, after all!), so masked off a square on the inside of the card and blended ‘chipped sapphire’ Distress Oxide over a Clarity cloud mask for the sky, then stamped a little flock of birds.

I finished with a word sticker on the front (and a sigh of relief!)

Here’s a quick pic of the card stood up

This card made me think of Play School, an iconic British children’s TV show from the 60s and 70s. There was a regular feature, usually a story, which started with the presenters asking children to guess which window we’d be looking through – the round one, the arched one or (definitely for today) the square one!