Hello crafty friends. Just dropping in with a quick card that I made for a colleague who’s got a promotion and, seeing that Barbara is showcasing a new set of Bijou Drop Shadow sentiments this afternoon (check the show out here), I decided it was time I opened the packet on the larger A5 set and put them to use! I haven’t yet put the Wee Patterns stencils away yet either, but this time I’ve made use of the pattern along the edges of the stencil-mate (and I’ll talk more about how useful that is in a couple of days!)

Anyway, I started by stamping the drop shadow part of the sentiment across the centre of a 3.5″ square of premium card, using black Archival ink. Now the masks that come with this set are interesting – they don’t mask the sentiment itself, but are designed to be used a spacers so you can line up images (or more sentiments) above and below them! So, as you can see, I popped the spacer mask across my sentiment and also ran a couple of strips of low tack tape down each side of the card to give me a narrow edge.

As I mentioned above, the stencil-mate in the set has a couple of patterns on it down each side, and that’s what I put to use for this card. I lined up the smaller dots side above the sentiment and then brushed ‘blueprint sketch’ Distress Oxide through it using the small ink blending brushes. Having cleaned my stencil, I switched to the other side which has larger dots and repeated the process with the ‘blueprint sketch’. And after removing the spacer mask, you can see how brilliant this drop shadow stamp is – it would totally work without adding any other colour!

Nonetheless, I pressed on with the second of the stamps (which would also work on it’s own), sponged ‘candied apple’ Distress Oxide onto it and added it the drop shadow. I would just note that, next time, I would stamp the coloured part first and then align the drop shadow to it – I think that’s a bit easier to see when lining them up. I couldn’t find a piece of companion paper in exactly the right shade, so created my own mount by cutting a piece of premium card and blending the ‘blueprint sketch’ around the edges. And of course, I had to emboss an indented frame to sit in in using a square embedder and a ball tool on my 5×5 card blank!

I’m so happy with the graphic, almost comic-strip, style of how this turned out, and it was so quick and easy! Lots of options on this with the other sentiments in the pack…

There’s a couple of challenges around that have got red, white & blue as their theme, so this card is off to make an appearance in the galleries at Cupcake Inspiration and Colorful Options.