Birthday

Happiest of butterflies

 

Hi everyone!

There’s a wonderful sketch over at the Freshly Made Sketches challenge this week.. and here’s my take on it!

I used the beautiful Simon Says Stamp Circle of leaves which I positioned so that the leaves would come from the side of the circle, leaving a nice little area for the sentiment strip.

I created the background panel from distress inks and stamped the My Favorite Things sentiment using a distress oxide ink. The two butterflies are by Penny Black.

I’m also entering this into the Simon Says Stamp Flickr challenge – Anything goes.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

AAA Fifth Birthday

Happy Sunday everyone!

It’s time for a new challenge over at AAA Cards and we are celebrating our fifth birthday with a blog hop and a treasure hunt this fortnight!

Five of the design team members have a picture hidden somewhere in their blog post. Simply find all the pictures and work out the one word that connects them all (hint: it begins with the same letter as the name of our blog!). Then email your answer to our lovely team admininstrator, Jane, at aaacardchallenge at gmail.com.

Our sponsors have been very generous and we have lots of prizes which can be won in a number of ways:

  • Create a card – make a CAS birthday card and link it over at our challenge post in the usual way
  • Enter our treasure hunt
  • Like, comment and follow us on social media (Facebook and Instagram)
  • Visit each of the 8 design team members’ blogs and leave a comment

Here are the blog hop links:

Lucie – you are here!
Maaike
Tracie
Åsa
Bharati
Ceal
Ishani
Jane

For my card, I used the Brilliant Presents die from Simon Says Stamp which I cut from black glitter cardstock. I cut the image a second time from an old panel that I’d created with Color Bursts and Cosmic shimmer powders. It is so sparkly in real life! I lightly stencilled a background using a Simon Says Stamp stencil and adhered the black out line and inlaid the pieces cut from the bright panel. The sentiment is by Clearly Besotted.

And for those of you looking… here is the treasure hunt picture!

My teammates have shared some gorgeous CAS cards on the AAA Cards blog – I do hope you can join in with all the fun this fortnight!

I’m also entering this into the Simon Says Stamp Flickr Challenge (anything goes) and the Seize The Birthday challenge where the theme is ‘anything goes’ and the optional topping is ‘presents’.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Bright tulip fanfare

Hi there!

It’s time for a new challenge at AAA Cards! This fortnight we’re challenging you to use just up to a third of your card base and the optional twist is ‘bright colours’. Our sponsor is JoyClair.

Now, bright colours are generally outside my comfort zone as I naturally reach for muted tones or pastels but it was such a wet, dull day when I was creating my card, I was really excited to be playing with them!

I chose an older die from Poppystamps called Tulip Fanfare. After I die cut the image from white cardstock, I coloured it using my Twinkling H2Os and added coloured pencils for some depth.

I did a bit of controlled ink smooshing on my base card and then adhered the die cut. The stamped sentiment is by Simon Says Stamp.

My team mates have come up with some beautiful cards which are on the AAA Cards challenge blog. We are also joined by Michelle from Seashell Creations – do drop by and take a look at her lovely work – she has some wonderful CAS creations!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Butterfly birthday wishes

Hello everyone and happy Tuesday!

Today, I’m playing along in two challenges – the current Case This Sketch challenge and the Poppystamps monthly challenge.

When I saw the sketch, I played around with various corner stamps but I wanted to do something a bit different so I started looking through my dies. I liked the positioning of the butterflies on the three frames of the Poppystamps Butterfly Triptych die and realised that I could use them in my take on the sketch challenge by simply cutting away half of each of the frames.

First, I prepared my card base by lightly stamping a background stamp by My Favorite Things in Tumbled Glass distress ink. I then took a background I’d created from some distress oxide inks and used it to cut out the butterflies and the Mod Birthday wishes sentiment. I then inlaid the die cut pieces into each butterfly.

Finally I added some glittery butterflies by Simon Says Stamp to finish off my card.

I’m also entering this into the new AAA Birthday Challenge.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Vase of birthday wishes

Hi friends!

Today, I’m playing along with the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge!

I used a die from an Impression Obsession vase die set that I picked up during the Dies-to-Die For Easter sale. I’m really looking forward to using all of those dies over the next few weeks! The funky stems are all from Simply Graphic.

Once I’d assembled my card, I added a small tag with a stamped Hero Arts sentiment and a few of my new Nuvo Summer Sunrise glitter drops. The glitter drops are a lovely subtle warm orange, but a little too subtle for this card as I really wanted to coordinate with the orange die cut. To get the deeper colour, I just added a dot of coloured pencil where I wanted to position each Nuvo drop – that gave me just the extra splash of colour that I was after!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Birthday Pomander

Hello all!

Today I’m playing along with the current Case This sketch challenge. It’s one of THOSE sketches this week – you know when you have a thousand ideas but have to choose just one!

In the end, I decided to use my new Altenew Prettiest Pomander set. I played with this set at the Simon Says Create Make and Takes and of course I HAD to have it after!! I don’t usually stamp the outline image when doing layered stamping, but this one need it because there’s at least one berry that wouldn’t have a stem otherwise. I used a black ink outline for the card I made at Create and I felt that was a little too heavy for the delicate image. This time, I chose a very light grey Altenew ink (Limestone) and a very gentle touch and I’m happy with how it turned out this time!

The sentiment is by Hero Arts and the embossing folder that I used is Radiant Rays by Creative Expressions. I saw Jennifer McGuire use this folder at the weekend and started to hunt for it online afterwards! And then I discovered that I bought it in January!! Honestly! Well at least I made that discovery before I bought it again!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.