Hello everyone – Sunday again and another cold day in the UK. Despite that, though, I saw a couple of bluetits in my garden this week – they may be an early sign of spring! That prompted me to get Clarity Crafts‘ ‘garden birds & cherry blossom‘ stamps out – I haven’t played with these for ages. The shades from the current Color Throwdown challenge were ideal, with a slightly loose interpretation of the layout at Freshly Made Sketches (the birds pick up the circles on the sketch) and the ‘January’ theme from Time Out Challenges thanks to their appearance this week.

I started with a square of Clarity’s stencil card and stamped the blossom branch and two small birds with ‘watering can’ Archival ink. I could then colour them with Pergaliner pencils, using greay Polychromos for the branch & leaves. Now I’d made a rookie error when stamping as I couldn’t fit the third bird on the branch without his feet sitting in mid-air (not a great look!) so I stamped him onto a bit of scrap card, coloured and then fussy cut (without his feet)

I pulled out my clouds mask lightly brushed ‘broken china’ Distress Oxide across it to fill in the sky behind the image. I could then add ‘happy birthday’ from the ‘bijou retro sentiments‘ set, again with the ‘watering can’ Archival.

I glued the fussy cut bird into place to sit amongst the blossom, then simply added a mount of grey Shenandoah companion paper and attached it to a 6×6 card blank.

Thanks for dropping in! I hope my little bluetits have brightened your day – I’m keeping an eye out to see if they visit my garden again…