Crafty As L

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...

I’m a bit late with my blog post this week as it’s been quite a hectic weekend.   Mr L and I had the privilege of hosting a very special D-Day veteran and escorting him to a D-Day 80 Commemoration Dinner organised by Project 71 .   The event was held at Southwick House in Hampshire, which houses the huge wooden D-Day map used to plan Operation Overlord.   The theme was 1940s so I had a bash at putting my hair in victory rolls and here I am in the map room.    Onto my cards for this week, which feature a new die set I bought recently, Box of Chocolates by MFT.   To begin, I die-cut a load of thevarious chocolates, wrappers and boxes using dark and light brown and cream card for the chocolates. Next, I glued the various elements together and added some acetate to some of the box lids. At this point, I realised that my wrappers and boxes were the same shade of pink so wouldn’t show up so I die-cut some more heart inserts and lightly stencilled a pattern...

Normally, my last post of the month is a Christmas make but I've got a very special, unusual celebration to share today.  Yesterday, Mr L and I had the privilege and pleasure of attending our very dear friend’s Ordination and Induction into the united Reformed Church.   We got to know Ruth as she is the wife of a friend and former ATC colleague of ours.  Ruth's a very warm, caring lady whose first career was in nursing and I know she will be brilliant as Reverend Ruth.    I am not at all religious so my celebration card for Ruth was not going to be the norm, most of which involve a quote from the bible.   Ruth is always very appreciative of the cards I send her and I know that she will know that, despite not being religious, the card and words therein, are heartfelt. My theme for the card was sheep, my thinking being that Ruth would be leading her new flock. The stamp set I used is Clearly Besotted Feeling Sheepish, which is an old set.   There’s n...

Last post of the month is my Christmas Card Mission and my makes this week are inspired by a card made by Elisabeth Lainey that I saw on Pinterest.   The bears are MFT Polar Bear Pals and I began by partially stamping them and just colouring the scarf.   I then let my Scan N Cut fussy-cut them. Meanwhile, I looked through my stash and gathered a selection of festive foliage, stars and snowflake dies and cut a bunch of these from green and silver glitter card. The sentiment in the set reads ‘Have a Beary Good Birthday’ however I used the Christmas sentiment from MFT Greetings Galore, which uses the same font.   After stamping the greeting, I used MFT Stitched Triple Peek A Boo window dies to cut the holes in the panel. After arranging and gluing in place the bears and snowflakes, I cut a piece of patterned paper and adhered it behind the windows. Lastly, the panel was matted on red card and then onto a side-folding card blank. Three more to add to the collectio...

I’m not usually one for batch making cards.   I’m not against it, I just find it a bit dull.   What I do like is partial batch making.   That is creating the base card but then finishing them off to create different cards.   The stamps I’m using this week are the dragonflies from Fluttering Friends by My Favorite Things. A stamping platform is really useful when batch making cards.   I positioned the 3 dragonflies and the sentiment in my Misti and stamped with Versafine Clair Nocturne and added clear embossing powder and heat set.   The heat embossing isn’t necessary but I like the shiny look. Next, I repositioned 2 of the dragonflies and repeated the stamping and heat embossing. Now, for my favourite part – ink blending!   I used Distress Oxides in Seedless Preserves and Peacock Feathers and blended over the dragonflies.   The lavender colour in the middle is the overlap of the two colours.   I then spattered a little water to distress...