Hello crafty friends. It’s time for our next theme at Sparkles challenges and Helen has opted for ‘no stamping’ on our creations! Now you know this is always a stretch for me (I am most definitely a stamper at heart), but fortunately one of ClarityCrafts‘ Fresh Cut Dies came to the rescue. I love the intricacy of the design on the ‘love birds’ aperture die, but did come to regret my decision to paper piece it!

The first step was to cut the die into the centre of a square of white card. I layered it onto an offset square of ‘Amazonia’ designer paper and then onto a 7×7 card blank. Having trimmed the ‘Amazonia’ paper down to fit the card, I had some offcuts left over so used the scrap from the darker part of the paper to cut out the two birds again and then paper pieced them. It’s easiest to keep all the bits for this in the die, laying it face down, and then take one bit out at a time – remembering that you’re working with a mirror image (basically doing a jigsaw with the image reversed!)

The other side of the ‘Amazonia’ paper had an area with a lovely patch of yellow, so I used a couple of scraps of that to cut out the flowers and then paper piece those. This is where it got very fiddly and I started to question the wisdom of my plan (well, that’s the polite version…!), but I persevered.

The great thing about using one piece of the designer paper is that all the colours tone together – and it did work out well, if I may say so myself. I finished with one of Clarity’s KISS word stickers across the frame, gluing a little bit of card onto each end of it so it sat flat.

Our challenge at Sparkles runs for the next month, so you’ve got lots of time to come and join in – don’t forget to check out the rest of the design team’s creations as well. Meanwhile, I’m heading off to share this one with a few other challenges. The layout picks up the sketch from Global Design Project (I moved the sentiment to the other side, opposite the bird), I’ve included the right hand column of yellow, diecuts & floral from TicTacToe and it obviously works with Happy Little Stampers die challenge.