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Showing posts from October, 2025

Really Retro

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My makes this week were for a couple of my friends who I’ve known for over 30 years so I can be a bit cheeky with them.   The recipients were a male and a female so I adjusted my spraying to mute the background a little for the masculine card. The backgrounds were sprayed using Distress Spray Stains and water and finished with a light Distress Spritz for some shimmer. Once the backgrounds were dry, I trimmed them to 5¼” square then stamped and clear heat-embossed the stamps from Visible Image’s Just Hit Play and Grunge Birthday Words to decorate the backgrounds. For the main images, I stamped the cassette and cassette tape on a scrap of card and fussy cut them.   The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted Laugh Out Loud and it pairs perfectly with the retro cassette. After spattering with Dr pH Martin’s Bleedproof white, each panel was backed with black card then mounted on white square card blanks. Finally, the toppers and sentiment were attached to the card using t...

Framed Cats

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For my sister’s birthday card this year, I wanted to use a new die that I’d bought by AALL & Create, I just had to decide what to fill the sections with.   Since sis is a cat lover, I turned to one of my favourite stamp sets, the Snarky Cats by Stampers Anonymous and the Halloween version too. For the background panels, I created a rainbow background using Distress Spray Stains and Spritzes.   The frame comes with all the internal dies too so I arranged them on the panel and die-cut them all together. I stamped the various cats using Versafine Clair Nocturne ink.   I would have clear heat embossed them too but we had a power cut at the time so simple stamping had to suffice. The eyes were coloured with a yellow Posca pen to make them standout and I added highlights with a white Posca too.   I then applied Glossy Accents to the eyes and noses and set them aside to dry. The large frame was die-cut from black card.   It die-cut really easily and most of...

Mr Pumpkin Head

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  Hello and welcome to my Halloween inspiration DT post for this week.   I usually do a Monday post but Rachel and I swapped so, for this week, here I am on a Friday instead! I had a ball creating this interactive card, using lots of different sets and trying out a technique I’d seen on this blog to make a spooky Halloween moon. For the focal image, I was thinking of a scarecrow with a pumpkin head so I stamped the Christmas Jumper and small pumpkin from Happy Halloween onto scraps of Tomorrow’s Memories Paper Pad and clear heat embossed. The jumper was decorated using the Knitted stamp. These were glued onto scraps of black card, fussy cut and set aside. For the moon background, I used the large circle mask from Bubbles & Fizz on a half sheet of A4 card and sprayed over liberally with Crushed Olive, Dusty Concord & Black Soot Distress Spray Stains and Black Soot Distress Oxide Spray.   I carefully lifted off the mask (keep it inky for later!), blotted s...

Good Times

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I was fortunate enough to be sent a load of goodies by Arden Creative Studios a few weeks ago.   It was a mix of stuff, some festive, including things that I don’t usually use such as rub-ons and ephemera, so I thought it about time I had a play with them. On an A4 piece of card, I stamped the Wispy Stems using Versafine Clair Morning Mist, using 2 nd generation stamping to create some tonal variation. I added some splatter using gold metallic watercolour paint and Iced Spruce Distress Oxide Spray. After chopping the card into four to make backgrounds for A6 sized cards, I used Iced Spruce Distress Oxide and the Maker’s Marks, stamping randomly.   I used a different mark on each panel. For the next layer, I used Botanical Clusters 01 and black ink.   I also edged each panel with the gold watercolour paint too. Using the ephemera pack and Page Starters Rub-On Transfer sheet, I created the various toppers, adding Season of Joy enamel dots to some.  Each panel ...