Crafty As L

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, I’ve found I’m using cash less often and am opting for contactless payment using my phone.  As a result, I rarely take my purse with me, and certainly not when I don’t take my handbag.  This has caused an issue for me when what I want to purchase is more than the contactless limit of £45.  My purse is quite large so I decided I needed a small wallet that would fit in my jeans pocket, to put in a couple of credit cards and maybe a banknote, in case of emergency.  Now, I realise I could just have purchased one but I saw this video on YouTube and thought it fit the bill perfectly.  The video is called Dainty Keychain Wallet by Yoan Sewing Studio.  Yoan’s directions are really clear and she gives all dimensions for the fabric needed.  This pattern doesn’t use a lot of fabric and is perfect for bits of fabric that you can mix and match for a truly unique item.  I’m using an old fabric collection call Flight from ...

I’ve been binge watching fancy fold card videos on YouTube lately.  A fancy fold definitely adds a bit of WOW! to a card.  They usually take a little longer to make but are worth the effort.  This card was made using Sam Calcott’s (of Mixed Up Craft fame) tutorial.  Her instructions are really clear and easy to follow. My theme for this week’s card was a 60 th birthday for my friend.  She’s a fun, bubbly and stylish lady so I wanted the same kind of feel for her card.   To begin, I wanted a black and white striped background.  I only had skinny striped paper so I drew some deliberately wonky lines with my black marker pen and coloured them in, several times, to give a rich black colour. Next, using my Cricut, I cut my sentiment from black and gold vinyl and stuck it onto the panel.  I added some gold dots in the corners where I would later add the decorative elements. For the decorative elements, I used Stampin’ Up! Dres...

This week’s card is inspired by a card made by Therese Calvird from www.lostinpaper.com in this  post - I really loved the repeat stamping of the kitties!  To make the card my own, I wanted to make the upside-down kitty into a wiper element on a Z-fold wiper card. First, I repeat stamped the kitty by using masks to protect the lower line of cats.  I used MFT’s I Knead You stamp set. Next, I adhered these panels onto my card base, which is 3” longer than my standard card front and scored at 1½” and 3” from one end.  The Z-fold section is 1¾” wide and the same length as the base and scored in the same places.  The extra panels were decorated using the Meow stencil from Newton’s Nook. The wiper element was next.  I coloured one of the kitties in greys (like my tabby cats) and cut out a small rectangle for the wiper mechanism. Now, I watched many YouTube videos to try to get my head around the wiper mechanism!  This way seem...

Our kittens that we adopted last October are now 9 months old and growing fast.  Whilst Scooby prefers to sleep on a sofa, Dill (or Dilly as he’s become known) likes a bed… or beds!  Since he was small, he’s loved his igloo bed but he’s now outgrown it. I’d seen these ‘volcano’ pet beds on a website and wanted to try to make one. The construction took a while to figure out.  There was lots of geometry and head scratching and I resorted to building scale models out of paper! After I’d figured out the dimensions, I scaled them up and made a template for the base and side piece out of corrugated cardboard.  I had no idea how dangerous this part of the process would be! I somehow managed to poke myself in the eye with a corner of the cardboard and had to go to A&E with a scratched cornea.  That was not a pleasant experience, I can tell you! After cutting out the pattern pieces, I attached Pellon Thermolam Fusible Fleece to the revers...

Do you remember the bunny stencil I made for my Easter cards?  I wanted to challenge myself to use it again so when the need for a baby boy card arose, I thought that was the perfect opportunity to give it a try. My initial plan was for a landscape card so I cut my top layer and blended blue ink onto the stencil with my blending brushes before adding heat embossed tails. Next, after changing my mind to make the card a portrait orientation, I trimmed down the panel and layered the bunnies onto a blue mat and then a white panel, onto which I stamped the sentiment. I blended a single bunny onto the inner mat layer and onto the envelope, as I like these to match the card front. For the background, I used some gingham check DSP and added three rhinestones over the dots on the sentiment.