Crafty As L

  A very dear friend of mine had a milestone birthday recently so I wanted to make him a special, one-off, kind of a card.  I had a quick surf on Pinterest and saw this idea and knew immediately that it would perfect! I wanted my ‘bathroom wall’ to comprise 2 parts; a wallpapered top and a wood panelled bottom, so began by selecting some patterned paper for my wallpaper and dry embossing some card for the wood panelling. Next, I needed to make a miniature toilet roll… like you do. I used a straightened-out paper clip for the holder and glued a small tube of brown card around and bent the wire at 90° either end of the tube. Actual toilet paper was then cut into strips and glued onto the tube and wound around until I had the desired thickness of toilet roll. I punched a couple of tiny holes into my wood panelling and inserted the wires, bending and securing them on the reverse side. The writing was next.  I had planned on using die-cut lettering but all my die sets ...

This week’s technique is one I saw Amanda, from Inspiring Inkin’, demonstrating on Facebook.  I can’t resist a bit of masking and ink blending so this corner masking technique was right up my street. To begin, I masked one corner of the card front.  I used Post-it notes. Next, I blended a couple of complimentary colours onto the card.  I started on the mask with my darker colour and then switched to the lighter shade, blending that out to almost nothing onto the white card. The last step was to remove the masks and stamp the images and sentiment.  Such a fun, simple technique to do and adaptable to all occasions ….  including Christmas .... there it is, I’ve said it already!        

W e share our home with two rescue cats, one is very playful, the other is quite lazy.  Monty likes to sit in a shady spot and watch the world go by, occasionally coming over for a quick head rub.  Leia, on the other hand, goes everywhere at break-neck speed and is a prolific hunter.  During one of her recent outings, she came back with her eye closed and we could see what looked like a thick hair protruding from her eye but couldn’t get it out, so off we went to the out-of-hours emergency vet.  Now, Leia does not travel well! During the 25-minute journey in her crate, she had a wee, a poo, was sick and then had copious amounts of drool hanging down each side of her face.   We presented her, in the socially distanced handover in the vet’s car park, with a description of the emergency and an embarrassed apology for the state of the cat/crate!  I’m sure they’ve seen it all before…. Anyway, 45 mins later, a rather quiet Leia was given back to us together...

  I loved making this week’s card for our friend that had her first baby recently.  I don’t have a lot of use for stamps aimed at making children’s cards but I bought the Baby Bear set as you’re never too old for a teddy bear!  This is a retired stamp set but I’ve kept mine as I really like that bear and how he comes to life with the three layers of ink.  I’ve also got a couple of handy tips on repeat stamping and extending the use of dies. This was a bigger card than usual as I wanted it to be a square Z-fold card.  I fancied a gingham style background but didn’t have anything in my stash that was pink so used the Buffalo Check background stamp and some Rococo Rose ink.  The stamp was a little small for my background so I used the Stamparatus to do some repeat stamping.  I first stamped the check background and marked an arrow on my grid paper where the edge of the stamp came to.  Next, I moved the card so that the left-hand edge of the stamped ...