Hello crafty friends. We’ve got our new theme at Addicted to Stamps & More starting today for ‘any occasion’ and it gave me the perfect excuse to share one of my designs from last Friday morning’s Clarity YouTube show, using the Block Print Elements stamps. These aren’t the sort of designs I’d usually gravitate towards as they look much more aligned to mixed media style, but they actually work really well for more CAS cards too just by layering up a few images, as I discovered.

I first cut a 5.5 inch (13.5cm) square of premium card. I took one of the larger stamps from the ‘happy birthday’ set, sponged ‘crushed olive’ Distress Oxide onto it (the sponge helps make sure the ink is evenly distributed) and stamped it into place horizontally. I followed with a second stamp, this time from the ‘celebrate’ set, inked it with ‘peacock feathers’ Distress Oxide and stamped it across the first one on the vertical.

I switched to ‘uncharted mariner’ to then ink up one of the smaller blocks and added it twice over the first two. I then planted the flower from the ‘celebrate’ set into place three times, again in the ‘uncharted mariner’.

I finished with the ‘celebrate’ sentiment in black Archival ink, then added a mount of black card before attaching it to a 6×6 card blank.

It was fun to build this pattern with the blocks! I think the key is getting a good colour combination – I love the contrast of the olive against the two blue tones. And I’ll be back later today with something very different ahead of Barbara’s shows on Hobbymaker this afternoon.

Before then, I’m going to add this to the gallery at Just Add Ink for their ‘choose two’ theme – my patterned blocks contain various spots and stripes.