I rarely use large detailed dies like this, but this one caught my eye. In theory, it should make it easy to create a few quick Christmas cards; which is why it took me two days to finish this one. I had a dig through my box of background experiments and found this piece of… Continue reading Merry Christmas frame
I want to get more confident with layering paints and other colouring mediums, so when this post went past on The Crafter’s Workshop blog earlier this year, I thought I’d have a go at replicating the style. I didn’t keep track of the exact supplies I used. The colour came from acrylic paints, the white… Continue reading Mixed media tags
This was a good way of using up lots of small pieces of vaguely Christmassy patterned paper; however, although it’s quite a simple design, it did take quite a while to make these. Creating the card bases was quick, they just needed to be run through the Big Shot in an embossing folder. Creating the… Continue reading Paper-pieced presents
This started out as an experiment, one of those “see a technique, try it” self-contained experiments that have no purpose other than to have a go at something. Of course, me being me, I couldn’t leave a perfectly good bit of string art sitting unused for long. The string art is in four colours —… Continue reading String art and flower
Now that I’m all caught up with the outstanding card blog posts, I can start writing up the other bits that are scattered around my craft room. This was directly inspired by Emma’s dragon eggs over at Puddleside Musings. Emma was wondering about ways to add colour to her shiny silver eggs and that got… Continue reading Purple dragon egg
I just felt like having a play with Distress oxide inks and trying out my new sentiment die, so I made a quick birthday card. I masked off a diagonal band, blended Distress oxide inks across it and then flicked water drops over to lift some of the ink and add a bit of texture.… Continue reading Diagonal Distress
Remember the spooky tree Halloween panel? The one that started life as a pretty autumnal tree in my imagination? Well, this is where I ended up using the sequins that inspired that original idea. I came up with and discarded several ideas before finally deciding to try something I hadn't done before: actually sewing sequins.… Continue reading Beautiful sequin heart
My mum's birthday means, as ever, finding some cute little critters (preferably rodents) for her card. Luckily, I recently discovered Isabel Cristina who creates some absolutely adorable digi stamps. I did the colouring for this during the Daily marker challenge, but I knew that it would end up on a card for my mum; I… Continue reading Mouse in a hot air balloon
Okay, who stole the end of October? How did I go from having a week to write up this Halloween card to it being November and I’m having to dash out to post my mum’s birthday card? In typically organised manner, I have already written up that card but didn’t want to post until I’d… Continue reading Pumpkin boo!
Back on my usual form this month and dashing around on the last day to get this cute little raccoon all coloured up and on a card in time to submit it to Gerda Steiner's progressive challenge for October. In my defence (slightly), I did have to get a birthday card for my mum finished… Continue reading Good luck raccoon
This wasn’t going to be a Halloween piece. This was originally going to be an autumnal scene. My starting point for this was a challenge to use half a bag of multicoloured sequins from the September Craft Box subscription. They’re not on here. They’ve been hand sewn onto a foam heart on a completely different… Continue reading Creepy tree panel
I picked up a set of the Tim Holtz mixed media dies out of curiosity more than anything else. Rather than giving you a positive shape to work with, these dies are designed to leave you with the negative, empty space on a panel, and I wondered what I could do with that. My initial… Continue reading Bricks and butterfly
I was in the mood for two things: using my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers — hereafter known as ziggies for the sake of brevity — and doing a bit of heat embossing. After a couple of busy days creating the mouse at the lake card, I had thought that I would keep that… Continue reading In bloom
The last of my catch-up blog posts! Assuming that I haven’t made more cards than I’ve blogged between scheduling this post and it being published, I am completely caught up. Ahem. This is the last of my catchup blog posts that I had intended completing before I started the 30-day colouring challenge in September. I… Continue reading Monster and teddy
This is the last of the cards I made for the Sparkle & Shine class. There are still a few techniques that I will get round to trying at some point, but I was just about glittered out by the time I got to this one 🙂 I created an ombre effect on the hexagons… Continue reading Glitter hexagons with love
Crafty Rat 