Crafty As L

When I’m feeling a bit low on crafting mojo, I like to follow a tutorial.   It takes some of the pressure off, not having to think about colours and composition.   One of my teamies on the Visible Image DT made this card for the VI blog (here’s the link to her card) a few weeks ago and I loved it! To start, I smooshed Weathered Wood and Iced Spruce Distress Inks onto my craft mat and sprayed with water, then pressed my card into the ink repeatedly until the card was covered.   This would form the texture and colour for the silver birch tree background. For the trees, I used the Forest stencil and blended Chipped Sapphire, Prize Ribbon, and Dusty Concord Distress Oxides through the stencil.   Then I made the bushes in the foreground by stamping the branch from the Night Owl stamp set using Versafine Clair Nocturne ink. To create atmosphere, I then spattered Dr pH Martin Bleedproof white ink and gold paint all over the panel.   I actually made 6 cards so ...

Our Design Team theme this week is ‘Valentine’ and my brief is a non-card make so I’m making a tag that could be used on a gift or a bottle of fizz.   I had to think outside the box a bit as I don’t have any romantic stamps but that’s where Visible Image stamps are so versatile.   For my tag base, I used an inky panel that I’d sprayed with Picked Raspberry and Lumberjack Plaid Distress Stains and Barn Door and Picked Raspberry Distress Spritz for a little shimmer.   I then used the typewriter from  One Kind Word which I stamped and clear heat-embossed.   I repeated the stamping and heat-embossing on a sheet of white card, adding a sentiment, and fussy cut the paper.   This was adhered to the tag. Using the two hearts in the set, I repeat stamped these all over the tag to add more interest to the background. Finally, I wanted “love you” at the bottom but there isn’t that in the set.   There is, however, “you are loved” so I did some partial...

One of my recent purchases was from last year’s Tim Holtz/Sizzix vault release called Fresh Brewed, which includes a mini embossing folder and a collection of dies to make mugs and take-away drink cups.   I paired it with sentiments from MFT Coffee Order. For the backgrounds, I used the embossing folder and a variety of complimentary coloured card.   Once embossed, I snipped out each coffee cup, making irregular shapes. These shapes were glued onto white panels.    I left the centres uncovered so that the sentiment could be stamped there. After realising that most of the sentiments wouldn’t fit in the gap (doh!), I die-cut a selection of the coffee cups and attached them to a stamped sentiment.  These were adhered to the cards using thin foam tape. Mr L bought me a new gadget for Christmas – an embosser with my ‘Crafty As L’ logo for making my envelopes fancy! These were the cards with the bright backgrounds which I mounted on a black background th...

Last December turned out to be a bit frantic one way and another and the fact that I had to make most of my Christmas cards didn’t help.   I have therefore decided to take the pressure off and to do what I did a couple of years ago and that is make a few cards each month so my last post of the month will be a festive one.   You may remember the background of the wobbler cards I made at Christmas and I was so pleased with how they looked that I decided to make them the feature rather than the background.   The stamp set is 'Let It Snow' by Visible Image.  After stamping the snowflakes with Versamark, I added Cosmic Shimmer embossing glitter.   I wanted the sentiment to stand out more so stamped that in black Versafine Clair Nocturne but added the same embossing glitter so it had some sparkle. I mainly used the large snowflake but rather than cleaning it, I just use a piece of old packaging as a mask whilst I get the stamp in the right position in my MISTI. ...