Hello crafty friends. We’ve got a new challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches – it’s always a sketch for the second one of the month and, as I’m still hosting, I got to design it! Although I drew it earlier this year, it’s worked perfectly for the candles stamps from ClarityCrafts‘ new ‘Christmas Elements’ collection.

I started by staming and heat embossing the wreath and individual candles onto a square of stencil card using WOW’s superfine gold powder. With this one, I remembered to rub the card with an antistatic pad before using the powder, so I didn’t get a load of residue (unlike my efforts live on the show on Saturday!) I wanted to colours with Pergacolour pens to get a deeper shade, but felt tips can ‘bleed’ on cardstock so I put down an undercoat first using a Pergaliner pencil, then went over it with the pen which gives a lovely even tone.

I’d also stamped another candle and the bow from the set onto scrap card, heat embossed and coloured them, then fussy cut both pieces. I attached them to the wreath using foam pads and the sharp-eyed amongst you will have noted that the bow is red at this point! Having mounted it all up onto the card, I really felt the red bow didn’t sit well (maybe it needed a red mount?) So I peeled it off the card front, then stamped, coloured and cut out a second one in green and popped that on instead – much better!

Having mounted the topper on a layer of Indian Summer comapnion paper, I simply added the sentiment from the set in ‘library green’ Archival ink to finish it.

So come on over to CAS Colours & Sketches and play along with my layout – you don’t have to use circles, any shape will do, but just remember to keep it CAS!