Crafty As L

My makes this week were for a couple of my friends who I’ve known for over 30 years so I can be a bit cheeky with them.   The recipients were a male and a female so I adjusted my spraying to mute the background a little for the masculine card. The backgrounds were sprayed using Distress Spray Stains and water and finished with a light Distress Spritz for some shimmer. Once the backgrounds were dry, I trimmed them to 5¼” square then stamped and clear heat-embossed the stamps from Visible Image’s Just Hit Play and Grunge Birthday Words to decorate the backgrounds. For the main images, I stamped the cassette and cassette tape on a scrap of card and fussy cut them.   The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted Laugh Out Loud and it pairs perfectly with the retro cassette. After spattering with Dr pH Martin’s Bleedproof white, each panel was backed with black card then mounted on white square card blanks. Finally, the toppers and sentiment were attached to the card using t...

"Things With Wings" was the theme for the Visible Image August ATC swap and, with my background in aviation, my mind immediately went to planes.   Visible Image don’t have any actual aircraft stamps however, they do have paper aeroplanes.   Bingo!   This is my matching card I made to go with the ATC. For the background, I stamped the map from Scripted Streets in grey and added images from Destination unknown around the edge in black. Using my favourite Grungy Union Jack stencil, I stencilled red and blue Distress Inks through, rotating the stencil randomly.   I spritzed a little water on and blotted to distress the inks. I stamped a few of the paper planes in different sizes and fussy cut them. I’m not a huge fan of fussy cutting but these are very easy to cut out, having all straight lines. The planes were attached to the panel using thin foam tape for dimension.   I backed the panel with a square of black to give a thin border all round and then moun...

It’s my turn over on the Visible Image blog today and I’m using one of the new release products – the Inky Daisy stencil .   These were designed to be used in conjunction with the MDF products in the release but are also great for using on cards. To begin, I stencilled the daisies around a DL sized panel using Picked Raspberry Distress Oxide for the petals and Mustard Seed on the centres. To fill in the gaps, I masked the petals so that I could stencil the dots in yellow. I stencilled another 2 daisies on a separate piece of card and fussy cut them, cutting out some of the petals.   Using a ball tool and a piece of fun foam, I rubbed the back of each petal to give some dimension. The two daisy layers were attached to the card panel gluing down the centres and using foam tape to add more dimension under the petals.  The overhanging petals were chopped off.   To add some bling to the feature daisy, I went over the centre and inner parts of the petals with a cl...

Welcome to my Design Team post for this week where I’m using Art Spheres 2 stencil together with Sparkle In The Rain stamp set.   My inspiration for the background for this card came from one of Lynda Hall’s samples using the  Calm Over Chaos stamps where she used the Art Sphere stencil as a parasol.   To make the umbrellas, I started by blending ink through the stencil, concentrating the ink in the centre and fading out so that there was no solid edge. Using a black waterproof fine liner pen, I tried to harness some of Mark Alexander’s sketching skills and make the spheres into umbrellas!   I’m not entirely sure it was successful but the next step would rectify that. To make the panel look more ‘rainy’, I spritzed some Stormy Sky Distress Stain over and also added some big drips.   Once this was completely dry, I stamped the rain shower stamp repeatedly all over the panel with Versamark ink, added clear embossing powder and heat set it. I stamped t...