Hello crafty friends. Well, it’s yet another wet and grey day in the UK , so I thought I’d brighten things up at one of the new Floral Elements stamp sets from Clarity. They’ve stepped these up a bit and there are now a set of sample layout cards with each set, to give you a few starting ideas. I tried one of them out for this card as you can see.

I worked on a 3.5″ square of stencil card and first stamped the Bijou Square Backdrop into the centre, using ‘pumice stone’ Distress Oxide which I applied with a sponge to get even coverage. I then lined up the striped background from the set and added that on top, also in the ‘pumice stone’.

Next was to add the Floral Elements in black Archival – I went with the little flower swirl plus two leafy branches, leaving out the additional flowers on each end that are in the sample layout, then adding the ‘thank you’ sentiment. I shaded in the flower and leaves with a couple of Polychromo pencils in ‘cadmium orange’ and ‘violet’.

I stepped up the layout a little further by using a square embedder and ball tool to emboss an inner frame on the topper, then a layer of purple Indian Summer companion paper and finally attached it to a 6×6 card blank.

These little sample layouts are such a clever idea and so useful to start you off with these stamp sets – it’s easy to amend them too, as I’ve done with this card. Barbara will be over on HobbyMaker TV tomorrow (Wednesday) from 1-3pm with more inspiration using this and the other 5 sets in the collection. Until then I’m sharing this with a couple of current challenges: Simply Clean & Simple and We Love Stamping