Crafty As L

This week’s card was one I needed for a very dear gentleman’s 101 st birthday.   Since he is a retired Naval officer, I decided on a sea theme and dug through my stash to find some appropriate gear for the card. To make the background, I used Weathered Wood and Salty Ocean for the sky and Salty Ocean, Stormy Sky and Chipped Sapphire Distress Spray Stains for the sea.   I blended a little ink over the edge of a piece of paper to make the horizon and stamped some wave tops from Inkylicious By The Sea.   After planning to make a square card, I changed tack and decided on a DL card so had to make some beach from the overspray area by blending some Mustard Seed Distress Oxide over the area.   I also added a little Peacock Feathers at the edge of the water. Once the blended ink was dry, I used Versamark and white embossing powder to stamp the waves at the bottom of the panel.   After stamping, I used markers to add some shading to the waves. For the top of the ...

This week’s card is a commission I received from a friend for a wedding card.   The brief I had was that the bride is a New Yorker, the groom is Scottish, they are having their wedding celebration on the shores of Loch Ness, to blend a NY skyline into a Scottish theme and add their names.   Plenty to chew on there!   I love the challenge of trying to bring someone’s ideas to life. It seemed sensible to start with the background, which I did by spraying card with a variety of Distress Spray Stains and Oxides.   I found a free SVG download of a New York skyline and cut that from vellum using my Cricut.   I’m not sure of the accuracy of the skyline but the Statue of Liberty adds enough clarity for the buildings to be a bit off.   Using the negative from the cutting as mask, I stencilled the buildings and statue.   I then added some wave tops by white heat-embossing waves from Inkylicious’ By The Waves stamp set.   Now imagine all that in orange...

  Aside from my Visible Image Design Team posts, this is my first post not scheduled back in July.   We are having building work done, part of which is an extension to my craft room, which will make it twice the size it was.   It’s so exciting climbing up onto the scaffolding at the end of each day to see what’s changed.   Here’s my craft room so far… As it transpired, it was fortunate that I had all these blog posts scheduled as just over 2 weeks ago, my Dad had a heart attack, so I’ve had little time for crafting anyway.   This came out of the blue but fortunately the doctors found the problem and remedied it doing an angioplasty and fitting a stent. Mum has dementia and cannot be left alone and Dad is her carer so my sister and I were taking shifts around our work, to look after Mum.   It’s been full-on!   When I have had a couple of hours to myself, I’ve taken advantage of the glorious weather and living on the coast, and taken myself off to th...