Hello there. I’m back with card 2 for today, and am delighted that CAS on Friday invited me along as Guest Designer for their new Summer theme challenge. It’s a prime time of year for weddings, so that sorted the reason behind my card – and the sharp-eyed amongst you will have spotted that it’s another use for my current favourite Summer Build a Wreath stamps! I thought they were perfect for building a floral arch for the happy couple.

I’ve wound three other challenges through this pair of cards as well, using the palette from Color Throwdown for one of them and the pink option from Simply Clean & Simple for the other. And both cards work beautifully for the summer theme at The Four Seasons!

The pink card was the first one I made in this pair. I drew the arch pencil guideline using Clarity’s stencil, then stamped two of the leafy images from the set in ‘lucky clover’ and ‘evergreen bough’ Distress Oxides, alternating them around the guideline.

I next added in two of the flowers to the arch, using ‘picked raspberry’ and ‘spun sugar’ Distress Oxide. The clouds mask from the Build a Scene set was the perfect size for brushing a little ‘broken china’ across to create the sky. I then stamped the couple from the Wee Wedding set in black Archival and gave them ground to stand on by sponging a little of the ‘evergreen bough’ ink across a piece of torn copy paper.

The only problem with this was that I’d taken the arch too far down the card, so chopped it across the bottom when I cut it to fit on a 7×7 card blank. It’s fine though, as it looks like the couple are set back into the garden beyond the arch. I added one of the Rub On anniversary/wedding sentiments and finished with my favourite little trio of birds from the Just Woodland stamp set.

For the second card, I learned my lesson from the first one and didn’t bring the arch so far down, so the couple now look like they’re stamping underneath it. All I changed was the colour scheme, using ‘evergreen bough’ in first & second generation, ‘peacock feathers’ and ‘carved pumpkin’ for Color Throwdown’s palette.

Oh, and I used a large square embedder to emboss a frame on the front of both cards before attaching the toppers. So, what defines summer for you? I know the team at CAS on Friday would love to see your creations on their blog.