Crafty As L

  Welcome to September - it’s time to get started on Christmas projects!  This is my first Christmas card this year.  For best results, a stamp positioning tool is needed – this allows the trees on the two layers to be perfectly aligned. First, I cut a ‘moon’ layer of Whisper White and a Misty Moonlight layer ¼” shorter in height.  I positioned both pieces of card in my Stamparatus, added the trees from Stampin’ Up! Winter Woods and stamped on the blue layer, removed it and stamped the white layer.  The white layer was removed and I repeat stamped the trees on the blue layer to cover the front. Next, I masked the trees and sponged a little black ink to ‘ground’ my trees. I sponged a little white and silver ink too. The moon was made by punching a circle from the blue layer and to add some more wintry feel, I ran the blue section through the Winter Snow embossing folder to cover with snowflakes.  As I’d used the stamp positioner, my trees matched throug...

I’m happy to report that I’m out of the sling this week although nowhere near back to normal yet 😞 The few days in the sling allowed my muscles to calm down enough so that the weight of my arm was bearable again.  This week I’ve had some physio and acupuncture and I’ve got this really jazzy strapping helping me out. However, I still can’t use my right hand for very long until my arm starts to hurt so I thought I’d challenge my left hand to some everyday tasks!  The first was writing.  Well, I struggled to even hold the pen to begin with! My pages of alphabet look like they were written by a 6-year old but at least they look like letters.  My blog posts and photo editing is also all being done left handed, albeit slowly, but I have learned some useful keyboard shortcuts. So, then I turned my attention to crafting and what I could make that would be simple, forgiving and hopefully not too frustrating.  I had some 2” strips of card left over from another projec...

This week, we have been celebrating Mr. L’s birthday.  It wasn’t a big one but still a birthday so warrants some celebrating!  Amongst his presents were two pairs of homemade house trousers.  I don’t know what other people call them but they’re the comfy trousers you put on to doss around in and they’re known as House Trousers in our house. He had asked for some for Christmas but I ran out of time so he got them for his birthday instead.  Now, I had never made trousers before so I was a bit concerned but, since the pattern was a simple pyjama style, they ended up being quite straight forward to construct.  His request for trousers was “the more outrageous the better!” and he loves the Minions so that’s what he got!  Here he is sporting the two designs…. For his card I used my newly acquired Winter Woods stamp.  The bare winter trees are great for Christmas cards but can also be handy for those tricky male cards.  This card is a va...