Crafty As L

For my Visible Image Design Team post this week, I’m sharing the card I made for my very dear friend who was awarded a British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours list this year.   As well as being a talented crafter, she also founded Project 71, a support group for WW2 veterans and the award is in recognition of this.   Lorie has worked tirelessly raising funds, organising events and marshalling her band of volunteers and the award is very well deserved.   I’m very proud of her. She was presented with her medal a few weeks ago and had a little shin-dig to celebrate with the volunteers and show off the medal. Lorie likes autumn colours and also knitting so I decided to use these as my inspiration.   I stamped the Birthday Balloons in orange and yellow tones of Distress Inks, spraying the ink on the stamp with a little water before stamping. The balloons were cut out with the matching dies and then some were decorated with the star and dots stamp in the set an...

Last week, our godson, Rowan, celebrated his 5 th birthday.   I don’t have many stamps specifically for children so I had to get creative with what I had.   Rowan’s Mum keeps a flock of Icelandic sheep and I have a sheep stamp set.   Sorted! I wasn’t sure how many sheep I would need but guessed it’d be quite a few.   To get some colour on the fleeces quickly, I opted to spray a sheet of damp watercolour paper with Distress Spray Stains. This next stage is a quicker way of stamping and die-cutting if you’re going to be doing a lot of the same image.   I die-cut the shape as many times as I could from the inky panel.   To make a frame for the stamping, I die-cut the sheep from a piece of scrap card. After securing the frame in my MISTI, I positioned the sheep stamp in the aperture and picked it up with the door of the stamp positioner. One-by-one, the die-cuts were popped into the aperture and the sheep stamped. To give the sheep a bit more chara...

I’ve been looking through my stash lately and have rediscovered the lovely Anita Jeram stamps by Colorado Craft Company.   I enjoyed the colouring I did for last week’s card and needed an anniversary card so Lots of Love was just the ticket. As usual, I began by clear heat-embossing the image.   Whilst I do have a hybrid ink pad, which is suitable for use with alcohol markers, I prefer to heat-emboss. I used the package images for colour inspiration and then cut the bunnies out using the matching die.    Whilst I was at it, I stamped and clear heat-embossed the sentiment and cut that out, together with another three so I could stack them together. As this was an anniversary card, I decided on a shaped card and die-cut some hearts.   I stamped some hearts from an old Stampin’ Up! set around the white heart in ink to match. To make the card base, I die-cut two green hearts.   For the back one, I scored about ¾” from the top to make the hinge and trimm...

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...

Our Design Team brief this week is Summer/Picnic and on a warm summer evening, my husband and I like to go watch the sun set over the sea with a bottle of fizz.   Our version of a picnic is that we occasionally have a bag of chips to go with it!   For my card this week, I started by stamping, clear heat-embossing and colouring the champagne bottle and cork from  Anyone For Bubbles and cut them out with the matching dies . To make the champagne flutes, I stamped and clear heat-embossed them onto vellum.   I then pressed my Versamark pad over the top of them, added clear embossing powder and heat-set.   I coloured champagne onto the back of the vellum.   The glasses were cut out with the matching dies too. To make the sea, I first sprayed a variety of blue Distress Stains onto a piece of card.   To make the waves, I die-cut the  Framed Fibres then sprayed that too.   Once it was dry, I used a Tim Holtz Embossing Dabber to add some s...

One of my recent purchases was from last year’s Tim Holtz/Sizzix vault release called Fresh Brewed, which includes a mini embossing folder and a collection of dies to make mugs and take-away drink cups.   I paired it with sentiments from MFT Coffee Order. For the backgrounds, I used the embossing folder and a variety of complimentary coloured card.   Once embossed, I snipped out each coffee cup, making irregular shapes. These shapes were glued onto white panels.    I left the centres uncovered so that the sentiment could be stamped there. After realising that most of the sentiments wouldn’t fit in the gap (doh!), I die-cut a selection of the coffee cups and attached them to a stamped sentiment.  These were adhered to the cards using thin foam tape. Mr L bought me a new gadget for Christmas – an embosser with my ‘Crafty As L’ logo for making my envelopes fancy! These were the cards with the bright backgrounds which I mounted on a black background th...