I’m back with a second post today, this time for the new challenge at As You See It . So here we go with one of our speed challenges, where you make a card in under 10 minutes, and this time the theme is ‘seashells’ – perfect for the summer days, as is the beach theme over at AAA cards. For these speed challenges, you can get everything you need ready in advance but then the clock starts as soon as you pick up your first item to start crafting.

I’d decided to use a seashell, one of the older stamps from ClarityCrafts‘ craft club, but for some inexplicable reason I took the ammonite out of my folder instead! I do think I can argue for the ammonite though – it was a creature with a shell and lived in the sea…! Anyway, I spent a little time getting everything else together, including trimming all my card to the right size and cutting a couple of masks from all-over sticky notes (and you all know this isn’t how I normally work! My preferred style tends to be ‘evolving’!!)

10 minutes is not long to make a card, so I opted to base the design on the club project sheet for the shell stamp (#103). I started my stopwatch, rubbed the square of white card with an anti-static bag, stamped the ammonite twice on the bottom in clear ink, and dusted the gold Perfect Pearls across them with a paintbrush. I covered them up with the two masks I’d cut and then stamped a further three shells across the bottom and two at the top of the card. After removing the masks, I dusted them all with the gold Perfect Pearls mica powder. I loaded my stencil brush with the ‘peacock feathers’ Distress Oxide and brushed the ink across the card, around the shells. I also brushed it around the front of my 6×6 card blank, then glued the shell topper onto a square of gold card and onto the card front. The final step was to add the sentiment from the ‘flower framer’ stamp set that was still on my desk from a couple of days ago, using the ‘peacock feathers’ ink.

With such a short time to finish the card, you won’t be surprised that I didn’t have time to take photos as I went along. I did grab a shot of the ‘craftermath’ on my desk though!

So here’s the finished product.

Now it’s your turn to create a seashell themed card in under 10 minutes! If you head on over to As You See It there’s more inspiration from my talented team-mates and a further explanation of the guidelines. Don’t forget to tell us how long your card took you to make. On which note, you’ll no doubt be wondering at what point I managed to stop the clock… Well, I just scraped it in at 9 minutes 50 seconds!