Crafty As L

  This year, I’m hoping to avoid that hectic period of Christmas card making in early December.  It’s not always very enjoyable as it gets super stressful and is not really what I want out of my crafting time.  I’m in a crafting Facebook group where they have a reminder at the beginning of the month to make a few Christmas cards so I thought I’d share the ones I made for this month.  Only two, so not a big dent in the ‘to do’ pile but you’ve got to start somewhere! As I’m learning watercolour, I’m trying out a line and wash technique.  Usually, this is done by drawing your scene in waterproof ink but (since I can’t draw) I stamped mine with these new Anita Jeram (of ‘Guess How Much I Love You’ illustrative fame) stamps.  I started by painting the sky and adding a little salt whilst the paint was wet.  This gives lovely texture that looks a little icy. My colour scheme for the card base was inspired by another lady in the group....

    This card style is one of my favourites for anniversaries but it would also be a great wedding card, matching the hearts to the colour of the flowers.  You could even use it for a Valentine’s card. To begin, I stamped the script from Very Versailles before attaching 3 strands of silver thread. I die cut a bunch of hearts, some were stamped, some were dry embossed and adhered them over the threads.   There were a couple of hearts left over so I used them to decorate the card inner and envelope. To finish, I mounted the panel on a grey mat layer on a red card base and added a stamped sentiment.      

  This week, my sister and brother-in-law moved from 120 miles away to ‘cup-of-tea distance’ (7 miles) away!  I haven’t lived this close to my sister for just over 30 years so I’m very happy indeed to have her nearby again.  This week’s post is the new home card that I made for them. To begin, I cut a house from the Home Together die set a couple of times together with a panel to fit behind the heart hole.  I glued these layers together and added a red glitter heart into the hole. Next was my background and I used the Detailed Hearts die.  I cut one in white and another in Smoky Slate as I wanted to inlay some of the hearts with white and grey.  This die cuts out loads of hearts – handy for a shaker card! My greeting was next.  I have no ‘new home’ sentiment stamps and the home related ones I do have say Congrats.  Eugh! - I hate Congrats!!  So, I’d have to make my own.  I wanted to say ‘Happy New Home’ so I used the...

  Mr L and I each have separate wash baskets and do our own washing.  Now, one of Mr L’s special skills is losing his socks in the wash.  He always has a selection of odd socks lying on top of his sock drawer so I thought I’d make him this lost sock organiser for a fun birthday present.   Now, as I had left it until the last minute to decide to make this, I couldn’t paint a piece of wood as there wasn’t time for the coats of paint to dry.  So, instead I decided to cover the board with fabric. First, I cut out my words in heat transfer vinyl.  After a few false starts, namely forgetting to weld the letters so the cursive words came out as a single piece and then forgetting to mirror the cut so the letters would be the correct way round to be stuck on, I finally got the words cut.  I used my cutting mat to align them and ensure they were level before using my Cricut Heat Press to stick them onto the fabric. The next job was to prepare t...

Happy 2021! We made it through 2020 and have emerged into a brand-new year.  Have you made any resolutions? My resolution for this year is to be kind to myself.  I’m a bit of a perfectionist and that leads to me being my own very harsh critic - so I’m now working on not being!  The other thing I intend to focus on is to enjoy whatever it is I’m doing, even if I can’t create a masterpiece.  With that in mind, this week’s post is a Winter Cake.  You may have heard them called Christmas cakes but if they’re not finished until January, it’s a Winter Cake!  It’s true!! With all the food we had to be eaten by less people due to the late Tier change rules, we really didn’t need the cake.  However, we’ve now ploughed our way through the festive goodies and so it was time for the cake to make an appearance. I made the fruit cake way back in October using Nigella Lawson’s Boozy Christmas cake recipe.  I also used a cake belt for the first time.  I...