April Leading Lady Lydia Evans | Take One

Today we are chuffed to introduce our April Leading Lady, Lydia Evans.   Lydia's style is simply lovely and fresh with a very appealing feminine flair to all she does.  Also apparent in Lydia's work is her sweet personality.  We are so excited to see her spin this month when spring flowers are blooming and the colors paint our lives with happy hues!  

Over the next few Saturdays in April Lydia will be leading us on a journey of her own design and imagining.  Make sure to visit her blog, Lydia Evans Design, to see more from her and for a chance to win a giveaway! 

Give Lydia a big round of applause to welcome her as she steps onto the stage for her first performance as our April Leading Lady!    

Hi there Winnie & Walter fans! I'm so happy to be sharing with you this month here on the Winnie & Walter blog...... especially as I very nearly wasn't..... the amazing email asking me to be Leading Lady was in my 'Junk' folder?!?! Gasp...... Mr Email was definitely not doing his job properly when he decided to file it there, only through blind luck did a take a peek in there and find it. I could not believe they Julie & Shay had asked lil ol' me so I can tell you I was as fast as lightning replying back with a big fat 'yes'! Well anyways I'm here now so maybe you want to know a little about me (or maybe not.... so you could just skim the next paragraph ... hehehe)
  

My name is Lydia and I reside in wet and windy North Wales, UK. I live with my ever understanding husband ( I mean he has to be right with a messy.. oooppps I mean creative wife ;) )and our two wee ones Archie and Tilly.. these two also have crafting in their blood, and can give me a run for my money. For as long as I can remember I have been crafting in some way, shape or form but right now my main crafty passion is stamping! I just love how you can take some white card, ink and stamps ad come up with a little piece of art, especially with the designs with W&W is so fun to play and create.

Okay enough jabbering from me and on to some cards..... the theme I went with this week was using the stamp set 'Happy Christmas' and making some fresh and floral springtime cards. First up I have a beautiful spring wreath to share ...



To start I cut a card panel using the smaller of the dotted card layers from 'Essentials: Katharine Cutaways', I then stamped the beautiful wreath from 'Happy Christmas' into place with black ink. I coloured in the leaves with Copic Markers and added some green pencil for shading. For the little flowers I used the teeny-weeny flower from 'A Tree For All Seasons', stamped it in coloured ink and added a dot of pencil to the centre. The little rose buds are the little cluster of multi-sized dots in the upper right corner on the 'Happy Christmas' set, I stamped these with coloured ink and then taking a sharp pencil I drew a spirel on each of them to create the rose effect.



I then cut the 'wishes' using 'The Big, the Bold and Party Cutaways' out of some Gold Add A Little Dazzle Craft Metal and attached it across the wreath, the 'best' is from 'The Big, the Bold and Party' and is stamped in Gold Delicata ink.

While the last card was more subtle I have gone for a bit of a modern twist for the next....



Again I have used the smaller of the dotted card layers from 'Essentials: Katharine Cutaways', this time I cut two, one from white cardstock and another out of black polka dot patterned paper to add at an angle behind the first. For this card I wanted a partial wreath , like a winners wreath and have this cradling the sentiment. To do this I stamped the sentiment into place first , this fabulous one is from 'The Party'- I just love the fonts and size of the sentiments on this set they are just so usable and work for all celebratory cards. Once the sentiment was in place I set to work on the wreath, first up was the centre flower, this is the small poinsettia from 'Happy Christmas' but coloured a different colour than the traditional red I think this would work for a spring-like bloom. I then added two of the sprigs from the same set , it great that there are mirror images of these leaves as it means I didn't have to do and mirror-stamping to get this effect. The small buds and flowers were created in the same way as the previous card.



Now onto a classic.... watercolour....



I stamped and heat embossed the small flower and the small cluster of dots from 'Happy Christmas' in white onto some watercolour card. I stamped the images closer together at the top but more thinned out the further down the card I got to get a falling/cascading effect. I then simply watercoloured the flowers and then created a blue background wash. The sentiment is from 'A Tree For All Seasons' , and this stunning sentiment is simply stamped onto some vellum so it 'pops' a little more.



My last card for today is a kind of fun one....



I wanted to change the doe from 'Happy Christmas' into a lamb... well how do you think I did? I'm thinking I pulled it off ;) So to start I again stamped the beautiful wreath from 'Happy Christmas' this time I used green ink as I wanted a softer effect ad then coloured with some pencils. I then stamped the afore mentioned doe in a grey ink, I then used some white embossing paste to cover his body and the top of his head. Instead of letting the embossing paste dry naturally I heated it with a heat tool, this made the paste bubble and fluff up giving me this awesome wooly texture. The sentiment I made up from a mix of two stamp sets, 'have' is from 'The Big, the Bold and Extras' and the 'big' and 'dreams' are from 'The Big, the Bold and Party'. I have to say that I truly love Winnie & Walter sentiments! I adore the mix and match fonts and words, they are all just a great size and so useable with each other!



Before I finish my first Leading Lady post I would like to thank Julie and Shay again for asking me to do this month, you ladies are awesome! I can't wait to share with you again next Saturday, I just have lots more ideas I want to share.

Before you guys run off I would love to know what you think of my cards, your comments mean the world to me. Also as Julie and Shay are so generous they have given me a $30 gift card to the Winnie & Walter store over on my blog, so if you hope over there and leave me some love I will choose a random winner from all the comments left on my Leading Lady posts through April.

See you next week!
Hugs Lydia xxx  


w&w supplies used:

A Tree For All Seasons	Happy Christmas	The Big, the Bold and Extras	The Big, the Bold and Party	The Party	Essentials: Katharine Cutaways
The Big, the Bold and Party Cutaways

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