Crafty As L

Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to be picked from a Instagram draw to win a year’s subscription to Tonic’s Monthly Craft Kit.   My ‘Christmas in July’ cards are made using the Whimsical Wonderland Kit 69.   It contains a whole host of dies, stamps, coloured card, green mirror-card and various Nuvo embellishment goodies! To begin, I did a lot of die-cutting!   For the houses, I chose white and craft card for iced gingerbread houses. The houses look really cute when assembled. For the background of one, I blended a little Distress Oxide Chipped Sapphire for the sky and applied some of the Glitter Accents with a spatula for the snow.   The Glitter Accents is a water-based product so it did warp the card a little. For the other card, I die-cut the candy canes from the metallic red striped card from the kit and white heat-embossed then die-cut the gingerbread men and sentiment.   The star embellishments were cut from a very pale green mirror-card, which looks almost golden.

The cards this week use TEXT{ures} Magnolia Half Tone stamp set, dies and washi paper by Lou Collins.   For my first card, I die-cut the outline from dark purple card and also from silver mirror card. After gluing the outline onto a white panel, I inlaid the silver pieces into the design and trimmed off the overhang.  To finish the card, the panel was simply mounted onto a purple card base and topped with a sentiment. Next, I tried out the washi papers, which come in a range of colours. I applied the transfer to a square panel and trimmed off the overhang before adding the silver frame from the first card on top.   You can see the edges of the washi paper as it is a slightly different shade to my card but it looks OK. These washi paper transfers make for really quick but impactful cards.   The image is large so it’s easy to cut in half and create two cards to stretch your supplies.    

These cards were borne from the leftovers from the die-cut windows from my Beary Good blog post from 28 May.   To make them look like tags, I punched a small hole into the corner of each one.   The Sizzix Framelits Tags Collection has three small tag dies so I cut a few of these to supplement the rectangles. Looking through my stash for sets with small images, I first settled on Mama Eelephant’s Cat’s Meow and stamped an image onto each tag. The next suitable set I found was Lawn Fawn’s Love Letters set. After some simple colouring using alcohol markers, I added a few white highlights using a white Posca pen.   Each tag was adhered to a craft card blank using thin foam tape and the sentiment stamped at the bottom. The second card was assembled the same way but I added a pink tassel to the top tag.

My card this week is a masculine make, created using the yacht from the Tonic Studios Craft Kit Box 61 – Message in a Bottle.   I needed a card quickly so used patterned papers I had lying around for decoration. First, I die-cut three yachts from navy card and also cut several from patterned papers. Using different bits of patterned papers, I snipped the pieces out and adhered them to the navy bases to create three different looking boats. I cut mat layers to fit a DL card base from navy card and another from a vaguely sea-themed patterned paper.   The yachts were attached to the panel using thin foam tape. For the sentiment, I die-cut the two banners from the same kit and looked through my stash for a sentiment small enough to fit on the banner.   I added a small enamel dot to finish the sentiment strip.

This card was made using the new stamp set by Altenew called Billowing Peonies.   The stamp set is HUGE and has co-ordinating dies and stencils. For this card, I used the layering stencils to begin and a variety of pink and green ink pads.   I really liked the no-line look but wanted to try out the stamp.   I used Versamark and heat embossed using rose-gold embossing powder. To finish the card, I spattered with some black acrylic paint and added some black enamel dots.   The sentiment is by Pink Fresh Studios and was mounted on foam tape.