Over at AAA Cards challenge blog we’re celebrating 9 years of clean and simple card-making. There’s even a money prize up for grabs! The challenge this time is ‘pink birthday’. I searched through my stash and remained uninspired by what I had on a generic birthday theme. Eventually, I settled on one of my flower stamps, coloured it pink and made it a birthday card with a stamped mini-sentiment:
It’s a colour challenge this week over at AAA Cards’ clean and simple challenge blog. Our task is to choose a side (of the colour wheel) – either hot or cold. Most of my art includes warm colours, so I thought this time I would take on the cold side. This meant choosing purples, blues and greens and I turned to the distress palette for my inspiration card:
I’ve had a few problems with my laser cutter over the last six weeks or so… One of the cables was causing intermittent faults. The presumption was that after four years of use, it was gradually fracturing. I managed to keep the machine limping on until I replaced the cable this week. As a result, I’ve had to feed projects into the machine through a slot so that the lid was barely lifted – an interesting exercise.
It would have been fine if I had not been asked to do several projects in those weeks. A small group craft session for church folk, the ‘Be Still’ evening and a large group craft session for my church’s retired men’s group. All of these needed kitting out with laser-cut items.
Here are the projects I designed and crafted for the small group and the men’s group. They feature crosses for the Easter season. Both are available as workshops at the Studio for groups of up to eight people. To book, just get in contact with me.
I was asked to run a craft table at a recent ‘Be Still’ community event at my church. The aim of the evening was to take the chance for attendees to have some ‘me’ time with massages, facials, mindfulness sessions as well as the craft table. I looked for all sorts of inspiration and didn’t really find any. I then stumbled on some photos of retro signage and decided to go with the theme. I created six different laser-cut wood signs, each with a typical self-affirming phrase often linked to mindfulness sessions. For each, I spent a long time finding a relevant Bible verse or passage to move it from self-centred to God-centred.
A new challenge has just been published over at the AAA Cards challenge blog. This time, it is to create a clean and simple card using a colour theme set by a photo with the optional extra of using dots. I picked out the primary four colours from the inspiration photo and spent a bit of time matching them to archival ink colours before stamping them onto white card using the same dotty stamp. Now, I usually avoid layers on my CAS cards, but most guidelines specify no or few layers so I feel I can get away with two. I like the individual pieces’ drop shadows and the depth they provide.
Every now and then I have cause to go back and look at some of my previous work. On this occasion, I reviewed a piece I made for Jones Crafts some 7 years ago. I like the wide frame and the recess, so I adapted that concept for my latest piece from my Glowforge laser:
It’s always lovely to be asked to make something, and even better when given relatively free rein! The brief was to make boxes that were suitable for holding board game tokens, roughly 3-4″ by 1″ deep in size. The rest was up to me… Here’s what I came up with:
I’ve been playing on my Glowforge laser cutter during the lockdown and experimenting with designing tealight holders. The first, tall one, took inspiration from one I came across on Pinterest. Once I had all the settings dialled in for the circular design, I came up with the next two designs. One features mirror acrylic and is a little bit out there, but I hope the internal reflections will make it zing. After that came the next two faceted rounds using various repeating seamless patterns to fill the facets. All are made from 3mm birch plywood, treated with flame retardant and are available to purchase for £5 each (p&p extra).
If you care to remember, I have been drawing mandalas from scratch. I’ve also been expanding my skill set designing and cutting on my Glowforge laser cutter. I’ve seen several 3D mandalas online where the design has been cut from layers of wood, with variable complexity and some true artists whose work must have taken days, if not weeks, to do.
My first attempt at a layered mandala, using 1.5mm thick birch ply:
I know, it’s the C-word again, but in the crafting world, Christmas is in July. I think it is so that all the kit can be bought, put somewhere safe, searched for and then, in a final frantic rush, used. In my case, it’s because I have an idea or find inspiration that I have to do something with. It also helps that I am well prepared for a table at a local craft fair at the beginning of November.
This week’s offerings summarise a few hours work over the last month or so, featuring original artwork inspired by Pinterest browsing or from my own creativity.
