Hello crafty friends. I’m back with another look at the Wee Tree Stencils that Clarity launched a week ago as one of their July Products of the Month (which means double loyalty points on your whole order when you add these to your basket). Now I got a whole lot more arty on this one that is my usual style, although it’s the Painterly Landscape topper that really adds to the look rather than my stencilling.

I found one of the portrait orientation Painterly backgrounds that I thought would work for my little landscape and stencilled through one of the trees with ‘library green’ Archival ink and a spot-on sponge. (The permanent ink comes off the stencil nicely when wiped with isopropyl alcohol)

I found two more of the trees and added them into my scene, again with the ‘library green’ ink and a sponge.

I wanted to vary the height of the trees, so ran a strip of low tack tape along the bottom of the first three which meant I could position the spindly tree down lower, adding it on either side. I then switched to a torn piece of copy paper, sitting it over the trees, so that I could sponge a ground line into place.

Surprisingly for me, I thought it still looked a little bare, so went back to my first tree and laid it half across the edge of the card, this time sponging ‘cobalt’ Archival through it and repeating across the to and down both sides to frame my scene.

I added a few little birds from the Friends & Family Silhouette set, again in the ‘cobalt’, followed by a narrow white mount and a layer of pale blue Toscana companion paper. Having popped the topper onto a 7×7 card blank, I finished with one of the A5 Tall Feel Good sentiments, plus a couple more birds for good measure!

They do say it’s good to push yourself, and I certainly did with this one – there were a few points where I was ready to bin it, but I persevered, deciding that the sentiment here had the right attitude towards it! It does look much more like one of the fab creations my Clarity DT buddy Sonia would produce, though, rather than my usual CAS approach!

So, having decided I’m happy with it, I’m going to share it in a few challenges, starting with Allsorts whose theme is ‘stencils’. I’ve picked up the right hand column of summer colours, border and stencil from TicTacToe’s grid and finally that great sentiment fits for Word Power.