Hello crafty friends. The third part of ClarityCrafts ‘Linda’s Christmas Compendium’ stamps are launching today on Create & Craft TV and I am in love with the ‘home for Christmas’ set. This little doggy is just so adorable – he reminded me of Toby, my friend’s little Westie! I’m going to share this one with the Christmas and stencil challenges at Happy Little Stampers.

So, before starting on the card, I made a mask for the door stamp using a piece of Clarity’s mask material. If you’ve not used this before, it’s a resuable sheet – the same as their pre-cut masks are made from. The best way is to stamp the image on a piece of scrap paper (you can’t stamp directly on the mask material as it’s plastic coated), put the mask material on top and then cut round the image. The paper can be discarded and the mask put back onto the carrier sheet.

So, on to the card. I stamped the door image onto a square of square card, then masked it off, ran a strip of low tack tape along the bottom of the image and laid the ‘brick wall’ stencil over the top. I brushed ‘pumice stone’ Distress Oxide through the stencil, starting all the strokes from the centre and brushing outwards so the ink didn’t go all the way to the edge.

I removed the stencil, tape and mask and then set about colouring the image, using a mixture of Pergaliner and Polychromo pencils, finishing with a dark green Pergacolour pen for the leaves in the door wreath.

I stamped the little dog in black Archival on a spare piece of card, shaded him with the cream & warm grey Polychromos and then fussy cut him. I popped a little piece of scrap card on the back and attached him to the card, before stamping the sentiment into place. I mounted the topper onto a layer of red card and attached it to a 7×7 card blank.

All the designs in these sets are just wonderful – I’ll be back to share another one tomorrow!