Birthday

Ornate Trims

Good morning everyone and welcome to the first AAA Cards Challenge of 2019.

We have a fun sketch challenge for you today. You don’t have to create a square card – in fact most of my teammates haven’t done so, but I really like square cards and so I stuck pretty closely to the sketch!

Anyway, as soon as I saw the sketch, I thought of another never been used stamp set – the Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous Ornate Trims set. I masked off an area on the front of my card and got to work with my Distress Oxides.

You’ll see this year we are introducing ‘optional twists’ and this fortnight the twist is pastel colours. As this card was super quick to create, I did another one with pastels. The sentiment stamp is by Simon Says Stamp.

My teammates have made fantastic CAS cards with this sketch and we are also joined my the talented Maria from the White Mood blog.

I do hope you can play along with us – the winner will receive a stamp set from our sponsor Happy Little Stampers and the opportunity to be a guest designer.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Flower Vine Birthday

Hi there!

I love the dainty Flower Vine set that Altenew released just before Christmas and was really looking forward to inking it up and colouring it in! Isn’t it a pretty stamp?

I also got the coordinating dies and used them on this card for a sweet crafty friend who is celebrating her birthday today.

The sentiment is by Clearly Besotted.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Dear Daffodils

Hello everyone!

Happy Friyay! As sad as I am that the festive season is over, I really enjoyed making a spring birthday card today.

As soon as I saw the colour palette for the first Color Throwdown Challenge (yellow, green, black and white), I knew I had to do something flowery! This coincided with the arrival of my Clearly Besotted order and I could not wait to inck up the Spring Daffodils stamp. I coloured them using my Twinkling H2O paints and then adhered the image to a smooshed background I created some time ago using distress oxide inks. And I finally used the My Favorite Things label die which I have had for ages but which I haven’t used….

I added a Brushed Sentiment also by Clearly Besotted and a few Nuvo glitter drops to finish off my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Birthday leaves

 

Happy Sunday everyone!

It’s time for a new challenge over at AAA Cards and this fortnight we have a sketch for you. Our sponsor is Happy Little Stampers.

I love this CAS sketch – lots of ‘white space’ with a great focal point! As we’re now into September (how did that happen?), I decided to use a stamp from Happy Little Stampers’ Doodled Flowers set and create an autumn-themed card. I had such fun using my Altenew watercolour paints again. Love how vibrant they are!

I then cut a circle from a square piece of white card to create a frame to go on top of the leafy background. I knew I wanted to raise the frame a little, but didn’t want to use funky foam. Instead, I created another frame from card and adhered one on top of the other to give my card some very subtle dimension. Finally, I added a Happy Little Stampers sentiment.

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

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

LucieG.

 

Enjoy your day

Hi everyone!

Today I have my next DT post for Crafts-U-Love using the ‘Always Flowers’ stamp set by Pink Fresh Studio. As usual, links to all the products are at the end of my post.

I noticed that my past couple of DT cards have been rather pink, so I was determined to use a different palette this time!

Step 1 – ink blending

Over the past few years, my style has definitely changed and I always tend to make my own backgrounds. My piles of pretty patterned paper are quite unloved, but I just can’t bear to part with them. I’m sure I’ll end up using them at some point (maybe!).

Anyway, when I started on today’s card, I hadn’t decided the size, so I used a larger piece of cardstock and blended three distress oxide inks. This ink is fabulous for blending!

 

Step 2 – stamping

Once I was happy with my blending, I randomly stamped images from the stamp set.

Step 3 – ink lifting

One of my favourite techniques with distress ink (regular and oxide) is ink lifting. I usually do this with larger images, but it’s easy to do with smaller images too.  I simply ‘painted’ water onto each image and then blotted it off to remove the ink. As usual, when working with smaller images, it’s best to use a small brush for all that detail work, and also ensure that the brush isn’t too wet. I also made sure to wipe off my brush at regular intervals – otherwise I’d start applying some of the colour I’d just removed!!

Quick, easy and effective! Once I finished, I almost stopped and started to assemble the card as I love the effect so much!

Step 4 – colouring

But in the end I decided to watercolour the images using my distress inks, diluted with a bit of water.

After colouring the images, I felt that the gaps between the images was a little too large so I stamped a couple of images from the Pinkfresh Studio ‘Happy’ set.

I then cut down the panel to fit on a square card base. I stamped a Hero Arts sentiment onto a strip of card which I adhered to the base. (The remainder of the background card will go into my ‘bases box’ as I know I can use it on another card!) I then stamped, coloured and fussy cut a couple of flowers and adhered them and a few gems to finish off the card.

I’m also entering this card into the current Pinkfresh Studio challenge as I was inspired by their summer theme and loved their colour palette (although I was determined to stay away from pink!)

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.

Pinkfresh Studio – Always Flowers stamp set*

Hero Arts – Happy Birthday Messages stamp set

Pinkfresh Studio – Word series stamp set – Happy*

Distress Oxide ink

Distress ink

Brilliance ink

Papermania adhesive stones*

Happiest of birthdays

Happy Friyay people!

My Altenew Watercolour paints arrived this morning so I had a fun afternoon swatching and playing with them! They made using this week’s Color Throwdown challenge palette (aqua, peach, light grey and white) very easy indeed!

I finally inked up and embossed part of the Simon Says Stamp Centre Cut Flowers stamp and coloured it with my new paints.  I dry embossed a strip of grey cardstock and adhered it to my base card before adding the coloured image.

To finish off the card I added a sentiment from My Favorite Things.

I’m also entering this into the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge and the Simon Says Stamp Flickr challenge (anything goes).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.