Crafty As L

  It’s time for my Visible Image Design Team post and this week’s theme is Halloween and my brief is CAS - clean and simple.   I’m using the lovely pumpkins from the  Happy Halloween stamp set as I don’t really use them at any other time.   Maybe I should try to remedy that?! I wanted to speed up the colouring of the pumpkins so decided to experiment and use black card for them. First, I used Versamark to stamp and clear heat-emboss the small pumkin. Covering the small pumpkin with a mask, I stamped and clear heat-embossed the large pumpkin. For the colouring, I used Finetec watercolour metallic paints in orange for the pumpkin and green for the stalk.   The embossing resists the paint so you don’t have to be super careful about not going over the lines.   Once the paint had dried, I quickly fussy cut the pumpkins. For me, a CAS card has to have a reasonable area of blank space, in this case white, but I didn’t care for leaving it all blank.   I blended some Villainous Potion

The Stampers Anonymous Snarky Halloween Cats is my most recent purchase.   Whilst I don’t send Halloween cards as such, I liked the other sentiments in the set so decided to purchase it anyway.   The thing I really like about these sets is that it’s easy to make quick cards with them as they don’t need much colouring. To make the backgrounds, I used Distress Stains in Mustard Seed, Lumberjack Plaid and Distress Spritz in Fossilized Amber and Spiced Marmalade for two.   The other two were sprayed with Villainous Potion and Twisted Citron Distress Stains and Wilted Violet and Twisted Citron Spritz.   For the latter panels, I had to wait for the different colours to dry so the colours didn’t get too muddy. I wanted to use the witches’ hat on one of the panels so I wiped the ink off the sticking up ear before stamping. The hat then sat nicely on the cat’s head. To add a little colour, I used a white pastel pencil and coloured pencils.   To make the eyes really stand out, I used

The theme for this month’s ATC swap in the Visible Image Facebook group is Halloween Colours.     Since I’m loving the pumpkins in the Happy Halloween set, I thought I’d use this set again.   An ATC is 2½” x 3½” so the small pumpkin was a suitable size for my project.   I began by stamping the pumpkin onto the ATC and onto a piece of masking paper.   The pumpkin was coloured using alcohol markers and I fussy-cut around the masking paper on the inside edge. Next, I placed the mask onto the pumpkin and blended Villanous Potion and Twisted Citron inks all over the card. For texture, I used the Graffiti stencil and the same colours and then used The Cat’s Whiskers stencil and black ink. The ATC was finished by adding a little shading under the pumpkin with a black fineliner and gold heat-embossing the sentiment. To accompany my ATC on its journey to my swap partner in Australia, I made a shaped card/tag using the large pumpkin stamp and die.   For the card base, I die-cut two lar

It’s my turn on the Visible Image blog today and I’ve made a Halloween Pumkins & Cats garland using the fabulous, new Happy Halloween stamps and  dies together with That Lovin’ Feline  stamps and dies . Since I would need about a dozen large pumpkins and a few small ones, I thought it quicker to colour my card first, so I opted for an ‘inky mop-up’ technique.   I used a large plastic bag and smooshed Distress Oxide ink pads onto it.   The main colour was Carved Pumpkin but I also added Mustard Seed, Barn Door and Wild Honey.   The bag was liberally spritzed with water then I pressed my card onto the bag, lifting dabbing until the sheet was coloured.   There was still a lot of ink on the bag so I spritzed with water again and mopped up with another sheet of card.   I used Daler Rowney Mixed Media card which copes with water very well and didn’t buckle.   The sheets were set aside to dry completely. The pumpkins were stamped onto the coloured card using Versafine Clair No

Hello and welcome to my DT make for the Visible Image blog.   From the latest new release, I’m using my absolute favourites, the Halloween Pumpkins and coordinating dies .   There are two pumpkins (and the big one is huge!), some inky splatters and two sentiments in a great font.   It was the size of the large pumpkin that gave me the idea for this interactive slider card.  There's a quick YouTube video showing how I made this card here . The background was the ideal place to start as it would need to dry.   I began by blending Distress Oxides in Villainous Potion and Twisted Citron onto a 15cm square of white card. Using the brand new Multiverse stencil and Ranger Distress Black Opaque Texture Paste, I used a palette knife and applied paste through the stencil.   I carefully peeled the stencil off the panel and washed it immediately in warm soapy water.   The panel was set aside for several hours to dry fully. Using Memento Black Tuxedo ink, I stamped the pumpkins and