Crafty As L

  Sometimes you don’t need the whole picture presented to you, just snippets in spotlights.  That was my inspiration for my card this week anyway.  I like the Stampin’ Up! Field of Flowers for silhouette images but I’m not keen on the coloured version so I thought I’d play around with it to see how I could use the coloured stamps on a card using the spotlight technique. I began by stamping the leaves in Mint Macaron and the flowers in Rococo Rose, Highland Heather and So Saffron together with a few dragonflies in Smoky Slate.  Then I used various punches to cut circles to make my spotlights. Next, I made my background by stamping the sentiment and ink blending a few circles using my sponge daubers and my homemade circle mask. For the liner and envelope, I punched a circle from a post-it note and stamped the images into the hole so that the image would have a circular shape to mirror the spotlights on the fronts. Lastly, I assembled the card, gluing some spotli...

  Here we are at the end of the 4 th week of lockdown in the UK and it’s presented me with a few firsts.  My first new experience was to cut Mr L’s hair! Now, I’ve never cut anyone’s hair before but I’ve watched our hairdresser cut Mr L’s hair many times.  She makes it look so easy.  It isn’t!  It took me a while but we got there in the end and Mr L still has both ears! My second ‘first’ was to attempt to make naan breads.  I’d made my favourite dhal recipe when I noticed a naan bread recipe in the same book and, since we had all the ingredients, I though I’d have a bash.  They were not quite like the restaurant ones but were delicious nonetheless. My third ‘first’ was an introduction to a technique called Inlaid Embossing.  Amanda (from Inspiring Inkin’) showed this on her Facebook crafting group this week and it looked interesting. To begin, I used the ½”, ¾” and 1” circle punches to cut a mix of circles in 3 coordinating colours. These w...

  In case you’re unfamiliar with the term ‘bokeh’, it’s a photographic term for an aesthetically pleasing blur you get when the background is out of focus.  Bokeh is from the Japanese word ‘boke’ meaning ‘blur’ or ‘haze’ and as far as I can ascertain, it is pronounced “bo-kay”.  However, I may be wrong but, irrespective of how you pronounce it, it’s a fun technique to try out. To begin, choose 3 complimentary ink colours and, using sponge daubers or sponge pieces, smoosh ink onto cardstock in random places gradually blending the colours together at the edges.  Leave to dry. Next, you’ll need to make a bokeh stencil.  Cut a selection of circle sizes out of a sheet of acetate or glossy card.  You will need a pigment ink for the circles so that they show up on the coloured background. Using a clean sponge dauber, apply the white ink in circles, moving the holes around the background and overlapping other circles in places.  Leave to dry. The last p...