Crafty As L

This card was a commission from a friend for a card for his wife.  The brief was “she likes books”.  I don’t have any stamp sets or dies featuring books and, whilst there are some available, the cost was rather high just to make one card.  My drawing skills are minimal but I figured I could draw a few books since they’re basically just rectangles so I set about sketching a doodle-style bookcase, adding a few stamps that were the appropriate size. After this sketch was approved by my friend, I started on the proper version.  I wanted to watercolour the images so drew out the shelves on watercolour paper and stamped the various images in place using Versafine Clair ink, which is waterproof. Using a waterproof fineliner, I then drew in the books. Once the drawing was complete, I pulled out my paints and spent a pleasant half hour adding some colour to the images. For the central focal panel, I had planned to use the Cricut to cut out some book shapes howe

  For my Easter cards this year, I used the Anita Jeram Happy Easter stamp set, by Colorado Craft Company and Bunny Friends by Penny Black.  Those bunnies are so cute! First, after stamping with waterproof ink, I completed the pictures with some watercolour painting. The card bases are from a pad of pre-scored patterned card.  The polka dots make a fun background for the images. The watercolour finish was quite muted and I wanted to see how differently they’d look coloured with more intense colours.  I stamped with MFT hybrid ink and also stamped the same image onto some masking paper.  After applying the masking paper, I blended some green ink onto the ground area and used a cloud stencil and blue ink for the sky.  I then removed the masking paper and coloured with my Copic markers. To extend the scene, I sketched in some silver birch trees on the sides.  You can see the difference in the intensity of colours between the watercolour and the Copic markers.

This week’s post features an outing for a rarely used die that I bought when I first started card making many years ago.  It’s a silhouette flower/foliage that I really like the shape of but have never really used very much. As I was planning on white silhouette images, I needed a vibrant background so I dug out my Brushos.  I mixed up some Prussian Blue and Purple and, after putting on some clean water onto my watercolour paper, dropped in the colours and let them mingle and do their thing.  To add some sparkle to the background, I spattered on some gold Finetec paint.  On another piece of watercolour paper, I swirled some of the gold paint to use for the die cuts. Once the paint was dry, I die cut the panel with a scalloped frame and cut out the flower heads. The flowers were glued onto the background and a little white twine was wrapped around the panel.  From the leftover gold-spattered card, I die cut a small heart to cover the base of the flowers and a rectan

I have quite a few anniversary cards to make during the first 3 months of the year.  These 2 were made for my parents and some close friends – neither of which know each other so it didn’t matter that they were similar.  I used a variety of stamps by Lavinia Stamps and Inkylicious. To start, I die cut 2 hearts, one scalloped and one plain edged, and some masks from sticky notes.  I added a moon mask and then blended some Distress Oxide inks to the sky, then removed the moon mask and added some grey to the moon. After stamping some distant trees, I moved the masks down and blended a little ink to create the landscape and added some more stamping.  The bunnies were added and then the scene built up around them using various trees, shrubs and a fence. For the background, I used the Stampin’ Up! Woodland embossing folder and a square of navy card and a few Posca splats. The sentiment was stamped and mounted onto a navy rectangle. To assemble the card, I added some fun foam under the heart