Well, here we are at Monday again – the weeks do keep ticking by, don’t they? I’ve got another new Clarity product to share with you today, this time the new Waterside Landscapes toppers. We’ve already got masks to create these fab scenes with, but now they’ve been turned into pre-printed cards as well, which does make life a whole lot easier!

The colours on this this made me think of a Western USA desert scene, so I reached for the Wild West Treescape stamps to create today’s card.

First, though, I wanted to create an embossed frame on the front of my card – I’d taken a 5×5 card blank and cut it down with my guillotine to evenly frame the topper. I found a rectangle embedder that was the right depth but too wide, so set about shortening it on the card, which is relatively easy to do. I started by attaching it to the card front with low tack tape, making sure that the left hand border was equally aligned with the top & bottom (so the embedder was sitting beyond the right hand side). I opened the card and embossed around the left hand side, plus partway along the top and bottom with a small ball tool. Turning back to the front, I realigned the embedder to give me the right hand border, then flipped back to the inside of the card and completed embossing around it.

I could then stamp the cowboy, eagle and a few desert grasses onto the topper, running low tack tape along the bottom edge of the image to ensure I got a straight line with my grass. My cowboy didn’t stamp brilliantly well (I realised after this card that it was time to crack open a new black Archival inkpad!), but I quite like the effect with the background colours adding a different feel to him. With a mount of Shenandoah companion paper in place, I simply attached it to my card blank.

Having launched these toppers on Clarity Social TV yesterday, Barbara will also be showcasing them on HobbyMaker on Wednesday (10th June) from 1pm to 3pm, so lots more potential for inspiration.

I’m going to share this card with a few current challenges, starting with the ‘masculine’ theme at The Paper Players. We Love Stamping are looking for ‘sports or hobbies’ – I think riding is definitely a hobby (it is also a sport but this guy looks far too relaxed to qualify for that!) and that fab sentiment works for Word Power too.