Hello crafty friends. Well today hasn’t exactly gone as planned… I was due to be launching these fab new ‘bijou dangles’ stamps for ClarityCrafts on TV today, but have had to admit defeat thanks to a persistent cough following a recent chest infection! It’s not a great look on screen if the presenter is coughing away in the corner, is it?! Thankfully Clarity’s Paul has stepped into the breach and picked up my demos to keep the show on the road!

This is one of the cards from the first show today, and was inspired by a creation by Sonia Goodliff, one of my Clarity design team-mates. It combines the ‘friends bijou dangle’ set with the floral decorative panel.

I started with half a 5×5 card blank and first brushed ‘dried marigold’, then ‘carved pumpkin’ Distress Oxide through the bottom part of the decorative panel stencil. The best way to do this is to sit the stencil over the bottom left corner of the card, slightly offset, and gently brush up from the side and corner, staying away from the top and right edges of the panel. I then rotated the card and did the same again from each corner – it’s a very forgiving technique and doesn’t really look like the stencil is overlapping. I took several of the dangles from the set and stamped them across the top of the card, then added the main ‘friends’ word and one of the curved sentiments (which fitted perfectly along the top ribbon.

I shaded the stamped images with an orange Pergaliner pencil to make them stand out a little more and edged the card with a black Sharpie. Before attaching to the 6×6 card blank, I turned to one of the other panels on the stencil and lightly brushed the ‘carved pumpkin’ into opposite corners.

So huge thanks to Paul for picking up to present the shows – such a good crafty friend! I’m going to share this over at Just Us Girls – it picks up the colour and group of friends from their moodboard.