Hello there! I decided it was time ClarityCrafts ‘butterfly tree’ stamp came out to play again, having watched Barbara put it through it’s paces on TV yesterday. For my card, I picked up the colours from Just Us Girls with the right-hand diagonal of butterfly, yellow & border from TicTacToe‘s grid. Sketch Saturday is a new-to-me challenge – their theme is to use one of their previous challenges, so I went with ‘make a scene’ from back in 2020.

I started by creating a border on the front of a 6×6 card blank using a couple of square embedders. First was the smaller square – attached it to the frant of the card with a bit of folded over masking tape, then turn to the inside and use a bone folder to locate the edge of the plastic through the card (I start at the outside edge and run the bone folder in so it butts up against the embedder, then move it up & down to get the outline). You can then sharpen the crease by using a #2 embossing tool before removing the embedder. I wanted a border frame, so next one of the nested embedders on the card, with an aperture slightly larger than my original piece. I repeated the steps to get the outline – because you’re running against the inner edge of the plastic this time, it creases in the opposite direction so you get a raised border. I hope that all makes sense…! I’ll try & demo this when I’m on TV later this month.

I then ran masking tape around each side of the embedded frame and brushed ‘ripe persimmon’ and ‘squeezed lemonade’ Distress Oxides into the centre of the card. I kept my brush strokes all going in the same direction, fron the lower left side, to give me a soft top and right edge to the colour. Frustratingly, the ink did bleed under the tape a little on the left side, but I decided to live with it!

I stamped the ‘butterfly tree’ into place using black ink – it’s a great silhouette stamp. I thought it needed a little more with the image so pulled out a circle mask, popped the outer part over the butterflies and lightly sponged the ‘ripe persimmon’ & ‘squeezed lemonade’ into it. I grounded the tree by sponging a little black ink across a piece of torn copy paper and then finished with a word sticker.

This made me think of a beautiful summer sunset, although there’s no sign of one here tonight – it’s grey and raining!