Hello friends. Today’s card features the bird tree stamp from Clarity Crafts – I used the co-ordinating stencil a few weeks ago but hadn’t yet showcased the stamp. I do love these images of the tree transforming into a flock of birds and it was perfect for a little countryside scene.

This is another card that I’ve manged to incorporate a few challenges into, starting with ‘weather’ and ‘place’ (the countryside) from Time Out challenges. The large sentiment works for Word Power and the birds are one of the three Bs at Triple B.

I started with a piece of stencil card cut to 11cm square (4.25″). I used sponges to blend Distress Oxides across the bird tree stamp, starting with ‘rustic wilderness’ on the right, then moving to ‘evergreen bough’ and finally ‘bundled sage’ for the outermost birds.

I then turned to my favourite clouds masks, brushing ‘tumbled glass’ Distress Oxide across it to create my sky, after which I sponged a little of the ‘rustic wilderness’ across a torn piece of copy paper to put the ground on the bottom of the card.

Finally I added one of the miniatures cats in ‘shadow grey’ Archival ink and the sentiment from the Quotes 3 set, then ran a black Sharpie around the card edges. I was then looking for a suitable piece of green Amazonia companion paper for a mount, but none of my pieces were wide enough! Cue the inspiration to use one of the offcuts to cover half of 6×6 card blank and the simply pop the topper over it.

Now do you think the cat (who’s looking very innocent sitting there) is the reason all the birds have taken flight out of the tree…??