Welcome to my second post today as we start our new theme at As You See It challenge. We’re back with a speed challenge again – cards must be completed in less than 10 minutes, this time on the theme of hobbies. I’ve used ClarityCrafts new linocut sampler stamp set to make a masculine birthday card – I’ve got a couple of friends who are keen birdwatchers, so this image was perfect.

I always find these a bit difficult (the clue’s in the word ‘challenge’!) Regular readers of this little blog will know that my crafting style tends towards ‘evolving’ and for this challenge I need to have everything planned and ready to go when I start the stopwatch! Here’s the starting point on my desk, although it wasn’t quite as well planned as I thought – read on…

I started the clock and then stamped the bird linocut into the centre of my 5×5 card blank. I then sponged ‘chipped sapphire’ & ‘broken china’ Distress Oxides onto the plain square stamp and addded that over the first image to colour the background. I wanted to create a frame – the smallest embedder I had is from the bijou notecards set, but it’s too long so I needed to reduce the size. This is basically the opposite to how I extended it in Monday’s post – I lined it up with the bottom of the image (attaching with a bit of masking tape), turned the card over and ran my embossing tool along the bottom edge and slightly up each side. I moved the embedder to sit level with the top of the image, turned the card over again and embossed the remaining sides with my ball tool. This is where the gap in my planning was revealed – I hadn’t got my sentiment ready! Fortunately, the ‘occasions – happy birthday’ set was already on my desk so I was able to quickly stamp one into place and stop the clock!

Phew! Well after all that, I guess you want to know how long I took to finish? I kept it very simple this time and stopped the clock at 6 minutes 11 seconds.

So are you up for our speed challenge? There’s some great inspiration from my design team-mates over at As You See It to help you get started and we can’t wait to see what hobbies you all share with us. You can get everything ready beforehand, but you must start the clock as soon as you start stamping or cutting your paper. Good luck!