Welcome to my crafty blog and another look at the new ‘bamboo’ stamp set from ClarityCrafts, this time for our latest challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches. It’s the fifth Tuesday of the month, so this time we have a double challenge using colours and a sketch. This is a really interesting sketch, not the sort of design I’d usually use, so I had to get my thinking cap on and also hunt through my inks for the best colour matches!

Having decided that the bamboo stamps would work, I started by creating a triangle at the top of a square of white card. I marked each side of the top of the upper triangle with a pencil dot and then put corresponding ones on the bottom edge. I then lined up a couple of strips of masking tape to create the top triangle, using the dots to line up the tape edges so I knew the bottom one would be a match. I lightly brushed ‘scattered straw’ Distress Ink over the triangle and then stamped the bamboo outline with ‘sepia’ Archival ink (the nearest I’d got to a rust shade). I then dragged the ‘scattered straw’ over the infill stamp and added that – the inkpad is quite juicy so it gave me a slightly blistered effect whichI think works well for the bamboo. I then removed the masking tape and stamped the leaves into place with ‘fern green’ Archival. I realigned the masking tape to form the bottom triangle and repeated the whole process.

I stamped ‘life’ from the small Japanese sentiments set at the point where the traingles meet, again using the ‘sepia’ Archival ink, then added the verse from the bamboo set. I mounted the topper onto a layer of Rainbow River companion paper and attached the whole piece to a 6×6 card blank.

These stamps are so different from anything else I’ve got in my stash! So how will you use our sketch and colours? There’s more inspiration from the rest of the design team at CAS Colours & Sketches to help you get started! I’m going to share this one at TGIF challenges – the leaves on the bamboo nicely pick up their theme.