Crafty As L

This week has been a strange one for me.   It’s the first time in 33 years that I don’t have a job!   I took early retirement and my last day of controlling aeroplanes was on 13 th April, however, I had annual leave to use to take me to my official retirement of 30 th April.   Although I have retired, I’ve done so early and can’t yet claim my pension so I’m technically unemployed!   I thought that this would give me more time to do the things I want but so far, my experience of retirement is that time seems to go twice as fast! For today’s card, I was inspired by a YouTube video by Angelica Conrad, which leant itself very well to making multiples.   This stamp set, a Big & Bold one called Build A Rainbow, by Colorado Craft Company, was another of my winnings that hadn’t yet seen the light of day.     I made use of my MISTI so that I could add multiple pieces of card in the different alignments.   After stamping the standard rainbow arc...

  The idea for this card came from seeing one of those Christmas tree ornaments made from baubles.  It got me thinking how I could make one using circles.  Here’s the result!  I think this would be a fun card to make with children. I began by drawing a triangular tree shape on my card top layer.  I used a tree stamp but any rough triangular shape will do.  Then, after dry embossing a selection of card in Shaded Spruce, Real Red and gold foil, I punched circles of various sizes.  If you wanted to use die cut circles, you’d have to cut first then emboss. The circles were roughly arranged in the tree shape.  To help me remember the placement for gluing, I took a quick shot of the layout and then removed the circles to erase the triangle. I glued all the circles in place, stamped and heat embossed my greeting, mounting it on a layer of Shaded Spruce and a length of Real Red ribbon.  To finish, I added a die cut star to the top on foam tape a...

  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...

  For my cards this week, I used the top half of the Stampin’ Up! Banner Blooms die to create a silhouette style card. Whilst it’s possible to make this card using plain card, I wanted to add some dimension to mine so blended some inks onto my Bermuda Bay panel and then spritzed with some Frost White Shimmer Paint for a bit of shine. Next, I die-cut the banner blooms from Whisper White card together with my sentiment from the Well Written dies set and glued them in place, cutting off any excess from the banner die. Since I had used Night of Navy ink, I used a navy mat layer and mounted on a white card base to tie all the elements together and finished with a few navy gemstones. For my second card, I wanted to try a warmer colour palette and used Crushed Curry as a base and used black card for my blooms and sentiment.  Again, I added a few rhinestones for a bit of bling.    

Well, it doesn’t seem like a year since I was creating an anniversary card for my parents’ golden wedding but clearly it is, so it’s also time to create another one!   I had in my mind a floral frame featuring dandelion silhouettes with some lettering on top.  It was clearly a job for the Cricut. I started in Design Space by adding various dandelion, floral and leaf elements and arranging and rearranging them into a square to create my background floral frame. Next, I added two cut out sections so that my letters would stand out more and then added the text.  I went for a bouncy alignment as this allowed the words to be cut as whole pieces (more or less!).  I then cut out the frame and two white versions of the sentiments. I also cut a purple version of the sentiment for the top layer. The reason for the white layers was to build up dimension so the sentiment stood proud of the frame.  I glued the two white sentiments onto the frame and then stuck the pu...

The weather here in the south of the UK has been particularly dismal for the past few weeks.  The eternally grey and rainy skies have really been getting me down so to cheer myself up, I thought I’d make a bright, happy, flowery card.  My stamp set of choice was the freebie from Sale-A-Bration called Thoughtful Blooms and the matching punch. I decided to do a gate-fold design so cut my card base from Lovely Lipstick and some Whisper White panels to decorate the front sections and inside.  The flowers and foliage were stamped using Lovely Lipstick and Old Olive inks. These panels were stuck onto the card base after attaching a strip of ribbon for some added texture and interest. The single flowers were cut out with the punch.  To give them extra dimension, I used my ball tool and the foam mat from my Stamparatus to curve the flowers. I added a medium sized rhinestone in the centre of the flowers and glued them on top of some of the flowers on the front of the ...

  This week, Mr L and I have discovered how to make homemade nut butters.  It’s remarkably simple requiring nuts, salt, a food processor and about 10 minutes of your time.  Mr L eats peanut butter like it’s going out of fashion.  I’m an avid label checker when shopping and nut butters often have a lot of other stuff added to them and the ones that don’t have a layer of oil at the top that is almost impossible to stir in.  The solution? To make our own in small batches that get used before the separation occurs.  I began by making cashew and sunflower seed butter which then spurred on Mr L to make some peanut butter.  He even managed to not eat it all straight out of the blender and put some in a jar for later! I’m not a huge fan of nut butters as they are but I like to use them as a base for sauces and dips.  I found this great  recipe for homemade nut butter granola.  This is currently our favourite breakfast! Arm progress is still...