Posts

Autumn Vibes

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My projects this week are the card and ATC I made for the Visible Image October ATC swap which had “Autumn Vibes” for the theme.   On the day I made these, it was blowing a hoolie and multi-coloured leaves were swirling all over the place, which inspired my makes. Using the Autumn Leaves stencil, a variety of Distress Ink pads and small blending brushes, I layered the leaves to cover the ATC. To give a little shadow to create dimension, I painted on watered down Gathered Twigs Distress Ink around the edges of the leaves and also painted on some leaf veins.   For some sparkle, I spattered on gold watercolour paint and edged the ATC with it too. Whilst the ATC was drying, I turned my attention to the accompanying card.   I began by stamping the large tree from Into The Woods in Versafine Clair Pinecone ink on kraft card.   I sprinkled a little gold embossing powder on, knocked off the excess and then added clear powder and heat-set. To make the tree canop...

Tactile Textures

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This week’s Visible Image DT theme is Textured Layers and my brief was for a CAS card.   It’s tricky getting a lot of textures onto a CAS card but I like to do it using die-cut shapes, where a variety of textures can be used separately on each piece.   I chose to use hexagons as I like that they tesselate but other shapes will work well although you may have to overlap them. To begin, I coloured a strip of the Destination Anywhere PET Tape using Aquamarine and Pistachio alcohol inks and set it aside to dry.  I sprayed a piece of card with Mermaid Lagoon and Cracked Pistachio Distress Spray Stains and finished with a light mist of Unchartered Mariner Distress Spritz.   Whilst that was drying, I die-cut the Framed Fibres  die from Arden Creative Studios navy card and adhered it to another navy panel that I’d covered with a sheet of double-sided adhesive.  Next, I die-cut the sprayed panel, trying to keep the die-cut pieces in the die as much as possibl...

Scaredy Cats

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For my last post this month, I wanted to have another go at the spooky moon I made for my DT post using this tutorial .   I really liked the effect and wanted to try it out using different colours. For the first layer, I placed a plastic circle mask over the panel and sprayed using Distress Spray Stains in Black Soot, Crushed Olive, Dusty Concord, Mustard Seed and Barn Door together with Black Soot Distress Oxide spray, spraying with water to get the colours to mix.   The panels were then dried with my heat tool. Using my sprayer, I spritzed water around the edge of the moons to reactivate the inks and tipped and tilted the panel to get the inks to streak across the moon then left them to dry.   After they were dry, each panel was lightly sprayed with a matching Distress Spritz Spray. I decorated the panels using Stamper’s Anonymous Snarky Cats and the Halloween version and the tree branch is from Mr Frostie .   These were stamped and clear heat-embossed to ...

Really Retro

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My makes this week were for a couple of my friends who I’ve known for over 30 years so I can be a bit cheeky with them.   The recipients were a male and a female so I adjusted my spraying to mute the background a little for the masculine card. The backgrounds were sprayed using Distress Spray Stains and water and finished with a light Distress Spritz for some shimmer. Once the backgrounds were dry, I trimmed them to 5¼” square then stamped and clear heat-embossed the stamps from Visible Image’s Just Hit Play and Grunge Birthday Words to decorate the backgrounds. For the main images, I stamped the cassette and cassette tape on a scrap of card and fussy cut them.   The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted Laugh Out Loud and it pairs perfectly with the retro cassette. After spattering with Dr pH Martin’s Bleedproof white, each panel was backed with black card then mounted on white square card blanks. Finally, the toppers and sentiment were attached to the card using t...

Framed Cats

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For my sister’s birthday card this year, I wanted to use a new die that I’d bought by AALL & Create, I just had to decide what to fill the sections with.   Since sis is a cat lover, I turned to one of my favourite stamp sets, the Snarky Cats by Stampers Anonymous and the Halloween version too. For the background panels, I created a rainbow background using Distress Spray Stains and Spritzes.   The frame comes with all the internal dies too so I arranged them on the panel and die-cut them all together. I stamped the various cats using Versafine Clair Nocturne ink.   I would have clear heat embossed them too but we had a power cut at the time so simple stamping had to suffice. The eyes were coloured with a yellow Posca pen to make them standout and I added highlights with a white Posca too.   I then applied Glossy Accents to the eyes and noses and set them aside to dry. The large frame was die-cut from black card.   It die-cut really easily and most of...

Mr Pumpkin Head

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  Hello and welcome to my Halloween inspiration DT post for this week.   I usually do a Monday post but Rachel and I swapped so, for this week, here I am on a Friday instead! I had a ball creating this interactive card, using lots of different sets and trying out a technique I’d seen on this blog to make a spooky Halloween moon. For the focal image, I was thinking of a scarecrow with a pumpkin head so I stamped the Christmas Jumper and small pumpkin from Happy Halloween onto scraps of Tomorrow’s Memories Paper Pad and clear heat embossed. The jumper was decorated using the Knitted stamp. These were glued onto scraps of black card, fussy cut and set aside. For the moon background, I used the large circle mask from Bubbles & Fizz on a half sheet of A4 card and sprayed over liberally with Crushed Olive, Dusty Concord & Black Soot Distress Spray Stains and Black Soot Distress Oxide Spray.   I carefully lifted off the mask (keep it inky for later!), blotted s...