Hello crafty friends. We’re back with a new challenge at Sparkles Challenges and Francesca has given us ‘January blues’ – rather appropriate, although to be honest we’ve had more grey than blue weather round here recently! Now, you know I love an inky background and I found the perfect one in my stash, which I’ve paired up with one of the ‘woodland treescape overlay‘ stencils from Clarity Crafts. I’ve pulled in the middle row of the tic tac toe board from Cardz4Guyz, and helpfully Addicted to CAS have also got a blue theme this time round.

My inky mop-up was on a piece of Clarity’s 3.5inch stencil card and the first step was to lay the stencil on it and run it through my embossing machine, so the trees have more of a 3D effect. Keeping the stencil in place, I brushed ‘speckled egg’ and ‘chipped sapphire’ Distress Oxides through it (which I think were the original inks on the mop-up…), adding a little ‘black soot’ around the edges with a sponge for additional shading.  It’s difficult to see the embossing on the trees in the photo, but it gives them a lovely texture around the edges.

I took a 6×6 card blank and part-embossed a frame onto the front using a square embedder (I went down the right hand side and halfway across the top & bottom edges), then attached a piece of Shenandoah companion paper down the left hand side. Next time I do this, I’ll try and see whether I can emboss the embedder through the card and paper together.

I took the ‘hills‘ mask and sponged a little of the ‘chipped sapphire’ scross it to put a little more definition into the landscape, then edged the topper with a black Sharpie, stamped one of the ‘essential sentiments‘ into place and attached it to the card front.

I do love the effect of a good inky background – and it’s a great way to clean up your craft mat too!