Hello crafty friends. As promised, here’s my second card for today, this time for our new challenge at As You See It. It’s the return of our dreaded speed challenge to make a card in less than 10 minutes, this time on the theme of water. I’ve recently been working my way through Clarity’s online 1-2-3 landscapes course using these toppers and their landscape masks – as they were out on my desk they were an obvious choice for a quick card, together with the meadow treescape stamps.

Now obviously, with only a maximum of 10 minutes to complete my card there was no time to stop and take photos during the process! Here’s a shot of my desk as I was ready start, with everything I needed gathered together – the clock has to start as soon as you start cutting paper or inking up a stamp, so I get the timer ready and set off…

Having chosen my topper, I ran low tack tape around the edges of the image and then added masks from the Meadow set above and below the water to isolate it, so that I could deepen the blue tones in that area by sponging ‘uncharted mariner’ Distress Oxide across it. I lifted the masks and stamped the two fences and tree from the set onto the image with black Archival ink (I wish I’d done the tree on the other side of the river in second generation stamping, but too late now!) I then added the flock of birds from the South Downs set. I cut the topper down to a square, mounted it on a layer of Rainbow River paper and attached it to a 6×6 card blank. I took one of the new birthday stickers, mounted that on a bit of the Rainbow River paper and popped it into place. With time ticking on, the final step was to add highlights to the water with a fine white Posca pen – one of the many tips from Barbara Gray on the 1-2-3 Landscape course.

This challenge is always guaranteed to get my pulse racing and I proise myself every time that the next one will be much simpler! Well, I thought this was with using one of the toppers, but with the extra bits I added I squeezed it in at just over 9 minutes 30 seconds.

So, if you’re ready for an adrenaline filled challenge, come and join us at As You See It. Don’t forget to set your timer when you start and tell us how long your creation took you.