Hello there! I’ve got a couple of cards to share with you today, both taking a different angle on some of the stamps I’m

demonstrating on Clarity Social TV today at 10am & 2pm (UK time). This first card is for our new theme of U for Underwater at Alphabet Challenge – not an obvious use for the ‘leafy crescent moon‘ stamp set! I admit, the main image has the fish from ‘Sam’s Gone Fishing‘, but I added in some of the smaller accent stamps from the moon set, basing it on the layout from SundayStamps.

My starting point was a background piece I made on last year’s Clarity summer retreat, mopping up blue & beige acrylic paints from a blending mat. I thought it looked a bit like a watery setting, so cut it down with a nested circle die and stamped three of the fish onto it with black Archival ink.

Next was to tackle the background on a 6×6 card blank. I created a frame by embossing a round a square embedder then masked off the side with low tack tape. I dug out the ‘bubbles burst‘ stencil and brushed ‘broken china’ Distress Oxide ink through the smaller bubbles into each corner of the card. I then took the squiggly line and small leaves stamps from the crescenet moon set and stamped them into the corners (I wish I’d now added a few more of the lines). I shaded the leaves with an orange Pergaliner pencil – they look like those little plants you find underwater.

Having added colour to the fish with blue & orange Pergaliners, I stamped one of the ‘bijou retro sentiments’ onto the die cut topper and attached it to the centre of the card front.

What do you think? It’s a bit different from my usual style, but the message here is to get the most out of your stamp sets by finding multiple uses for all those accent stamps – and they may not be immediately obvious!