Crafty As L

Spring is coming!   The daffs are out in my garden and I’m writing this sat outside on a rare windless, sunny afternoon.   Whilst out on a walk last week, I saw a large clump of snowdrops and I remembered that I had this die set so set to work as soon as I got home. The set is Altenew Snowdrop Craft-A-Flower and I used a inky sprayed sheet I had laying around for the leaves and stems. I then got busy die-cutting.   Lots of die-cutting!   The flowers have a few layers so I assembled them before starting the cards.  I was making half a dozen cards so I needed lots of bits. Using kraft card blanks, I blended some white ink over torn paper to make the snowbank for the snowdrops to sit on.   A few of the leaves, stems and flowers were adhered to the card and then I added the last leaf and a couple of the flowers using foam tape for some dimension. For some added texture and interest, I flicked a little brown alcohol marker over the card and then spat...

The Billowing Peonies set features two stamps, one of which is HUGE!   I rarely make cards which would require such a large image but the size of this one makes it suitable for using on two cards – provided, of course, that you stamp all of it, which I didn’t do with the blue one. I started by stamping and clear heat embossing the image twice on a piece of A4 card.   Since this image is so large, I use my big MISTI so that I can repeat stamp any areas that don’t have good coverage. Next, the layering stencils.   I used 4 shades of blue on one card, as you can see in the photo.   For the other flower, I used Altenew Crisp dye Inks in Rose Quartz, Puffy Heart, Purple Wine and Cosmic Berry. This is how they looked after the stencilling and I used the matching die to cut them out. I stamped the sentiment on a white card panel and attached the flowers, trimming off the overhang.   To add some bling, I spattered some gold Finetec paint across the panel. I fi...

As I have mentioned before, I’m in a Facebook birthday group where we exchange cards with other card makers all over the world.   When I saw the Birthdays Around The World stamp set by Altenew, I thought it’d be nice to be able to add the birthday sentiment in the recipient’s native language.   We don’t have every nationality in the group so, after seeing this inspiration idea on the stamp packaging, it was a great way of using all of the different birthday greetings. To make the stamping easier and to make 4 cards, I used my MISTI stamping platform.   I used Versafine Clair inks in Glamorous, Morning Mist and Warm Breeze and started with just one stamp in the centre. For the next round of stamping, I added 2 stamps that would be inked in the same colour. I kept repeating this process until most of the card was filled. Last, I just filled in any little gaps at the side to complete the panels which gave me 4 colourful backgrounds. One of the smaller sentiment...

  There was another outing for the Altenew Rennie Roses stamp this week.   Whilst looking for Rennie Mackintosh roses on Pinterest, I saw lots of art deco glass panels and wanted to recreate that look on a card. Since I couldn’t decide what colour to use, I heat-embossed the roses on two panels, one in silver and the other in gold. Next, using a Versamark pen, I drew in the characteristic sets of parallel straight lines and boxes. Again, these were heat-embossed in the appropriate colour powder.   My pen was running out so I dipped the nib into some embossing ink.   Unfortunately, I was a bit heavy handed with it and some seeped under the ruler which is why the silver one is a bit blotchy. To colour the roses, I wanted a bit of sparkle, so I used some Distress Mica stain and a fine paintbrush to colour the roses. For the green parts, I used watered down re-inker.  I looked through my stash to find a sentiment that would fit in the gap and heat-embossed...

This week’s post stars some Altenew goodies that I bought a while ago but hadn’t got around to playing with.   I’ve got the die version, called Rolled Roses, but I really liked the look of these Charles Rennie-Mackintosh style roses and I loved the fact that they also came with stencils for easy colouring and coordinating dies. As I planned on batch making a few of these cards, I set up the stamps in my Misti and stamped each image twice, rotating 180˚.   The stencils come with both the positives and negatives so I used these as masks when stamping the overlapping roses. I stamped and clear heat-embossed 6 panels plus some of the smaller roses that I could die-cut later. The stencils made the colouring super-easy! After stamping the sentiment, I used the Wavy Grid stencil and a very light blending of black ink to lightly stencil the pattern.   The tiny roses were die-cut and fixed in place with foam tape. To add a more organic feel to the panels, I put them in...