Crafty As L

Have you been able to make the most of the heatwave?   I’ve been at the hospital a lot as my Dad is not recovering from his surgery as well as expected.   To have a little break from the stress of it all, Mr L and I had a few hours at the beach and our first dip on the sea.   It was rather chilly but invigorating! I’ve a couple of quick cards this week, inspired by my trip to the beach.   The stamp set is Colorado Craft Company’s Beach Life and I stamped and clear heat-embossed the stamp. Using a selection of sandy coloured alcohol markers, I coloured the sand castles and beach. I thought a little sea would set the scene so coloured that in the background. To finish the cards, I layered them on blue and sandy mounts and onto a 5” square card blank.

For my Visible Image DT post this week, I’m making a sympathy card.   There are a wide variety of images you can use for a sympathy card.   Quite often we use flowers but whilst this card was for a lady, it was her father that had passed away, so I decided against flowers.   Looking through my stash for alternative images, I opted for the seahorse from Create Your Calm . I’d prepared an inky background and used the stamps from Dare To Swim to add fish and foliage to the panel. After colouring in the seaweed, I stamped some coral using pink dye ink.   The coral stamp is actually the large tree from Into The Woods . The seahorse was stamped using Versafine Clair Twilight ink and clear heat-embossed.   I used my MISTI as the stamp is quite large so I could restamp if required.   I added colour to the seahorse by painting with silver Distress Mica spray “Frozen”. To create a frame, I first die-cut the Torn Fishcut from navy card.   Using a Distr...

Apologies for my late blog post.   It’s been a frantic few days for our family as my sister had to rush Dad to the hospital late on Thursday night, calling me to the hospital in the early hours of Friday as he was really not in a good way.   It transpired that he had a huge gallstone and inflamed gallbladder but they were reluctant to operate.   Medical management was chosen but today it became apparent that this was not working so he had to have surgery.   He is almost 87 so this was not done lightly but the operation was successful so hopefully he’ll make a full recovery.   I needed something relaxing to do whilst he was in surgery so made today’s card. This stamp set from Colorado Craft Company’s Anita Jeram collection features a snoozing cat, which very much reminds me of Scooby, one of our tribe.   He loves a bit of “paws up” napping! As usual when I’m planning on using alcohol markers for colouring, I stamped and clear heat-embossed to start. I ...

A few weeks ago, I attended a 3-hour glass fusion workshop at Making Space , run by Elisa Dodd.   Unlike my previous fusion workshop when I made my wave , which was tack fused and textured, this panel would be heated to a higher temperature and be fully fused and smooth. The homework before the workshop was to find a scene that we wanted to make and I opted for a lighthouse and drew my design onto tracing paper. After a few scoring and cutting practices using plain glass, the proper cutting began.   I simplified my design so that I had fewer pieces to cut.  The design was built onto a piece of plain glass, under which was my tracing paper so I could attempt to follow my design.   The cutting didn’t always go according to plan though! Once the basics of the background and building were in place, it was time to play with frit and stringers.   Frit is tiny pieces of glass that can be sprinkled on.   I used it for the clouds, waves and seaweed on the rock...

The brief for my Visible Image DT post this week was to make shaped card and to use stencils.   My last post used stencils to do embossing but this time, I’m using them in their traditional role.   For the shaped card base, you can use almost any shape and layering die sets are particularly useful for this. To begin, I selected two dies for each card, one for the card base and the other for the decorative panel. I cut the heart panel and blended Wild Honey and Picked Raspberry Distress Inks through the Entwined Butterflies stencil and set it aside to dry. For the next panel, I blended Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink through the Lava stencil. The next stencil, The Cat’s Whiskers was placed over the top and Gathered Twigs Distress Ink blended through the gaps. After peeking under the stencil, the cat’s face didn’t seem to stand out enough so I went over the face using texture paste in black for the face and gold for the eyes. Once the pastes were dry, I outlined t...