Hello everyone and welcome to the 900th post on this little blog! I can’t believe I’ve been sharing my crafting creations and thoughts for the last three years – thank you for sticking with me! Today’s card is a first outing this year for the ‘pansy’ dies from Stampin’ Up! I thought of these when I saw the inspiration card by Karen at Inspire.Create, and the colours at Just Add Ink work perfectly for spring pansies. I’m also going to share this as a second offering at TicTacToe, this time picking up the middle row from their grid (wood, flowers & die cut).

I started with the background, embossing a square of white card with the retired ‘pinewood planks’ folder from Stampin’ Up! (a favourite of mine). I added a strip of the ‘dandy delights’ paper in ‘granny appple green’ (also retired) across the bottom, then mounted the square onto a layer of ‘garden green’ card (as I don’t have it in granny apple) and attached it to a 6×6 card blank.

The next task was to set about a bit of die cutting to create the flowers. I used white and purple card for the pansy and bud, blending a little mango ink into the middle of the petals before adding the centre in ‘mango melody’ card. I cut two leaves in ‘garden green’, then attached all the pieces to the card front.

I stamped the sentiment from ‘share a milkshake’ onto a die cut banner and added that to the cardm finishing with a few resin dots to reflect the centre of the pansy.

I’m not the only one celebrating a 900th event this year, either. My training hospital, St Bartholomew’s, was founded 900 years ago in 1123 by a monk, Rahere and there are lots of celebrations planned. The League of Nurses has also commissioned a commemorative bottle of gin – mine arrived a few weeks ago, but I can’t quite bring myself to break the seal!