Well here we are at the last Monday in July – maybe I’m getting old, but this year just seems to be flying by! I’ve got a birthday card to share with you today using the ‘three blooms’ stencil from ClarityCrafts, and picking up the bright summer tones from Color Throwdown, the sketch from The Paper Players and the right hand column (stencil, dots & sentiment without ‘birthday’) from Seize the Birthday‘s TicTacToe grid.

I started with a square of stencil card, lined up the middle sized bloom in the centre (masking off the other two with sticky notes) and sponged ‘squeezed lemonade’ & ‘picked raspberry’ Distress Oxides through it. I wanted to line the smallest bloom to sit behind it, so cut a few bits of masking tape to cover the petals. I sat the stencil over the first image, masked the two larger blooms and sponged the ink through again, repeating it to give me the three flowers.

I then grabbed my favourite clouds mask and lightly brushed ‘broken china’ Distress Oxide across it, trying to keep clear of the flowers, to give me a summer sky in the background. The sponged ink hadn’t come through in the centres of the two smaller flowers, so I added them in with a yellow Pergacolour pen. I switched to a blue one to add a dotted outline to the central bloom and sat the topper on a mount of Waimea Falls companion paper.

I finished with one of the additional sentiments from the ‘bijou ribbon’ stamp set and attached the whole piece to a 6×6 card blank.

Summer seems to have finally arrived in the UK – it’s been a beautiful hot sunny day today, and temperatures are forecast to give us the hottest day of the year so far tomorrow. I guess I’ll just have to stay indoors and craft if it’s too hot to sit in the garden!!