Hello there. I’ve got a rather joyful card to share with you today, which I made for my new grandson who arrived last Saturday!

I couldn’t resist using the fab little teddy from Clarity‘s Craft Club a few years ago (he’s #141) together with a few of my favourite Clarity products – the latest ‘autumn build a wreath‘ stamps, the alphabet letter stamps, my Pergaliner pencils and the ‘hearts‘ nested doodle frame-it panel dies! I have to confess that I’m also going to share him with a couple of challenges, having taken brown, yellow, colouring & bear from Festive Friday‘s inspo list, plus the ‘beginnings’ theme over at Time Out.

The first step was to take a 5×5 square of card and stamp some of the leaves from the ‘build a wreath’ set onto it using ‘peeled paint’ & ‘ bundled sage’ Distress Oxide. I then added one of the flowers with ‘mustard seed’ before sponging a little of the ‘bundled sage ‘ across a torn piece of copy paper to create the ground. Now, I wanted to sit the bear amongst the flowers, so needed to make off the end leaves. The easiest way to do this was with a couple of bits of low tack tape – I traced the outline of the edges of the leaves onto it, then fussy cut it and popped it back into place.

I could then stamp the bear into place using ‘potting soil’ Archival ink. I wanted a little colour in the background, so cut another mask for him with Clarity’s mask material and lightly brushed ‘tumbled glass’ Distress Oxide into the sky around him. Next, because the masking tape was a solid cover over the leaves, I used a brown fineliner pen to draw in the edge of his paws between the leaves. I then used three shades of my pergaliner pencils to shade his fur in – I didn’t worry about blending the pencil marks together as I quite like the effect of texture.

The next step was to personalise it. I used a nested circle embedder to trace a curve above the bear’s head, then stamped the ‘letterbox alphabet’ letters in the ‘potting soil’, starting from the centre and working out in each direction.

Having run a brown Sharpie around the card edges, I added a mount of Toscana companion paper that I’d cut with one of the ‘hearts’ nesteed square doodle frame-it panel dies and attached the whole piece to a 7×7 card blank.

So this went to my new little cutie – he’s a very snuggly little soul who looks exactly like his father when he was first born! I’m looking forward to a future of fun & adventures!