Hello crafty friends! We’ve got another set of new stamps and stencils from ClarityCrafts launching today – the ‘Japanese flowers & butterflies’ and circular decorative stencils, based on a design Barbara & the Clarity community orginally drew in the SHAC shack. If you don’t know about the SHAC (Safe, Happy & Creative), it’s an online drawing & colouring session that Barbara set up during the first Covid lockdown in 2020 to help everyone who was so anxious. It’s still going over three years later, now meeting on Clarity’s Facebook page every Monday morning – how fantastic is that?

Anyway, back to the stamps & my card. I started by lightly brushing ‘evergreen bough’ Distress Oxide through the decorative stencil onto a square of white card that I’d trimmed to fit a 6×6 card blank – I added the centre circle into the stencil as well, so the middle remained white. I then stamped the main outline image from the ‘love – Japanese flowers & butterflies’ set into the centre of the stencilled area.

These designs are two-step stamps, with the second one infilling the main image. I sponged the ‘evergreen bough’ onto it to fill in the background and stamped it in place, followed by ‘picked raspberry’ on the flowers & butterfly. As usual, I used my stamping platform for this, so I could line the stamp up against the outlined image before adding the ink.

I wanted to make the butterfly stand out more from the image, so stamped the separate image onto a scrap piece of designer paper, fussy cut it and glued it over the butterfly on the stamped image. I brushed it over with Wink of Stella so it had a light sparkle.

I mounted the card onto a piece of Clarity’s companion paper and attached it to a 7×7 card blank.

These are really lovely stamps – there are three sets in the release and six stencils, so lots of creative opportunites to grab. I’m heading off to share this card with the challenge at Festive Friday – their theme is World Conservation Day and I’ve picked up stencil, foliage & animals from their inspo list.