Birthday

Seeing dots

 

Happy Saturday everyone!

So, it should come as no surprise that I LOVE background dies. The Altenew Doodled Dots cover die is no exception and I was fortunate enough to get mine during Dies to Die For’s recent Easter discount weekend. It is such a beautiful die – I’m looking forward to using it with an ink blended background, but first of all I decided to play along with this week’s Color Throwdown Challenge (pink, red, mint) and used it with some coloured cardstock.

(That cardstock really is mint-like in real life, honest! Unfortunately it looks quite aqua in my photos…)

I’d love to say these were quick makes. That would be a lie! It took HOURS to inlay all those little dots….. I may have got a little frustrated… but now that it’s over, I like having the set of three cards to compare! Plus three more cards to add to my ‘stock’!

To finish off the cards, I used dies from Savvy Stamps and Penny Black.

So, which one is your favourite?

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Purrfect Birthday

 

Hi Everyone!

I have the honour of being the GD over at the Case This Sketch challenge. This week was a throwback sketch from a few years ago – before I discovered the challenge! I had LOTS of ideas for this one as it’s wonderful for creating CAS cards, don’t you think?

Anyway, for my card, I used some of my patterned paper mountain plus some cute kitty dies from Impression Obsession and a sentiment from Altenew.

There’s lots of inspiration over at the Case This sketch blog – I hope you can play along!

I’m also entering this into the current Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge (a trio of something).

LucieG.

Go wild on your birthday

Hi everyone!

There’s a wonderful photo inspiration over at the Time Out challenge blog – gorgeous spring colours, but I really wanted to ink up my new Hero Arts background stamp, so here’s what I came up with!

I also love layering stamps so used a new-to-me set also from Hero Arts to create the lion. I was so impressed with how easy it was to line up these stamps sometimes it can take me quite a while to get a decent impression as I often misalign one stamp – not with the lion set. This was my first attempt and I just love how that lion turned out. Now that I’ve assembled it, the card and background together kind of reminds me of a lion version of the Bocca della Verita in Rome, don’t you think?!

Anyway, I’m also entering this into the current A Blog Named Hero challenge (favourite products).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Blended Blissful Butterflies

Happy Easter Sunday everyone!

It’s time for a new challenge over at AAA Cards, but before I get on to that I must just say that the response to the last challenge was AMAZING! So many beautiful CAS cards in our gallery and some wonderful inspiration! THANK YOU.

Anyway, this fortnight’s theme is ‘a favourite technique’ and our sponsor is Sugar Pea Designs.

Favourite technique! How can I choose just one? Heat embossing – who isn’t amazed by that process?! Dry embossing – so effective! Colouring – so soothing! TOO MANY FUN TECHNIQUES!

In the end I decided to combine a few of my favourite techniques – inlaid die cutting, ink blending and adding shimmer – although realistically I’m not sure that last one is really a technique!

Anyway, for my card, I blended some distress inks (Tumbled Glass, Shaded Lilac and Cracked Pistachio) and spritzed some perfect pearls that I had mixed with water. I then cut the blended panel and some glitter card with the Memory Box Blissful Butterfly Border.

So that the die cut would be truly inlaid, I also cut the base card with the die and then added a cardstock panel to the inside of the base card. This panel then served as a base for the die cut. Hope that makes sense?!

This is the reverse of the panel, on the inside of my card.

Once I’d inlaid the glitter outline and blended butterflies, I added a Winnie & Walter sentiment to finish off my card.

My teammates have shared some gorgeous CAS cards on the AAA Cards blog and we are also joined by one Guest Designer – Anita from Neet & Crafty. She has some amazing creations on her blog, so please drop by her site!

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

LucieG.

Birthdays are full of sunshine….

Hi everyone!

The theme for the Time Out Challenge’s 4th birthday challenge is ‘birthday’ and here is my take. I decided to play along with the Where Creativity Meets C9 challenge as well as I have a few Concord and 9th products that I was itching to use.

I started with a background I created with a couple of distress oxide inks to cut the rosette from the Hooray Ribbon die set. I followed the helpful C9 video to fold the rosette – I must confess that this took MUCH longer than I expected mainly because I’d used a very thick cardstock so it was quite difficult to fold the card along the score lines.

For the sentiment, I inked up a stamp from the Cuddles and Hugs stamp set and cut the ‘happy’ from the Happy Balloons die set. Finally to create the background, I used the Polka Dot Turnabout stamp with distress oxide inks.

Although it took a long time, I really enjoyed using so many of my C9 products – great fun!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Leaf bursts

Hi there!

I’m still on a quest to find my mojo and decided to enter the Altenew inspiration challenge as I haven’t played along in that for a while. I pulled out the fabulous new Altenew leaf burst stencil and got masking/inking.

I really liked the blue/peach combo… and then I re-read the Altenew challenge – the colours are actually blue, CORAL and light brown! So I redid the card with the correct colour combo!

Which one do you prefer?

I’m also entering this into the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.