My Art

It seems appropriate that I'm writing about my last card from March's show on the day day that the new stamps for April's have arrived. My head is full of ideas and I can't wait to get started.

I'm not one of the "arty ones" on the DT, so the journaling stamps were something a bit different for me. I certainly had fun playing with them though. I particularly loved the distressed diamonds stamp (as you can probably tell) and I can see me using it a lot. The background is just that stamp, stamped repeatedly on white card with black Archival ink.

For the main image I used Permanent Red, Orange and Diarylide Yellow PanPastels with black and Red Geranium Archival ink. I just kept adding to it until I thought I'd better stop. Hopefully I managed to do that in time. I'll let you be the judge of that though.

Stamps Used

Word Chain 1 Set

Remountable Journaling Set

Lynne

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Home Sweet Home

Good morning. This is one for all you pet lovers, whether it's cats or dogs or both. I think you know which I am.

I always enjoy using the frame style stamps from Clarity. They're so versatile.

For this card I used the Home one with the Letter Box set to create the phrase "Home sweet Home".

I stamped the design out on copy paper first so that I could see the size that the card needed to be and then cut a card blank the appropriate size. The roof was cut on my Cameo from a design bought in the Silhouette Store but you could easily cut one by hand. 

I positioned the roof in place and added a pencil line down the centre so I could see where I needed to do the stamping. "Home" was stamped in black Archival and heat embossed with clear powder. "Sweet" was just stamped in Archival.

I then masked them off with Post-its ready for the next stage........

.....the brickwork. This was created with the 9 x 11 inch Brick Wall stencil, a Clarity stencil brush and various shades of Distress Ink.

When that was complete I created a couple of little scenes in the frames.

Naturally the Labrador took centre stage.

My final task was to stick the roof on. I did this before I cut the corners off the card to make things easier.

I hope you like it. My home certainly wouldn't be the same without Maya, although it would be a lot quieter............. and cleaner.................and there wouldn't be scratches all over my leather sofas.......... That would be dull though.

Stamps and Stencils Used

Brick Wall

Home Frame

Remountable Home Set

Letter Box Set

Lynne & Maya

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A Couple of Blue Tit Cards

Morning all, I hope you're having a lovely weekend. I had a really enjoyable afternoon yesterday making a Mother's Day card and a birthday card with my Cameo (and of course some Clarity stamps).

I will share them at the end of the month but today I've got two Claritystamp Blue Tit cards to show you.

I made this first one for my Dad's birthday last month. He's a keen bird watcher so these stamps arrived at the perfect time.

Last month I made my Clarity Family Tree Card and I though that the same design would work well with the Blue Tit stamps.  With hindsight I wish I'd added some of the blossom in the apertures too.

The Blue Tits were stamped in black Adirondack ink and coloured in with pencils. I did try them with ProMarkers first but I decided that I liked the softer look of the pencils more.

One of the fun parts of this card is the bird feeder.

I stamped it onto shrink plastic with black Archival ink and coloured it in with coloured pencils. I tried it on clear shrink plastic first but I didn't like it so I did it again in white. As you can't see through it I added some blue in a few of the squares at the top for the sky.

This shows the difference in size between the stamp and the shrink plastic version of it.

I did think about recreating it for one of my Claritystamp samples but I decided against it as it's based on/so similar to the Clarity Family Tree card that I made last month. 

So I made this instead. It uses the bird feeder as it was intended with the blue tits hanging off it. They certainly look like they're enjoying their feast. In fact it reminds me of Mum and Dad's garden. They have lots of bird feeders hanging in the trees.

The stamping was done with black Adirondack ink and I coloured it in with pencils. It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I think I might have to invest in some decent pencils.

Stamps Used

Large Blue Tit

Blue Tits and Feeder

Large Blossom Branch

Small Blossom Branches

Lynne

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Floral Mother's Day Card

The Freesia stamp from Clarity is a lovely, elegant design. When the design team were discussing it so many of us said that they're our Mum's favourite flowers. I guess that makes them perfect for a Mother's Day card.

