Hello crafty friends.

The monsoon rains continue here in Japan. We took off for a week in Okinawa, lured by pictures of tropical beaches, but despite the fine weather both the week before and the week after our arrival, it rained consistently the whole time we were there. Luckily for us, Okinawa has a fabulous aquarium, and unique restaurants, so we still had a great time. Okinawa also has a long and sad history, and we spent a long time looking at museums and historic sites. On the final day, spurred on by the fact that it was only drizzling, not pouring, the 16 year old and I jumped in and had a swim!

I have three cards for you today that all use lines that cut through the floral images to give a strong design element.

I masked off the top and bottom of the panel for this first card, and stamped the Ella’s Garden stamp from Paper Rose Studio through the middle. I then removed the mask, and used a Copic friendly marker to draw a solid black line along the top and bottom of the stamping. I then coloured the image.

I used a sentiment from the Into the Woods stamp set. I cut the front panel just a little short of my card size and mounted it onto a piece of royal blue cardstock.

For the next card, I reversed the process, masking off a thick band towards the top of my card, and stamping outside the panel. I used this sentiment stamp for the word ‘celebrate,

The final card was made a little differently. The leaves from the Ella’s Garden scribble leaves were stamped in a variety of blues and one brown ink onto a panel, I then made two parallel diagonal cuts to remove a section for the sentiment. (Where the cut went was actually determined by a badly stamped set of brown berries, which are thankfully no longer visible!) Once again I used the royal blue card to highlight and to edge the panels. The sentiment is from the same stamp set.

I really like these cards. Something about the restful blue, as well as the mix of florals and straight lines really appeals to me.

If you’d like to see more cards, feel free to visit me here, where I show all my cards. (Well, apart from a few that don’t make the cut.

Until next time,

Blessings,

Donna