Hello everyone. I hope you’re having a good weekend. I grabbed some time today to play with the January stencil from Clarity’s Craft Club – the lovely Fern Sprig Tree. We got both parts of the stencil in the club pack (the positive and the negative), but I just went with one part on this card, using it for dry embossing.

So, having cut a piece of card slightly smaller than a 5×7 base, I attached it to the stencil and ran it through my electronic embossing machine, using a rubber shim.

I kept the stencil in place and brushed Distress Oxides through it onto the embossed tree – ‘salvaged patina’, kitsch flamingo’ and ‘wilted violet’. You have to be careful not to move the stencil pieces whilst doing this – I found the best way was to brush in from the outer edge on each side, rather than going back and forth. I gently wiped the stencil with a damp piece of kitchen towel to lift the inks off it, then squished a Versamark inkpad over it. After removing the stencil, I scattered WOW’s ‘clear sparkle’ powder across the tree and set it with a heat gun.

I wanted to out a border around the topper, but none of my papers looked right against the blended colours on the tree. Instead, I brushed more of the three inks around the edges of the card blank to mimic the blending on the tree.

I attached the topper to the card base and finished with a KISS word sticker that I’d edged with a purple Sharpie.

I’m loving the sparkle against these pastel shades! I took the colours from Creative Colour Challenges, the glitter theme from Time Out, ‘something new’ from Inspire.Create and ‘anything goes’ from Stencil Fun.