Crafty As L

Our Visible Image Design Team theme this week is, appropriately, Remembrance.   For my project, I’ve created a spread in my art journal representing purple poppies to remember the animals that served during wartime.   I’m not sure that cats contributed much to the war effort but since cat paw prints are all I have, they are representing all the animals that served. For the rolling hills background, I stencilled Mowed Lawn, Dusty Concord and Seedless Preserves Distress Inks through the Curves stencil. Next, for some texture, I used the Particle stamp and Versafine Clair Morning Mist ink, using 1 st and 2 nd generation stamping. To represent the poppies, I used the flower images from Total Chaos and stamped them in Versafine Onyx Black.   I also stamped the scribble along the bottom to symbolise barbed wire. The poppies were coloured using metallic watercolours.   These paints tend to obliterate the lines so I went over them afterwards with a black Posca p...

It was my birthday last month and I received beautiful handmade cards from ladies in the UK and all over the world through a Facebook Group that I run.   As I was opening all the envelopes, I noticed that there were some very interesting stamps so I kept them to one side whilst I worked out what to do with them.   My art journal came to the rescue!   I arranged the stamps over one of the pages and glued them in place using Ranger Transparent Matte texture paste, applying a layer over the top too to ensure the stamps were well adhered.   I left this overnight to dry. I trimmed off the overhanging stamps.   Sadly, the Netherlands printed postmarks were dissolved by the adhesive which left some bald spots. I used Visible Image Birthday Wishes to add a little stamping in the bare areas and die-cut a few hearts from a scrap of gold inky glittery card which were glued randomly around the page. To finish, I applied some white Ranger Crackle Paste with a spatul...

My projects this week are the card and ATC I made for the Visible Image October ATC swap which had “Autumn Vibes” for the theme.   On the day I made these, it was blowing a hoolie and multi-coloured leaves were swirling all over the place, which inspired my makes. Using the Autumn Leaves stencil, a variety of Distress Ink pads and small blending brushes, I layered the leaves to cover the ATC. To give a little shadow to create dimension, I painted on watered down Gathered Twigs Distress Ink around the edges of the leaves and also painted on some leaf veins.   For some sparkle, I spattered on gold watercolour paint and edged the ATC with it too. Whilst the ATC was drying, I turned my attention to the accompanying card.   I began by stamping the large tree from Into The Woods in Versafine Clair Pinecone ink on kraft card.   I sprinkled a little gold embossing powder on, knocked off the excess and then added clear powder and heat-set. To make the tree canop...

This week’s Visible Image DT theme is Textured Layers and my brief was for a CAS card.   It’s tricky getting a lot of textures onto a CAS card but I like to do it using die-cut shapes, where a variety of textures can be used separately on each piece.   I chose to use hexagons as I like that they tesselate but other shapes will work well although you may have to overlap them. To begin, I coloured a strip of the Destination Anywhere PET Tape using Aquamarine and Pistachio alcohol inks and set it aside to dry.  I sprayed a piece of card with Mermaid Lagoon and Cracked Pistachio Distress Spray Stains and finished with a light mist of Unchartered Mariner Distress Spritz.   Whilst that was drying, I die-cut the Framed Fibres  die from Arden Creative Studios navy card and adhered it to another navy panel that I’d covered with a sheet of double-sided adhesive.  Next, I die-cut the sprayed panel, trying to keep the die-cut pieces in the die as much as possibl...

For my last post this month, I wanted to have another go at the spooky moon I made for my DT post using this tutorial .   I really liked the effect and wanted to try it out using different colours. For the first layer, I placed a plastic circle mask over the panel and sprayed using Distress Spray Stains in Black Soot, Crushed Olive, Dusty Concord, Mustard Seed and Barn Door together with Black Soot Distress Oxide spray, spraying with water to get the colours to mix.   The panels were then dried with my heat tool. Using my sprayer, I spritzed water around the edge of the moons to reactivate the inks and tipped and tilted the panel to get the inks to streak across the moon then left them to dry.   After they were dry, each panel was lightly sprayed with a matching Distress Spritz Spray. I decorated the panels using Stamper’s Anonymous Snarky Cats and the Halloween version and the tree branch is from Mr Frostie .   These were stamped and clear heat-embossed to ...

My makes this week were for a couple of my friends who I’ve known for over 30 years so I can be a bit cheeky with them.   The recipients were a male and a female so I adjusted my spraying to mute the background a little for the masculine card. The backgrounds were sprayed using Distress Spray Stains and water and finished with a light Distress Spritz for some shimmer. Once the backgrounds were dry, I trimmed them to 5¼” square then stamped and clear heat-embossed the stamps from Visible Image’s Just Hit Play and Grunge Birthday Words to decorate the backgrounds. For the main images, I stamped the cassette and cassette tape on a scrap of card and fussy cut them.   The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted Laugh Out Loud and it pairs perfectly with the retro cassette. After spattering with Dr pH Martin’s Bleedproof white, each panel was backed with black card then mounted on white square card blanks. Finally, the toppers and sentiment were attached to the card using t...

For my sister’s birthday card this year, I wanted to use a new die that I’d bought by AALL & Create, I just had to decide what to fill the sections with.   Since sis is a cat lover, I turned to one of my favourite stamp sets, the Snarky Cats by Stampers Anonymous and the Halloween version too. For the background panels, I created a rainbow background using Distress Spray Stains and Spritzes.   The frame comes with all the internal dies too so I arranged them on the panel and die-cut them all together. I stamped the various cats using Versafine Clair Nocturne ink.   I would have clear heat embossed them too but we had a power cut at the time so simple stamping had to suffice. The eyes were coloured with a yellow Posca pen to make them standout and I added highlights with a white Posca too.   I then applied Glossy Accents to the eyes and noses and set them aside to dry. The large frame was die-cut from black card.   It die-cut really easily and most of...