Christmas, New Year and Winter

A die for all seasons

Happy Saturday everyone!

Today I’m playing along with this week’s Color Throwdown challenge which has a fabulous autumnal combo of orange, brown and grey. I really liked the shade of orange in the inspiration photo and I used a blend of distress inks to get close to it!

Penny Black released ‘Making Spirits Bright’, their fabulous festive collection yesterday. There really is something for everyone in this massive collection – I am particularly delighted by all the dies. They are gorgeous! What’s more, so many of them can be used all year round. For my Color Throwdown card, I used Berry Sprig (51-719) and the branches from Nestled (51-722). The branches actually bend to the right rather than the left but I saw that Jill had used the reverse of the dies cut for a few of her cards in this release and I decided to do the same. I smoothed out the edges using a bone folder, and was very happy with the results! To complete my card, I added a sentiment from my current go-to autumnal set – Autumn is Calling (30-863).

Want to see the first card I made with Berry Sprig? Well, it’s a festive one – and here it is!

I paired this beautiful die with a sentiment from the Season to Believe set (30-868) and coloured it using a variety of watercolour paints, including my Twinkling H2Os.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas Card Throwdown – Birds

Hello everyone!

I’m honoured to be the Guest Designer for the current stash challenge over at the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown! The challenge theme is ‘birds’.

I decided to create a tree of robins and cardinals for my take on the theme – I used dies by Memory Box, Poppystamps and Simon Says Stamp. The sentiment is from an older SSS set.

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!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

CAS Christmas Guest Designer

Hi there!

I am so delighted to be a Guest Designer for this month’s CAS Christmas Challenge. The theme this month is ‘ornaments’.

For my CAS card, I used a beautiful PaperArtsy stamp which fits the theme but is rather unusual! I’ve has this set for a while now, but I don’t think I’ve ever used this image. It was such fun to colour with my Twinkling H2O paints – the shimmer is amazing in real life but always so difficult to capture on camera!

I was a bit nervous about adding a sentiment as the first few sentiments I tried seemed a bit too large, so I was quite relieved when I found this small sentiment by Mama Elephant.

The CAS Christmas DT has come up with some amazing inspiration over on the challenge blog. I hope you can play along!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2021 – 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! Even though life got a bit hectic at times in July and it was tough creating a card every day, 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!

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 had to use my favourite Christmas in July purchase – the gorgeous Sizzix 3D Christmas Trees embossing folder! To create the background, I blended some distress oxide ink in the centre of a white panel and applied a generous layer of perfect pearls across it. Then I embossed the whole panel. I coloured and fussy cut my favourite Paper Smooches snowman, adhered him to my embossed base and added a My Favorite Things sentiment on top to complete my card.

I’m adding this to The 12 Months of Christmas Link Up.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2021 – Day 31

Happy Saturday everyone!

Welcome to Day 31 of Christmas in July 2021! Today I’m playing along with the challenge at CAS on Friday where the theme is tiny images.

I used a beautiful festive die set by Simply Graphic adhered to an ink-blended panel. You would not believe how long it took me to arrange those little images! Sometimes I’m too much of a perfectionist.

The sentiment is by Clearly Besotted.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2021 – Day 30

Happy Friyay everyone!

Welcome to Day 30 of Christmas in July 2021! Today I’m playing along with the challenge at Inspirational where the theme is spots/dots.

I haven’t used a kraft-based colour combo during this Christmas in July, even though I love it! So, I decided to go with a neutral palette today. I chose the fabulous Merry Bauble Tree by Poppystamps which I cut from kraft, black and white glitter paper. As I wanted the tree to really stand out against a kraft background, I darkened the cardstock used for the tree with a little Frayed Burlap distress ink.

As I was assembling the tree, I wanted to add a little something to the round tree truck. I liked how that spare dot looked so I added a few more on the larger baubles! Gives it a retro feel, don’t you think?

I added it to a base that I embossed using the Confetti Burst embossing folder by Crafter’s Companion/Sara Davies.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.