Rubber Stamp Tapestry wreath

Hello again!

This is my third and final card from yesterday’s crafting session. All the cards I made yesterday have the same theme (‘wreath’) for this month’s CAS Christmas challenge. As I can’t work out how to use the same link for my three different entries, I’ve decided to do three separate posts – one for each entry.

For my final entry, I dusted down a couple of old Rubber Stamp Tapestry stamp sets to create my wreath. I used distress oxide inks – love how these stamp so nicely but unfortunately I underestimated the drying time and smudged part of my wreath! Argh! Luckily I was able to save the card with a large die cut from Concord & 9th. Phew!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Sending warm winter wishes

Hello again!

This is the second post in today’s series sharing what I made during some much needed downtime in my craft room yesterday. All the cards I made have the same theme (‘wreath’) for this month’s CAS Christmas challenge. As I can’t work out how to use the same link for my three different entries, I’ve decided to do three separate posts – one for each entry.

Anyway, for my second entry I did some more inlaid die cutting with another fabulous Poppystamps die – Ball Wreath! The sentiment is from Hero Arts.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Modern Wreath

Hello everyone! Long time, no ‘see’! Life has been so busy this month, with almost no crafting time, sadly.

Yesterday, I was able to spend some much needed downtime in my craft room and made three cards. All with the same theme (‘wreath’) for this month’s CAS Christmas challenge. As I can’t work out how to use the same link for my three different entries, I’ve decided to do three separate posts – one for each entry. My blog posts are like buses this month….. nothing for ages then three in rapid succession!

Anyway, onto this first entry – a very simple CAS card using my fabulous Poppystamps Modern Wreath die for a spot of inlaid die cutting! The sentiment is from My Sentiments Exactly.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

 

Have the courage to imagine

Hello everyone!

It’s time for a new challenge over at AAA Cards and this fortnight we have a word to inspire your CAS creations – ‘imagine’. Winnie & Walter is our sponsor.

I decided to use a quote as the starting point for my male encouragement card. I knew I wanted to create a simple one layer card so I started with a background stamp to ‘ground’ my quote and image. Before stamping the background, I used a paper towel to remove some ink so that the pattern would be subtle.

I spent a little while choosing the image… I toyed with spaceships and hot air balloons but in the end I chose a vintage plane. All stamps are by Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous and I used regular distress ink and distress oxide.

My teammates have shared some gorgeous CAS cards on the AAA Cards blog and we are also joined by the super talented Izzy from Izzy Scrap as our Guest Designer. She has some beautiful creations – you must pay her a visit!

Thanks for stopping by – I do hope you play along with us!

LucieG.

 

Shimmer and snow

Hi everyone!

It’s been a long busy week with no time for crafting. Hoping to carve out some time to get crafty today… but first I want to share my next DT card for Crafts-U-Love!

I was delighted to receive a couple of die sets from the John Next Door Christmas collection this month. Aren’t they pretty? I couldn’t wait to use them.

Apologies in advance for the quality of some of my process photos in this post. I was having a few lighting problems…

I decided I’d make a shaker card and showcase the dies against a blended distress ink background… of course once I sat down at my craft table, the card evolved a bit differently…

When I sat down, I spotted a couple of bottles of Nuvo Shimmer Powder that I bought a few weeks ago and still hadn’t tried, so I decided to use them to make a background rather than my distress inks.

Step 1 – prepare the surface 

As I knew I’d be adding a TON of water and heat drying the background, I decided to use watercolour paper and taped it to a wooden chopping board I use when I create inky backgrounds before ‘painting’ a coat of water.

I’ve since tried the powders on regular cardstock and they work just as well, although the card did get more warped during the wetting/drying process.

 

 

Step 2 – sprinkle the powder(s)

I then gently sprinkled the powders randomly across the paper. A little goes a long way!

Step 3 – spritz with water/blot as desired!

The pigment from the powders didn’t flow as much as I wanted as my paper had started to dry so I spritzed water onto the paper to spread the pigment a little more across my background. I added a few more sprinkles of powder where I had a lot of white and then started to dry the background with my heat tool.

I also blotted some of the ink to lighten the background a little. I ended up with a very shimmery paper towel and was worried that I’d removed the shimmer from the background. I needn’t have worried! The background was still super shimmery!

Once I finished the background, I started to assemble the card. At this stage, I was still planning to make a shaker card so I cut a square frame and adhered the die-cut snowdrifts to the top and bottom of the frame. As I was holding the frame against the background, I realised that the shimmer wouldn’t be as obvious in a shaker so I decided to simply frame the background instead!

I cut down the background and adhered the frame using foam. One of the snowdrift dies from John Next Door also includes a single whole snowflake so I cut that MANY times and stuck them across the card. Then I added the fabulous sentiment.

I was originally going to use the sentiment cut from mirror card, but when I tried this against the background, I thought a white die cut would stand out a little more. So I cut the sentiment from white cardstock a few times and adhered them together before adding it to the card.

I wanted to add EVEN MORE sparkle so I applied some Nuvo aqua shimmer to the snowflakes and sentiment and some gems across the card. After all, you can never have too much sparkle and shimmer can you?!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Supply List

Here are the links to the products I used on my card. Products marked with an asterisk (*) were kindly sent to me to use.

John Next Door – Snowflake Edges die set*

John Next Door – Festive Greetings die set*

Nuvo Shimmer powder  

Nuvo Aqua Flow pens – glitter gloss

Papermania adhesive stones*

If you decide to buy any of the products I’ve used after reading this post, please let Crafts-U-Love know by using the drop down menu on the checkout page and selecting ‘Design Team’. Please note this is simply to help Crafts-U-Love and I do not receive any compensation if you choose this menu option. I do not use affiliate links.

 

Simply the best

Happy Sunday everyone!

Life has been busy with no time for cardmaking, sadly, but I managed to find a couple of hours today to play along with some of my favourite challenges – the Color Throwdown and Freshly Made Sketches.

There’s a great seasonal colour palette over at the Color Throwdown challenge this week – red, orange and blue. I used distress oxide ink and one of my new Hero Arts glimmer paints to create blue and red background which I then cut with a Penny Black background die. I also used the die to cut a piece of orange glitter card – got to have a bit of sparkle somewhere.

The background die is rectangular but the sketch calls for a square background, so I simply cut an extra section and stuck it to the end of the blue die cut as I knew I could use my sentiment strip to hide the join. I then inlaid the die cut leaves from the orange and red background pieces.

Once I completed the inlaid die cutting, I stamped a Penny Black sentiment and adhered it to the card.

This week, Penny Black announced a holiday challenge (covering autumn, Thanksgiving etc as well as Christmas) – I often play along with other Penny Black challenges but I was so pleased to see one from Penny Black themselves, so I’m entering my autumn card in that challenge as well.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.