Crafty As L

According to Google, string art first started in England in the late 19 th century but became popular as hobby items in the 1960s and 70s.   I was too young for it then but my husband bought me a string art kit for Christmas and I’ve only just gotten around to doing it.   The kit came with a thick booklet with about a dozen or so designs in it.   I was torn between the bee and the lion.   I opted for the lion, despite it having the longest list of instructions – 3000 of them!   The first job, which wasn’t that thrilling, was to position 180 screws into the canvas.   This took me almost an hour to do. To make my life easier when reading the many lines of numbers, I made a windowed slider that slid around the edge of the page to hold it in place.   As each line was completed, I moved the slider down to reveal the next row on numbers. There was a plastic thread holder in the kit which made it much easier to get the thread between the screws.  ...

For my Visible Image Design Team post this week, I’m sharing the card I made for my very dear friend who was awarded a British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours list this year.   As well as being a talented crafter, she also founded Project 71, a support group for WW2 veterans and the award is in recognition of this.   Lorie has worked tirelessly raising funds, organising events and marshalling her band of volunteers and the award is very well deserved.   I’m very proud of her. She was presented with her medal a few weeks ago and had a little shin-dig to celebrate with the volunteers and show off the medal. Lorie likes autumn colours and also knitting so I decided to use these as my inspiration.   I stamped the Birthday Balloons in orange and yellow tones of Distress Inks, spraying the ink on the stamp with a little water before stamping. The balloons were cut out with the matching dies and then some were decorated with the star and dots stamp in the set an...

Last week, our godson, Rowan, celebrated his 5 th birthday.   I don’t have many stamps specifically for children so I had to get creative with what I had.   Rowan’s Mum keeps a flock of Icelandic sheep and I have a sheep stamp set.   Sorted! I wasn’t sure how many sheep I would need but guessed it’d be quite a few.   To get some colour on the fleeces quickly, I opted to spray a sheet of damp watercolour paper with Distress Spray Stains. This next stage is a quicker way of stamping and die-cutting if you’re going to be doing a lot of the same image.   I die-cut the shape as many times as I could from the inky panel.   To make a frame for the stamping, I die-cut the sheep from a piece of scrap card. After securing the frame in my MISTI, I positioned the sheep stamp in the aperture and picked it up with the door of the stamp positioner. One-by-one, the die-cuts were popped into the aperture and the sheep stamped. To give the sheep a bit more chara...

Last week my friend, Lorie, and I had a little crafty evening out doing some flower arranging.   I was amazed that Lorie hadn’t done any before as (like me) she’s done most things! The tuition was from All About Flowers but the event was held at 1086 wine bar, both of which are in the same Botley Mills complex.   It’s a glorious building with lots of nooks, crannies and beams and, unsurprisingly, used to be a flour mill. We began by securing our saucer and foam block into the basket using florists’ tape and pins to hold the tape into the foam. The idea was to start at the bottom and work up so the first layer was to get the big bits of greenery in so the foam was obscured. As both mine and Lorie’s philosophy with flower arranging is “more is more”, we then added more foliage, trying to leave enough foam free to stick the flowers into! We then placed the focal flowers, the rose, irises and tulips, into position.   It was supposed to be a basket that could be vie...

It’s time for my Visible Image DT post and this week I’m sharing a card I made for the hospital ward staff who looked after my Mum when she broke her hip and needed surgery.   Mum has advanced Alzheimer’s and the staff treated her with kindness and dignity which I really appreciated. For the background, I had a piece of inky mop-up lying around on my desk.   I can’t remember what I used on it but it’s a combo of yellow and green with some gold metallic on it too. Using the Rotation stencil and Mowed Lawn Distress Ink, I added some stencilling in patches around the panel. I clear heat-embossed the daisy from Daisy Days and fussy cut.   I used the solid petal stamp partially inked and Weathered Wood Distress Ink to add a little colour to the petals.   I used the solid circle to add colour to the centre but decided instead to stamp the flower centre on the little off-cut of inky background and cut that out. To make some stamens for the flower, I wound some ver...