A crafty day away

A treat for me today, as I got to spend the whole day crafting at a Clarity workshop with Angela, one of their design team, down near Reading.

We made 4 cards, mostly using a Japanese style Clarity stamp set.

This is the first, a waterfall card that unfolds to reveal the lower panels, with the greeting on the last one.It's easier than it looks - and now I have instructions and measurements!

Don't look to closely, but after I took the first photo, I splashed my drink onto the card, smudging it a bit. I have some spare card so I can redo the damaged bits at home.


The next card used a bigger version of the geisha stamp.

It's simple but effective. The images are stamped in watermark ink and heat embossed with white powder. The hills are shaded with white pencil, to ground our lovely lady. The white mat is edged in black sharpie to mimic a black layer - isn't it effective! And saves on layers for postage.

After lunch we tackled a pagoda.

The images were stamped and masked - good practice for this month's Clarity challenge, which has a masking theme.

The panel was created with masking tape, and distress ink swept over with stencil brushes. I used salty ocean and picked raspberry; others used yellow and green, or green and a pale pink, to give a completely different feel to the same card.

The pagoda, lanterns and blossom were coloured in with pencils, and the panel edged with a black micron pen. Again, we used a sharpie to edge the piece.

The final card of the day used a different stamp set - the wild grasses, which are on my wish list.

The first step was to brush in the background, using a square aperture stencil.

The birds, grasses and butterfly were stamped in brown. We stamped a second butterfly onto a spare piece of card, and cut it out (I even did the antennae!) then layered up.

We dry brushed the edge of the card in the same colours as the centre, but reversed. The final step was a raffia bow on the corner.

It's subtle but pretty - I think this is my favourite card of the day.

Thanks to Angela and the other lovely ladies for a very enjoyable and productive day! I look forward to joining you again soon.