Christmas Card Throwdown Guest Designer

Hello everyone!

During Christmas in July, I discovered a new-to-me challenge, the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown! I love the idea of creating one Christmas card each week and hope to continue to play along throughout the year!

I’m honoured to be the Guest Designer for their current colour challenge; this month’s palette is orange, green and gold.

What an interesting combo for festive cards! I actually worked with a similar palette during Christmas in July. I liked the idea of having a green background again but I wanted to switch it up a bit this time….

So, I created a blended background using Spiced Marmalade and Carved Pumpkin distress inks and a Taylored Expressions oval stencil.  I splattered and then lifted some water droplets before using a Uniko stencil with some green Nuvo embellishment mousse – love the shimmer from this paste!

I added a gold Impression Obsession deer and a Memory Box sentiment to complete my card.

The Design Team have some amazing inspiration over on the challenge blog – you must check it out! Hope you can play along with the challenge – I can’t wait to see how this palette is used!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

AAA Cards Along the edge challenge with beach twist

Hi there!

It’s time for another challenge at AAA Cards!  This fortnight we’d like you to create a CAS card using just one edge of your card. Our optional twist this time is ‘beach’. Stamplorations is our sponsor.

We had a beach theme back when I had just started on the AAA challenge blog – see the card I made at the time here. I was tempted to use those fabulous beach huts again but then as I was reorganising my craft room, I came across the beautiful Stampin Up Summer By the Sea set that I’ve had for well over a decade. I don’t think I’ve ever used the boy/sandcastle stamp and thought it would be perfect for this challenge! And I love inking up those wood-mounted stamps, there is nothing like them! Of course cling and clear stamps are much easier to use nowadays with the MISTI and other stamp platforms! I coloured the image with my Twinkling H2O paints and added a sentiment from a Simon Says Stamp set to complete my card.

My team mates have come up with some beautiful cards which are on the AAA Cards challenge blog. We are also joined by a previous challenge winner, Vicky, who has some lovely inspiration on her blog!

Hope you can play along with us!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

LucieG Christmas in July 2020 Challenge

Hi everyone!

Last November, life got super busy for me and I was so grateful that I had devoted July 2019 to Christmas cardmaking! It meant I had enough handmade cards to send out to friends and family! I couldn’t wait to do the same this year!

Once again, I LOVED devoting a whole month to Christmas cards and I’m not ready to move on from making Christmas cards now! I have some really lovely festive supplies and I’ll definitely be creating more Christmas cards on and off during August.

Like last year, I generally ‘shopped my stash’ to create my cards and didn’t have the ‘distraction’ of new stuff! I truly feel that sometimes ‘fast craft fashion’ means so many items don’t get the ‘air time’ they merit – most brands don’t have their festive releases ready for Christmas in July which makes it easy to devote crafty time to existing supplies!

It was also fun to create festive cards for challenges which were not focussed on Christmas-themed cards! I ended up with cards using non-traditional colours – some challenges really stretched my creativity!

Thanks to everyone who followed along and shared kind comments with me – I really appreciate all of you!

Have a great day!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2020 – Bonus Day

Hello All!

Well it’s the early hours of the first day of August! I can’t believe Christmas in July is over – I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge I set myself and I know I will be grateful to have all these cards in November when I will need them! I’ll carry on creating Christmas cards quite frequently too, at least I hope I will!

Anyway, as I enjoyed myself so much, I carried on with my Christmas crafting during 31 July so I’m calling this one my Bonus Christmas in July card!

I’m playing along with one of my favourite challenges – the Color Throwdown challenge. I thought this week’s colour palette (black, white and terracotta) would be perfect for a reindeer scene and this is what I came up with. I used dies by Memory Box, Taylored Expressions and Penny Black. I created a little interest to the night sky by applying some transparent texture paste through a stencil. First time using that and I like it! Very subtle but also nicely glossy in real life!

To complete my card, I added a sentiment by Mama Elephant.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2020 – Day 31

Happy Friyay everyone!

Can you believe it’s Day 31 of  Christmas in July? How did that happen? Today I’ve been taking a trip down memory lane while playing along the Freshly Made Sketches challenge .

The theme of the challenge is ‘slimline card’. It took me back to the happy Saturdays that I spent taking card classes at my local (and much-missed) craft store. We rarely made ‘standard’ size cards and would often make slimline cards. I actually bought a lot of pre-creased card bases for slimline cards…. and then I discovered the Instagram card making community where slimline cards were not fashionable. I am so glad I kept hold of those bases though! Slimline cards are back in vogue and I am jumping back into creating them!

I used the beautiful Snowberry Sprig die by Memory Box, together with a stem die from Poppystamps and a vase die by Altenew. The sentiment is from an old Penny Black set.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2020 – Day 30

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Day 30 of Christmas in July! Today I’m playing along with the Case this Sketch challenge.

As soon as I saw the sketch I thought ‘SNOWFLAKES!!’ and pulled out my favourite dies by My Favorite Things. I used some Echo Park patterned paper from my paper mountain and a sentiment from an older Penny Black set.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.