Crafty As L

Recently, a very dear friend of mine was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer.   She is an amazingly strong and determined lady and I don’t know anyone who can better weather the treatments and surgery and emerge victorious than her.   She has a wicked sense of humour so I had to get thinking to create a card that would make her laugh. Somewhere in my mind, an idea of a cat with a bra on had taken root so that’s where I started.   Stamper’s Anonymous Snarky Cats has a fab selection of cats with great expressions so I looked through them for a suitable cat on which to sketch a bra.  This cat looked suitably alarmed at this idea! Next, I pencilled in the words and then went over them with my black fine liner pen.   Once the ink was completely dry, I erased the pencil.   I like to combine capital and lower-case letters when hand lettering. For some extra interest, I stamped another of the cats on the inside of the card and on the envelope.   I love ...

This week, I had a play with a new purchase, Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous Botanic Collage.   I didn’t really know where to start so decided to dig out one of my gel plates to create a background and go from there. Using a small brayer, I applied Distress Oxides to the gel plate, sprayed with a little water and then pressed onto squares of white card. This was repeated with a variety of ink pads. Next, using stencils from Tim Holtz Mini Layering Stencil Set #24, I added the same colours used with the gel plate through the stencil. After stamping the botanic stamps on each panel and onto a scrap of card, I die-cut the main focal image from each panel.   The scraps of card were coloured and the image fussy cut. I sprayed each panel with some Shimmer Spritz but I still felt that they needed something more so I dug out my Black Distress Paste, applied some through the stencil in various spots on the panel and the cut out.   Whilst the paste was still wet, I added s...

This week’s DT theme is Mindfulness and I’ve combined it with the musical mood that we’ve been in this past week with the new Musical Notes release.   I’m not one for sitting quietly doing mindfulness exercises.   For me, being mindful is when I’m doing something which is completely absorbing, not allowing thoughts about anything else to intrude.   One of these activities for me is music.   I am an organist and I started learning when I was 8 years old when my feet could reach the pedals!   I had lessons for 10 years and passed my exams to Grade 8 but since then, I just play for pleasure.   When I’m playing, I am totally immersed and have no headspace for anything else. For my CAS card, I used the new Bauhaus stencil and stencilled black ink onto a quarter of a 5¼” square of white card, masking off the card with sticky notes. This procedure was repeated on the opposite corner. Next, on a 2¾” square of white card, I stamped and clear heat embosse...

Whilst I usually do my Christmas card challenge for the last post of the month, it’s Mothering Sunday in the UK today so I’m sharing the cards I made for my Mum and M-i-L.   It’s been bittersweet making the card for my dementia-ridden Mum.   She no longer knows my sister or me and claims that she doesn’t have any children.   It’s truly heartbreaking. After digging through my Visible Image stash, I started by using the Heart Ink and Entwined Butterfly stencils together and stencilled a heart using Squeezed Lemonade, Saltwater Taffy and Twisted Citron Distress Oxides. After drying the panel well, I gold heat-embossed the daffodils and sentiment from Golden Daffodils. I then gold heat-embossed the small butterfly from Antisocial Butterfly onto the heart and also onto some scrap card. For the accent flower, I blended a little Squeezed Lemonade onto a scrap of card and then gold-heat embossed the daffodil over. Next up – fussy cutting!   The reason I stamped...