Crafty As L

  Later today, I’m heading up to Oswestry to do a 3-day freehand machine embroidery course run by Alison Holt.   I saw her work in a book and was captivated by it!   After searching for any YouTube videos featuring her work, I happened across her website and discovered that she does in-person courses.   There were spaces on one in a few weeks, themed Spring Woodlands, and I was free so I booked it.   Whilst going through the requirements list for the course, it transpired that I needed an extension table for my 30-year-old Brother sewing machine.   I have one for my computerised machine but it didn’t fit the Brother and a computerised machine isn’t suitable for the course – a machine with dials is needed.   It is possible to have a table made but the lead time was 2-4 weeks, which I didn’t have.   They were also priced at over £90!   I started to wonder if I could make my own and saw this blog post which spurred me on.   First of ...

Our Design team theme this week is Messages of Congratulations.   For my CAS brief, I was inspired by Mark (aka Mr Visible Image) demonstrating on Hobbymaker TV the new metallic watercolours on black card.   I also love a pun so, when rifling through my stash for which set to use, the sentiment in Better With Ice Cream sealed the deal. I started by heat-embossing the sentiment and a couple of cones using gold embossing powder, then masking the cones. The masking and stamping was repeated until the bottom of the panel was completed. Next, I painted the ice creams with the metallic watercolours.   The heat embossing resists the paint so makes the painting really easy.   For added interest, I added some gold paint splats. To finish the card, a blue glitter mat set the sparkly paints off perfectly. Here are some close-ups of those lush paints!  

This week’s makes are the ones I made for the Visible Image ATC swap last month.    The theme was ‘Portrait or Landscape’ and you had to make the style that you least used.   I had no idea that I normally gravitate towards landscape – my score was 11-6 in favour of landscape – so mine was to be a portrait challenge. To begin, I heat-embossed in copper the sunflower and sentiment from Grunge Sunflower.   I used the new Visible Image metallic watercolours which cover drawn or stamped lines but the heat embossing resists the paint so makes the colouring easier.   You can see the lovely sheen to these paints in the top sunflower. Next, I did a little stencilling using the Light Trails stencil and Blueprint Sketch Distress Oxide. To finish the card panel and ATC, I heat-embossed the edges by dragging each edge across my Versamark pad and then adding the copper powder and heat-setting it. The card was finished by matting on blue and yellow card to pick up th...

This week’s card is a commission I received from a friend for a wedding card.   The brief I had was that the bride is a New Yorker, the groom is Scottish, they are having their wedding celebration on the shores of Loch Ness, to blend a NY skyline into a Scottish theme and add their names.   Plenty to chew on there!   I love the challenge of trying to bring someone’s ideas to life. It seemed sensible to start with the background, which I did by spraying card with a variety of Distress Spray Stains and Oxides.   I found a free SVG download of a New York skyline and cut that from vellum using my Cricut.   I’m not sure of the accuracy of the skyline but the Statue of Liberty adds enough clarity for the buildings to be a bit off.   Using the negative from the cutting as mask, I stencilled the buildings and statue.   I then added some wave tops by white heat-embossing waves from Inkylicious’ By The Waves stamp set.   Now imagine all that in orange...