Hello everyone and welcome to July! That means we’ve got a new board for you to play with at Christmas (or not) BINGO. As a reminder, you pick one of the columns (B, I, N, G, or O) and incorporate at least three of the elements from it into your card.

I went with column N, picking out Land and Sea, Teal, 2 or more Print Papers, and Things with Wings, thanks to a fortuitous find in the Waterside Landscapes toppers and adding in a couple of Stamp Pen Birds and the new Bijou Branches, Twigs & Sprigs stamps.

So, let’s start with a look at this fab Waterside Landscape topper – it was the teal river that drew me to it for my challenge card. And you know how fascinated I get about how a change of colour palette gives a card a completely different vibe, so here’s the link to a card from last month using the same image but in tones that make it looks more like a desert canyon scene!

Having sorted my topper, I started stamping my additional images onto it, first running a piece of low tack tape along the bottom border to keep that clean. I added one of the branches in black Archival ink, together with two of the birds, nestling them into forks on the stems.

I took one of the leaf stamps from the set and filled out my little tree by repeat stamping it in ‘shadow grey’ Archival, then switched back to black to add the wild plants along the lower edge of the water. I used the ‘cobalt green’ Polychromo pencil (which is more of a teal colour) to deepen the shading

I was debating on what colour mount to add when I thought about looking through my Antarctica designer papers and found one with the ideal tones in it – it’s also one of the heavier patterned pieces that I use less often, but gave me the perfect edge to frame my image before I attached it to a 5×7 card blank.

Clarity are building an impressive catalogue of printed toppers now, and they do make life so much easier for making quick and easy cards that still have lots of impact. The question now is which column will you opt for on your card? Come and play along with us at Christmas (or not) BINGO!

I’m going to share this one as a second offering with AAA Colourful as well, having pulled the teal & purple tones from their colour board.