Crafty As L

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...

Welcome to my first DT post using the lovely new Hopes and Dreams Collection.   I’m mainly using the Catch A Star stamp set but with a little help from Inner Glow .   I planned to use the emboss-resist technique so I used Distress Spray Stains in primary colours for the background. Using my MISTI, I stamped the children and star outlines using Versamark ink, added clear embossing powder and heat set. To fill in the stars, I used the solid star stamps from Inner Glow and repeated the clear heat-embossing. Next, after positioning a torn paper mask across the bottom, I blended Memento Tuxedo Black all over the panel.   The embossing resists the ink but I did gently wipe over the embossed areas with a damp tissue to remove any excess ink and brighten the images. I stamped and clear heat-embossed the sentiment along the section of ground. For some extra sparkle and distant stars, I spattered gold metallic watercolour over the panel, masking the children and groun...