Crafty As L

Our DT theme this week is ‘Spring’ and it's really starting to feel like it’s on the way.   The snowdrops and mini-daffs are out in my garden so they’re what inspired my CAS card. Using the small tulip from the Sketched Tulips set, I repeat stamped across the bottom of a white panel, added clear embossing powder and heat set.   I filled in the gaps with the small leaf stalk and clear heat embossed those too.  I like to clear heat-emboss as I can use any colouring medium with it. Next for some quick colouring.   Rather than blending the colours, I just made blocky swipes in pink and purple alcohol markers for the tulips.  I stamped “spring” from the set and decided to add “hello” from One Kind Word .   Again, these were clear heat embossed as I like the shiny finish.  Although this was to be a CAS design, it felt a little unbalanced so I added a little bee from  Bee Happy . Lastly, I lightly blended a little blue ink around the edge of the...

Spring is coming!   The daffs are out in my garden and I’m writing this sat outside on a rare windless, sunny afternoon.   Whilst out on a walk last week, I saw a large clump of snowdrops and I remembered that I had this die set so set to work as soon as I got home. The set is Altenew Snowdrop Craft-A-Flower and I used a inky sprayed sheet I had laying around for the leaves and stems. I then got busy die-cutting.   Lots of die-cutting!   The flowers have a few layers so I assembled them before starting the cards.  I was making half a dozen cards so I needed lots of bits. Using kraft card blanks, I blended some white ink over torn paper to make the snowbank for the snowdrops to sit on.   A few of the leaves, stems and flowers were adhered to the card and then I added the last leaf and a couple of the flowers using foam tape for some dimension. For some added texture and interest, I flicked a little brown alcohol marker over the card and then spat...

I’m here with an extra blog post this week to celebrate Visible Image’s new Floral Life release.   This is a great collection of 5 stamps and 3 stencils and you can find the link to them all here . Today I’ve got a quick card using Colourful Life stamps and Windows stencil.   To start, I cut a 5” square piece of white card and stencilled Distress Oxides through the Windows stencil to create a partial rainbow on my card, overlapping them to get the colour mixes. The main flower image and both the sentiments were then stamped and clear heat-embossed.   A little embossing powder stuck to the stencilling due to me not waiting long enough for it to dry, but as it was clear, I didn’t mind that. On a scrap of card, I stamped and clear heat-embossed the flower and coloured by blending on the same rainbow inks.   I then fussy cut the flower and adhered it to the panel, which was mounted on black card and then onto a 5¾” square card blank.

I’m continuing my mission to make a few Christmas cards for my last blog post of each month.   Today, I’m using an Apple Blossom die set that I got for an absolute bargain in the Craft Stash New Year sale. For my first card, I envisaged a stained-glass window.   To begin, I die-cut the image, and then used a piece of Glad Press ‘n’ Seal to collect all the tiny pieces and hold in place to make it easier to colour in. Next, I used a variety of pens to add colour to each piece. I die-cut the piece from black card and adhered some Stix 2 Anything’s double-sided adhesive sheet to the back.  The coloured pieces were inlaid into the die-cut.  I do love a jigsaw!! To make the panel more window like, I attached a piece of acetate over the top before die-cutting another panel to adhere over the acetate.   The panel was then simply mounted on a white square card blank. This all turned out to be rather labour intensive!   I thought I’d try out a quicker ver...

Our DT theme this week is “CATS” and I’ve chosen a big one!   Whilst searching the internet for pictures of white tigers for this week’s post, I found out a few interesting facts about them.   I was surprised to discover that they are not a subspecies of tiger but their coat colour is caused by a genetic mutation and they are not classed as an endangered species.   There are believed to be none left in the wild and, s adly, white tigers are bred in captivity purely for profit.   Due to the rarity of the gene, a lot of inbreeding takes place which causes the tigers to be born with a plethora of health problems.   Here’s my homage to the beautiful white tiger. To begin, I used my MISTI to stamp the tiger from Fearless Tiger .   I like to use my MISTI as the stamp is large with lots of detail so I like to do a few repeat stampings to get a perfect result.   Once happy with the stamping using Versafine Clair Nocturne, I added clear embossing powder and...