Crafty As L

Happy New Year all and welcome to my first Visible Image DT post of 2025.   Our theme this week is “The Great Outdoors/Wildlife” and this is my non-card project.   After watching an Instagram short showing an embroidered fluffy bee, I decided I wanted to have a bash at one.   The large bee from Bee Happy was the perfect size for my project. I had a piece of grey Belfast linen for the background and stamped the image.   I wasn’t sure how well the image would stamp so I used my large MISTI so that I could repeat stamp if necessary.   I also used Archival ink as it would dry quickly and not smudge later when working on the embroidery. (The little bee was my practice to see how well it would stamp.) Hoops really help your embroidery to have a nice finish as the background fabric doesn’t get warped. The bee is made fluffy by using turkey work embroidery.   I watched a few YouTube videos to work out how to do this.   It’s a series of loops of thread...

My card this week is one I made for my Mum who had her birthday a few weeks ago.   As I’ve mentioned before, she has dementia so cannot read the sentiment or writing inside any longer.   What she does seem to enjoy are the wobblers plus she loves cake so that’s what I made for her. To begin, I sprayed a sheet of white card with various Distress Spray Stains, Spritz and a Nuvo gold spray and set it aside to dry.   I love making backgrounds like these and the spritz and Nuvo spray gave the card a lovely shimmer. Once the sheet was completely dry, I used the Visible Image Grunge Birthday Words background stamp and Versamark ink, then added gold embossing powder and heat set it.   To finish the background, I gold heat-embossed the edges too. On an off-cut of the background, I stamped the cupcake from Blow Out The Candles and clear heat embossed it.   I repeated the stamping on a piece of white card, cutting off the icing and adhering it to the other cupcake. ...

This Christmas has been a heart-wrenching one for my family as it was the first one without my Mum being present.   Sadly, her dementia has progressed such that Dad can’t care for her any longer and she is now being looked after in a local care home.   Mum doesn’t recognise any of us now and doesn’t know what Christmas even is.   We took the difficult decision to leave her in the home on Christmas Day, where she has familiar surroundings and people, rather than bringing her to our home to be in the company of “strangers” who love her.   It’s made for an emotionally-charged time for Dad, my sister and myself.   The past couple of times I’ve visited her, she’s not quite been herself, which has been very upsetting to see and it’s really made me miss my Mum.   She was a very creative lady and could knit anything!   Among other things, she taught me to sew and to use a sewing machine when I was a child so I thought that I could ‘reconnect’ with her thro...