I started by smooshing the background - what a lovely word - which basically means putting ink down on a piece of acrylic sheet, spritzing with water, and then laying your card on top to transfer the ink, drying with a heat tool, and continuing in this way until the desired coverage is achieved. I used a snippet of white card and Distress Inks in Peacock Feathers, Tumbled Glass, Mustard Seed and Shaded Lilac.
I stamped the bird on the branch and then the Daffodils stamped and masked several times to fill the space. In order to get the flowers as close as possible to the bird image I placed a piece of paper over the nearest branch so I wouldn't stamp over it. With rubber stamps there is a certain amount of guesswork and I inadvertently cut off the edge, but with the use of my Spectrum Noir pencils with which I coloured the images I made the edges look fuzzy and faded into the distance which luckily worked quite well. I have the Primary and Essentials sets and I love these as they are quite waxy and work well over a watercoloured background. I did try to make the background colours tie in with the colours I would be using for the images and tried not to make the background too dark.
I have some Tsukineko cling mount (Di from Pixie's Playground has kindly told me it is called Tack n Peel) which works like cling for rubber stamps and sticks permanently to a large acrylic block and means you don't have to mount every stamp. It has worked well but it has got discoloured with the inks which have gradually built up so it is getting difficult to see through it for placement, and although I wash it regularly stamps don't cling as well anymore. Anyway the inevitable happened and a couple of times the stamp fell off as I was stamping so I covered the bad bits with little flowers over the top using some snippets of white card. The air was a little blue but I got there in the end, so note to self GET IT SORTED!!
Finally I mounted it on to two different snippety offcuts of green card and then mounted that on a square white card. The sentiment is a Britannia Die.
Thank you to everyone who stops to take a look, I really do appreciate your interest.
Pat x
Darnell at djkardcreations has a new NBUS (never before used schtuff) challenge, and she has been very generous in offering five $25 vouchers for any US company of the winner's choice. Congratulations on having over 800 followers Darnell.

The other challenges I wish to enter are:
Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 169. Where we use up our snippets of paper, card etc.
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.
The Artistic Stamper - Spring is Coming.