Hello everyone! It’s a beautiful day here on the edge of London – the sun is shining and it finally feels like spring might be here after weeks of rain. I wanted to share the uplifting vibe with you thanks to another of my demos from last Friday’s Clarity Social TV and the Garden Birds stamp set. I love this set of images – it’s been around for a while and is perfect for this time of year with the cherry blossom stamps.

So, having cut a topper of card at 4.5″ square, I stamped the medium size blossom branch, the bird feeder and the two small bluetits onto it using black Archival ink. My bird feeder didn’t stamp perfectly, but I decided I quite liked it – it looks a bit like weathered metal (well, that’s what I told myself!)

You won’t be surprised to read that I then shaded them all in with Polychromo pencils! I am going to have to start using some of my other colouring techniques, but for now these keep me very happy! For the seeds in the feeder, I used the ‘nougat’ Polychromo, avoiding the outline of the mesh on the feeder, then added little lines with a micron pen which gives them a bit of a 3D feel.

I wanted to lift the background a little, so ran low tack tape around the topper edges to give me a border before lightly brushing ‘tumbled glass’ Distress Ink across the Clouds mask to create my sky. Having added ‘spring’ from the Bijou Entwined Wreath stamp set, I added a mount of Indian Summer companion paper and attached it to a 5×5 card blank.

I have to say, having sunshine all day today really does make everything feel so much better – it’s been a long time coming! The birds are singing in the garden, my daffodils are starting to open and life feels hopeful. There are a few uplifting challenges to share this with as well, starting with ‘birds’ for Triple B and ‘wings’ at Cardz4Galz. My spring day also fits the ‘weather’ theme at Addicted to CAS and I picked up the pretty pink blossom from the photo moodboard at Just Us Girls.