Crafty As L

Cards for men.   I used to struggle making men’s cards but I’m finding it a little easier of late.   It’s handy if there’s a particular theme you can employ, which was the case with this card.   It was a birthday card for one of the Project 71 veterans who was in the Royal Navy so a sea-themed card seemed appropriate. The main stamp I used was from Papercraft Society’s  January 2023 Box by Sheena Douglass. For the sky, I used Lou Collins TEXT{ures}  Clouds Layering Stencils.   These are really neat and colour the sky with the first stencil and the shadows on the clouds with the second. After doing the sky, I flipped the stencil upside down and blended the same colours onto the sea. I then masked the sky and blended blue inks onto the sea.    The rocks and highlights on the lighthouse were shaded using alcohol markers.   The scene looked a bit bare so I added a ship,  some birds and the sentiment.   To finish, I added a...

The last Sunday in the month means it’s the C-word.   Yes, it’s Christmas! The stamp set I’m using this week is Christmas Hats by Colorado Craft Company which features the cute drawings by Anita Jeram.   To begin, I stamped the cat, masked it and then stamped the dog.   To colour, I used a technique demonstrated by Jennifer McGuire, in which the negative mask is used so that ink can be blended onto the image. After colouring the dog, I then masked the hat fur and coloured the body of the hat red. You can see that I forgot to protect the area at the edge of the mask when colouring the hat so had to cut out the image.   Since I’d overlapped the images, I had to partially die cut each image and then fussy-cut the bit in between. The animals were masked and I also added a mask for the ground before white heat-embossing snowflakes (Avery Elle Snowflakes stamp) and blending Distress Oxides in Salty Ocean and Chipped Sapphire to the sky. Somehow, I managed to get ...

The dies that are included with Die-Cutting Essentials special 100 th edition are so lovely that I thought I’d share my midweek make with you.   To broaden my horizons, I went away from my usual style and opted for a grungy, mixed media style card instead.   First, I die-cut the butterflies and multiple sentiments from white card and blended ink over.   To give the die-cuts some support, I placed them back into the negative space whilst blending the colour on. Next, the backgrounds.   Using Distress Oxide Picked Raspberry , Peacock Feathers and Uncharted Mariner , I stamped a variety of background stamps from Text{ures} Wildflowers Additions stamp set and blended a little ink around the edge of the panel.   I also added a few sections from Inkylicious Handwritten Script in Ranger  Watering Can ink.   For additional texture, I applied Ranger Grit Paste through Visible Image Mesh It Up stencil and, once dry, blended a little more ink over i...

It’s Mothering Sunday in the UK today and I’m sharing the cards that I made for my Mum and Mum-in-law.    The inspiration for purchasing the Altenew Craft-A-Flower Snowdrops Layering dies was from these two cards by  Jenny and Erum . Whilst I could have cut the leaves from coloured card stock or coloured the die-cuts, I decided to make a water-coloured panel of green for the leaves whilst I was creating the background for one of the cards.   For the background panel, I started with Altenew Water-Colour paints and then added Brushos for more vibrancy, adding some salt for texture. Next, the marathon die-cutting! I think this took me about half an hour to do.   I then assembled the flower heads so I had everything ready to go. I’d had a Waffle Flower frame lying around for a while so thought I’d use that for one of the cards.   The leaves and stalks were glued in place behind the bottom edge and then glued to each other or the top or sides of the fra...