Crafty As L

First of all, I have good news - our missing cat from last week’s post has been found!   She was in a neighbour’s shed all along, despite them checking.   We believe she was afraid of their dog and wouldn’t come out.   I wish I’d gone around and checked myself, she might have come to me.   Anyway, she was checked out by the vet and, despite losing a third of her body weight, she is absolutely fine.   Having not eaten for 3 weeks, we’re having to feed her a small amount, slowly increasing her food allowance over a week so that she doesn’t have complications from refeeding syndrome.   She’s not very impressed with her meagre rations though! It was my brother-in-law’s birthday earlier this week and, having watched Visible Image’s Live earlier in the week, I grabbed the same sets Mark used, Grunge Birthday Words and Blow Out The Candles.   I also got out some other favourites, Stamper’s Anonymous Snarky Cats and Snarky Cats Halloween.   I white heat...

  Our Visible Image DT theme this week is “Gratitude & Reflection” and it’s been a tough one for me to do.   Our little girly cat went missing almost 3 weeks ago and despite all our efforts, there has been no news.     She was a real home body so this behaviour is most out of character.   My husband and I are very worried and it’s been a distressing time.   So, my inspiration for my art journal page was to try and get myself into a more positive mindset with a calm, misty mountain scene. A muted colour scheme seemed appropriate so I selected Distress Inks in Stormy Sky and Weathered Wood and blended them onto the sky area before spritzing with Lost Shadow Distress Spray Stain and Iced Spruce Distress Oxide Spray. Using a torn paper mask and the smallest fir tree from Christmas Eve , I spritzed the page with water and then stamped the trees in Bundled Sage and Iced Spruce Distress Inks, using second generation stamping for some more distant trees. ...

My project this week was the card and ATC I made for this month’s Visible Image ATC swap.   Our theme this month was “Say it with words”.   I've found it hard to be creative as our little girly cat disappeared almost 3 weeks ago and, despite all our efforts, there has been no news and Mr L and I are feeling very sad.   Looking through my VI stash, the sentiment in Glimmer of Light   spoke to me so that’s where I started. On an inky mop-up piece of card, I trimmed it make my ATC and card front and started by stamping and clear heat-embossing the moth, sentiment and light bulb. Next, I used the Strobes stencil, with the central blob masking the light bulb, and blended Black Soot Distress ink, fading to the outer edges.   I also blended ink around the edges too. I repeated these steps on the card front too, adding a large light bulb from Shining Bright .   To make the light bulb glow, I added some gold metallic watercolour paint, flicking it out alo...

During lockdown I took up watercolour painting after watching and being inspired by several of Paul Clark’s YouTube videos .   Once lockdown was over, I stopped painting until earlier this year when my Dad and I went to a beginner’s class locally.   I remembered that I really enjoyed it and started doing some extra painting in between the classes.   My friend fancied trying watercolour and mentioned about Paul doing workshops .   He’s just under a couple of hours’ drive away and there was a workshop we could both attend so we packed our gear and headed off. During the first part of the workshop, Paul explained the advantages and disadvantages of the various papers, paints and brushes that you can get and then demonstrated how to paint rocks.   We also used a plastic card to scrape away at the paint and then added some reflected shadows in the sand.   We then practiced our dry brush technique, which we would use for the sea in our finished painting. ...