Hello!

I hope you're watching the Craft Store at the moment where our Jo is demoing the absolutely gorgeous brand new stamp designs from the very talented Melina Dahl. I'm very happy to share one of my samples with you today that I created from the bird and flower sets of stamps.

My chosen substrate for my project is an MDF Chunkie which is 4 x 6 inches in size. I decided to cover the front with paper so the first thing to do was assemble the substrate which I did using That's Crafty! craft glue which is my go to for sticking MDF together.

I took a piece of paper from the Pastels and Rainbow set by Melina Dahl, choosing one without much detail as I wanted to stencil on it. I used the new Square Circles Stencil with Mustard Multi Surface Paint in the top right and bottom left corners and teal in the remaining corners. I felt it was missing something so added splatters of diluted paints in Black, White and Orange.

I glued the paper to the front surface of the Chunkie and then set about making my embellishments. I stamped a bird and a floral spray from the new sets on white smooth card with black ink and coloured the images with Zig brush markers and cut them out.

I placed my embellishments on the background but it was missing something as there wasn't enough contrast. I solved my problem by taking an odd strip of the paper used for the background and painting one half Orange and the other half Bright Blue Multi Surface Paints. I then stamped on the strip using co-ordinating inks with the floral spray image.

I assembled my artwork with a mix of That's Crafty! glue and silicone glue for added dimension. I finished off with my chosen text from one of the Nature's Gatherings sets by Lynne Moncrieff. I always love the sound of birdsong in my garden when I open the windows in the morning (when it's not drowned out by the seagulls that is!).

Have a great weekend and hope you caught the shows but if not there's always rewind.