Crafty As L

I have a pile of Distress Spray Stained backgrounds on my desk ready for creating with.   Leafing through them, this one looked like a scrummy summer cocktail so it was the perfect base for this week’s Visible Image DT post. The Grunge Birthday Words stamp is in my Top 10 of VI stamps as it’s so versatile.   I stamped with Versamark and heat embossed in white to keep the summery feel.   I decided not to repeat the stamping across the whole panel – sometimes less is more! Next, I stamped and clear heat-embossed the cupcake from Birthday Glow and coloured with alcohol markers. After fussy cutting the focal image, I felt the cupcake needed more sparkle so added some Nuvo Drops and Stickles to the icing and flame. I always make my background bigger than the finished size so I used the offcuts to create the sentiment strip.   This and the cake were attached to the background with foam tape.   The background was mounted on black and then onto a square white ...

Recently, I attended a workshop to make a book cover, which was run by one of the ladies from my textile group.   It was a really fun workshop and I learned loads. To begin, we painted Bondaweb with water and then acrylic paints.   As we were on a time constraint, we dried the pieces from the underside with a hairdryer, which was a very messy process.   For future makes, I would paint them and leave to air dry – a perfect project for this hot weather! After placing the Bondaweb paint-side-down onto black acrylic felt, it was covered with baking paper and then melted onto the felt with a hot iron. Once cooled, the Bondaweb backing was carefully removed, revealing the paint pattern on the felt. The next step was great fun and involved scattering threads and sequins all over the painted felt.   This was then covered with organza, covered with the baking paper and heated with the iron on a medium heat, to melt the adhesive onto the organza, sandwiching the thread...

Continuing my recent theme using Anita Jeram’s illustrations, this week’s cards are made using Colorado Craft Company “Ice Cream Day” which feature two of my favourite things; cats and ice-cream.   To begin, I stamped and clear heat embossed the images so that I could colour with alcohol markers and not worry about the ink running. I used a selection of markers to colour the cats simply and added some Stickles to give the ice-cream some sparkle. One of the panels was quite small so I used the small ice-cream cone stamp to add some details to the card blank. Finally, I matted the card using Neapolitan ice cream colours.   I had to add a some rhinestones onto this one as I managed to get finger prints in a few places. This card is more CAS and the smaller images are perfect for making cute 5” square cards.

It’s been a hectic and emotional time for me lately with my father in hospital for three and a half weeks, leaving little time or energy for crafting.   I’ve been playing catch-up so I needed a quick make for this week’s Design Team post.   I love to spend hours creating a card but sometimes I just don’t have that luxury and today is one of those times.   Fortunately, Visible Image stamps and stencils are perfectly adaptable to all kinds of crafting. To begin, I cut a panel and silver heat-embossed the flower and text from Daisy Days . I received some acrylic inks for Christmas and haven’t had a chance to try them out so decided to use these to colour the panel rather than my usual metallic watercolours.   A little goes a long way with the dark coloured ink! The sentiment is the grunge style one from Birthday Wishes , also silver heat embossed. The panel was matted onto teal card and then onto a 5” x 7” card blank and finished with rhinestones for a bit ...

In the UK, today is Father’s Day.   I love this Beach Life set from Colorado Craft Company and we have photographic evidence of my sister and me burying Dad in the sand when we were kids. I debated whether to position the sandcastles in front or on top of the mound and opted for in front, although the masking process would be the same.   I stamped and clear heat-embossed the sandcastles first as I was going to use alcohol markers to colour the image. After stamping and sandcastles onto the sticky part of a sticky note, I trimmed it and positioned it over my prior stamping.   The mound was then stamped over the top. Using a selection of alcohol markers, I coloured the image, adding a little sea in the background plus a few birds drawn in with a fine liner.   I like to have a scrap of card available so that I can test my colours as the lids aren’t always very accurate. For my Dad’s card, I used Happy Happy Happy by Lawn Fawn for the sentiment. For the secon...

At my art group, we have a competition each term and this term's theme is “Fauvism”.   In its most basic form, it is art made using intense, non-naturalistic colours.   I’ve just bought some large animal stencils so thought I’d try them out with some non-standard animal colours. I used a couple of colours of turquoise and pale green acrylic paint, which I applied by dabbing with a sponge over the stencil. I’m loving my turquoise giraffes! I repeated the process with the zebra stencil too, trying out the paints on black and white card. The sentiment was from a Creative Stamping set from a few years ago.   After backing with dark green card, the panel was adhered to a 7” square card blank. The other two were trimmed down with the zebra mounted on a 5” x 7” card blank. I decided that I didn’t like the one on the black card so turned the card over and applied Distress Grit Paste through the stencil, topping with sparkle embossing powder, which was heated whilst t...