Crafty As L

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...

A few weeks ago, it was our wedding anniversary and I’d seen a card like this on Pinterest and used it for my inspiration.   It’s a very adaptable design and can be used for many celebrations by simply changing what is written. To begin, I used my MISTI so I could align ‘HUSBAND’ using MFT Well Connected.   After leaving a gap for the stars, I repeated the process for ‘EXCELLENT’ but I had to leave some gaps as there are a few duplicated letters. To fill in the gaps and for the additional lettering at the bottom, I just stamped the letters individually. Using my smallest star die, I die-cut five stars from yellow card.   To add a bit mor character to the stars, I used the little smiley faces stamp from Lawn Fawn Gleeful Gardens .   To assemble the card, I backed it with black card and mounted it onto a square kraft car blank.    The stars were attached using foam tape.   I stamped a few small hearts around to finish.    

Last year, I joined a local textiles group.   We meet once a month and usually have a speaker or we take a project we’re working on plus some finished projects for “ Show & Tell”.   Each year, they run a Travelling Books scheme.   Each participant has their own A5 -sized book which is passed around the group of six ladies and each month a new piece of textile art is added to the book.   Since I was new to the group, I had also to make a bag for the book to travel in, plus I could decorate the front of the book too. First, I made my bag using some lovely cat print fabric.   I used my embroidery attachment on my machine to embroider my name before assembling the bag the same as I did here . Next, for the front cover.   I had kept the off-cuts from my festive table runner so I sewed them together to make a mini-quilt and edged it with binding.   To decorate it, I stamped the images from Visible Image Destination Unknown onto white cotton backed...

It’s another exciting new release day over at Visible Image, this time to celebrate Hobbymaker’s birthday.   This new collection comprises four stencils and four stamp sets to cover you for cards for all kinds of life events.  You can shop the collection  here . For my card today, I’m using the Birthday Glow stamp set and I started by stamping and gold heat-embossing the large sentiment. After trimming the sentiment, I cut a 5¼” square of black card and marked in pencil where the sentiment would go.   This gave me the frame to work around whilst stamping and gold heat-embossing the row of candles. The row was perfect for the height but a bit short for the width of the sentiment so I had to repeat stamp, masking the area I didn’t want stamped with a sticky note.   I filled in the little gaps at the corner with my Versamark pen. To get the candle glow, I blended Delicata Golden Glitz ink over each flame using a small blending brush. Metallic waterco...