Crafty As L

  I loved making this week’s card for our friend that had her first baby recently.  I don’t have a lot of use for stamps aimed at making children’s cards but I bought the Baby Bear set as you’re never too old for a teddy bear!  This is a retired stamp set but I’ve kept mine as I really like that bear and how he comes to life with the three layers of ink.  I’ve also got a couple of handy tips on repeat stamping and extending the use of dies. This was a bigger card than usual as I wanted it to be a square Z-fold card.  I fancied a gingham style background but didn’t have anything in my stash that was pink so used the Buffalo Check background stamp and some Rococo Rose ink.  The stamp was a little small for my background so I used the Stamparatus to do some repeat stamping.  I first stamped the check background and marked an arrow on my grid paper where the edge of the stamp came to.  Next, I moved the card so that the left-hand edge of the stamped ...

This Sunday in the UK is Mothering Sunday or Mother’s Day, so my cards this week are the ones I made for my Mum and Mum-in-law.  I’ve had the Frosted Florals set together with the matching Frosted Bouquet framelits but hadn’t got around to playing with them so I made them the star turn for this card.  I also used the Jar of Love set and matching Everyday Jars framelits.    Whilst this is a Mother's Day card, it could easily be adapted for birthday, anniversary, thank you or get well card - indeed anything for which you'd send a bunch of flowers!  I made a birthday card earlier in the year using Lovely Lipstick, Smoky Slate and Mint Macaron and I really like these colours together so I used that colour palette here too. Firstly, I stamped the card liner and the envelope with same designs.  I really like the thistle/teasel image (that was my reason for buying this set actually!) so that was my main focus.  I made it dual coloured by using sponge d...

My challenge to myself this week was to make a card using colours that I don’t normally reach for.  I like purple, grey, green and blue so tend to use those frequently and the other colours don’t get a look in. So, I decided to use some new purchases: Bermuda Bay, Lovely Lipstick and Sahara Sand.  I also used Very Vanilla cardstock too instead of my usual white, together with my new Buffalo Check background stamp and one of my prizes from a couple of weeks ago, Hello Cupcake. The biggest job was working out the dimensions of the parts of the card as this is my first one of this design.  Once that was complete, the actual card only took about 15 minutes to create so it’s a great option for putting into card packs or making multiples. For this card I used: Sahara Sand:  card base4⅛” x 8⅝” (scored at 5¾”) and mat layer 4¼” x 2¾” Very Vanilla: liner 5½” x 3⅞”, card front 4” x 2½”, mat layer 2⅝” x 3⅞” (you could use some DSP for this piece instead), sent...