Crafty As L

After getting all my photos ready for my blog post yesterday, I then forgot all about actually writing the thing!   So, here it is, a day late.    I realised that the number of cards I had made so far this year was only enough to do the cards that needed posting so there’s been some panic crafting this week to get the rest made. To start with, I remade the Alex Siberia stencilled Holiday Wreath cards in non-trad, muted pastel colours and finished them with gold gems for some sparkle.   They looked like I’d bought them from Next! Next was some batch making from a design by Shirley, one of my Visible Image Design Team mates.   After realising that I had no 5” x 7” card blanks, I modified the design to use only one tree rather than three.   I also used some of my own designs using up some inky panels on my desk with heat-embossed snowflakes. For my family cards this year, made a Christmas jumper using Visible Image’s fab set and backed with glitter heat-...

Last post of the month is the Mission Christmas and this month’s offerings are made using Spellbinders Holiday Blooms dies.   They’re not quick makes but if you’re in the mood for cutting, colouring and assembling, making them is a very relaxing, mindful activity. To begin, I dry embossed the panels using the Holiday Floral Swag embossing folder.   For the green one, I dabbed the green ink pad on the inside of the top before embossing it to give a tone-on-tone look.    I die-cut lots of the foliage and flowers from coloured card.   If you can’t be bothered to add colour, you can just use coloured card, but I like the additional interest a little variation in colour adds to the design.   For the gold elements, I didn’t want a mirror finish so I used Red Gold and Light Gold from the Gansai Tambi Starry Colours on a piece of card, applying 2 coats to get good colour.   After die-cutting and colouring, the elements were assembled. After playing aroun...

My cards this week were inspired by this tutorial by Ishani S and her ideas for this embossing folder.  I received the Altenew Garden Roses embossing folder in the Craft Your Life Project Kit as part of my Cardmaker of the Year 2022 prize from Practical Publishing and Craftworld.  This is my first play with the kit and I'm loving this folder and the double embossing technique! To begin, I dry embossed a white and a navy panel before moving on to the double embossing.  The dimension from this folder is amazing!   One of the cards was to be for my Mum-in-law so I asked Mr L which he preferred and he chose the inked one.   On the white panel, I used small blending brushes and Altenew Mixed Media pigment inks in Frosty Pink and Coral Berry to add some colour to the roses and Distress inks to the leaves - I can't remember which ones though! The panel was matted onto pink and green layers and mounted onto a 7" square card base.  I spattered the card wi...

I have a new toy - a Spellbinders Glimmer hot foil machine! Mr L bought it for me after I made a crocheted stag faux taxidermy head for housewarming gift for a friend of his.   After a few false starts, most of which were alleviated by watching this video , I got to playing with my Inna’s alphabet suite of goodies by Pinkfresh Studio to make a wedding card. I foiled the letters with some silver foil and then used the layering stencils to colour them, although you could easily just colour them in with markers or pencils.   Once coloured, I cut them out with the matching dies.   As I wanted something more than the letters on the card, I heat embossed the Folk Art Birds stamp, also by Pinkfresh Studio, twice.   These panels were coloured using the matching layering stencils.   All these elements can be cut out with the coordinating die and I’d got it in my mind that I could create a heart with the pieces. It transpired that I could but it didn’t work with ...