Like the diver on my Flower Power card, I thought these stamps would work well with some pretty papers. Again they're by K & Co. but these have a lovely vintage look to them. 

I stamped the image using Espresso Adirondack onto watercolour paper as it has a lovely texture. I then cut that out using one of the Spellbinders Decorative Labels Eight dies. The flowers were coloured in with ProMarkers using colours that matched the papers.

I added some Distress Ink around the edges and finished it off with some lovely vintage looking lace.

Stamps Used

Freesias

Mother Verse

Lynne

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Good Luck Card

I thought I'd start with this one as it's a bit of a grey day outside and I thought it might cheer things up a bit.

There are lots of little stamps in the Lucky Set and I thought this was a great way to use them all. After all you can't have too much good luck!

I started off with the Good Luck stencil, inking through it with Black Archival.

Once that was dry I cut a piece of copy paper to cover it and stamped the border. I again used Archival for this as I wanted it nice and black. I left it to dry overnight and then coloured it in with ProMarkers - Bright Green and Poppy, with a little bit of Cool Grey 2 on the horseshoes. 

I was careful how I went around the Archival Ink with the Promarkers but as you can see it's fine. It's not like that there's a lot of blending (that might cause it to bleed).

Stamps and Stencils Used

Remountable Lucky Set

A5 Good Luck Stencil

Lynne

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March's Clarity Samples

Well that was another busy show! Barbara certainly looked like she was enjoying herself with Dean. I always love seeing what the rest of the DT has made with the stamps and there were so many fantastic cards this month.

These are what I made for the UK show.........

............and these are the ones I made for the German show.

As always I will be blogging them all individually throughout the month. I also have my Dad's birthday card (made with the Blue Tits) and another of the A5 stencil cards that I made for the Trade Show to share, so I hope you'll come back for a closer look. 

This Easter card from last year was also shown again. If you've not seen it before, the post about that can be seen here. 

I'm now off to have a play in my craft room. I loved the demo that Barbara did with the Tag stencil and I fancy having a go myself.

Lynne

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Flower Power

It's the first of the month, so that means the start of a new challenge on the Claritystamp Challenge Blog. I always think that these blog challenges are a great excuse to have some fun. You're not making a card for a specific person or occasion, so you can do whatever you like, as long as you stick to the theme.

I certainly did that with this one! You've probably guessed already but the theme is "Flower Power". 

I have a huge stash of patterned papers from when I used to scrapbook and when I saw this month's theme I immediately thought of these papers. The range is called Berry Sweet and was by K & Co. Add to that the fact that I've recently been watching Splash (wasn't Perri Kiely fab!) and that this diving stamp was in the recent New Designs Club members' sale and you end up with a card like this. I am sure that her hat and costume are giving her real flower power!

Other than the lettering, this panel is the only bit of stamping on the card. I stamped the diver first onto an oval cut out with one of my Nestabilities and masked her off to create the background. I chose the colours of this to match the papers. They are Evergreen Bough Distress Ink for the water (I brayered over scrumpled up copy paper first to get the waves) and Wild Honey and Rusty Hinge Distress Ink for the sun. I cut my own stencil for this using a Design bought from the Silhouette Store and my Cameo. It was only when I was uploading my project and saw the beautiful tags by Linda Page that I remembered that I already had a fab Clarity sun stencil. Silly me!

I coloured the diver in with ProMarkers and cut her costume and hat out of the paper with the smallest print.

Then it was just a case of going wild with the rest of the papers, adding some of the matching felt embellishments and assembling it.

I hope she makes an elegant entry into the water, unlike some of the contestants on Splash! 

Congratulations to the winner and Top 5 of the Love and Romance Challenge. It was lovely to look at all of the entries and I hope you will enjoy this challenge as much. The Design Team certainly have; I love all of the beautiful creations that they've made. Don't forget that there's a £50 Claritystamp voucher for the winner.

Stamps Used

Diver 1

Letter Box Set

Lynne

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