I’ve been a member of Craftworld for quite a few months now and recently upgraded to premium membership. One of the benefits of being premium is regular free downloads of Digi Stamps and 10 o/0 off all Craftstash purchases. I have to say, apart from Craft Artist Software, I’ve never really bought into the idea of digi stamps but I am learning fast. I took my time downloading the files and organising them so I can find what I want and have now had a day or two to play. Here’s what I came up with. I started by making two digital layouts for click & print cards as playing digitally didn’t involved wasting any card or other supplies. I kept things simple but am quite pleased with the results. Feeling a little more confident I ventured into print, selecting first the images I wanted to use and then Sizing them to what I felt would be appropriate. I printed the images and coloured them with Prisma brush pen watercolour markers (a new acquisition). I learned quickly that watercolour markers are not the best medium for colouring inkjet printed images as the ink can smudge. Still, I’d started so I finished, taking care not to get things too muddy. After some fussy cutting I had two lovely summer themed cards. think I could get used to using these. I love that you can resize the images to suit your project and will explore other colouring mediums.

I absolutely love the Turnabout stamps by Concord & 9th and have a few of them in my collection. I love the concept of being able to create lovely colourful background patterns using up to 4 different colours of my choice. I have lots of small stamps in my stash and wondered if I could make up my own versions using some of them. I failed miserably and soon realised that the placement of the different elements to make up the designs was much more difficult than it looked. Then one day, while window shopping turnabout stamps I had a brain wave. Concord & 9th produce a pack of alignment guides for their stamps which worked out at around £7 for over 20. I figured I could use these guides to place my own small stamps on and thereby create my own version of a turnabout stamp. Some of the designs have all small designs while others include some larger elements so I tried a few. I am being brave and honest here as I’m showing you my first attempts. They are by no means perfect but are a start and I’ve learned a lot too. My concept did actually work really well if the execution was less than perfect. The trickiest thing was making sure not to dislodge any of the small stamps whilst cleaning in between rotations. I did have a couple that didn’t cling very well and were a pain. I know now for future reference, to make sure I only use stamps that have a good level of cling. Enough waffling here are the results of my experiments. See what you think.

I was recently asked to make a card for a couple who were both celebrating special birthdays. I’ve done lots of pop up box cards but never tried the tuxedo version so I though I’d give it a go for this one. I kept the embellishments generic and non gender specific. I used my newest alphabet dies for this, the Crealies Alfies 3 die set. They are fab for a good sized letter that doesn’t take up too much room and I love that there are shadow dies too. I had great fun making this and learned quite a few things in the process too, especially creating the internal tabs for attaching the pop up elements. It was really well received and I have another fold to add to my arsenal.

I had a few cards to make for June birthdays and wanted to try out some new dies. I ended up making all the cards the same but changed up the colour of card used and flipped the layout for one of them. I used my favourite Z fold for the cards, it’s a fold that guaranteed to give maximum mantlepiece appeal. I really love the Bright Rosa sentiment dies I used for these, I bought quite a few from Craftstash when they were on offer, they make such a statement on card fronts that not much else is needed apart from the flowers of course. The flowers are the Gemini double sided flower dies. I don’t have a gemini machine so only bought this one to try out on my Sizzix Big Shot. I found that by removing the wafer thin die adapter they cut just fine. I used older cutting plates just in case as the dies cut into both cutting plates. I’m really pleased with how they turned out and may add some more to my collection soon.

How have you been during lock down? I found it difficult to concentrate in the early weeks and consequently found crafting difficult. I managed to get my mojo back a little by making rainbows for my windows and happy mail to send to friends and family. They were easy to make and were really well received. I printed rainbow ‘Thank You’s’ and laminated them so I could attach one to each of my wheelie bins. It was just what I needed to help me gain a bit more positivity. Have you made any special projects during lock down?

I was asked to make birthday cards for my friend and her daughter to send to a very special Grandson & Nephew on his first birthday. It’s tough at the moment as they can’t see him up close or cuddle him while we are in lockdown. They wanted something special that would be familiar to him. It’s sometimes a challenge making more than one card for the same recipient, to end up with different cards. In this case all the more so as they both requested the same theme of his favourite show. Another challenge was create familiar images that he would recognise and yet not be exactly the same. I usually list the dies I have used to create my cards but in this case, not all of the dies are listed, especially for the 8″ x 8″ version as I lost count and track of which dies I used during my lengthy process of trial and error. Though I did use dies, there was quite a bit of snipping and reshaping to end up with the desired effect. My friend and her daughter were delighted with the end results and the birthday boy loved them and even recognised some of the characters.