Christmas, New Year and Winter

30 Day Christmas Card Challenge 2024 – Day 2

Hi everyone!

I’m playing along with Martin’s 30 Day Christmas Card Challenge this month.

Today’s challenge is ‘Gingerbread Dreams’. I couldn’t find any gingerbread stamps or dies in my rather extensive collection but then I remembered the Gingermas House that I received in Pinkfresh Studio’s Holiday event kit!

I embossed it on kraft and coloured it with my Prisma coloured pencils. I embossed a kraft background panel with a Spellbinders folder and added The Greetery’s Pine Wisp die cut (which is actually cut from antique gold card) before adhering the house and adding a few pearls to complete my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

30 Day Christmas Card Challenge 2024 – Day 1

Hi everyone!

I can’t believe it’s November already, can you? It’s always a busy month for me but when I stumbled on Martin’s 30 Day Christmas Card Challenge, I decided to jump right in! All my own cards are done thanks to Christmas in July so this one is for the joy of creating.

The first challenge is ‘O Christmas Tree’ well of course I had to use the Stampin’ Up Decorative Trees for this one didn’t I? The sentiment in the set is absolutely perfect for today’s theme! The glitter circle was cut with a Hero Arts stars background.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Primary Tree

Hello again!

Next up today is my entry in this week’s Color Throwdown challenge which has a primary combo of red, yellow and blue. One of my very first entries into the Color Throwdown was for this very combo in 2016, before I had this blog, but I did create this card for another primary combo in 2021. I have to confess that I find this combo very challenging and I was going to skip it until I saw the little chubby tree card I created a few weeks ago which combined an aqua/blue tree and red pearls… and so I was inspired to get crafty!

I saw a card using the Stampin’ Up Decorative Trees on Instagram in mid September. I rarely buy from Stampin’ Up partly because I’ve found their dispatch to be very slow and I’m very impatient for new goodies. But I liked the trees so much that I said that I would get them the next time I spotted an offer on shipping. I checked and there was a post for free shipping the very next day! I could not believe it! And to top it off, the order was actually shipped two days later!

Anyway, I used a couple of tree dies for this card, together with a circle die from The Greetery and a Spellbinders embossing folder.

The sentiment is by Mama Elephant.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Deer shaker

Happy Monday everyone!

Today I’m playing along with this week’s Freshly Made Sketches challenge using some products kindly sent to me by Penny Black from their new release – Wishing You Joy – Christmas Round 2 plus some older products.

When I saw the beautiful Rural Winter stamp (40-944), I zeroed in on the cluster of trees to the right of the image and knew that there would be so many possibilities with just a section of the stamp, as well as creating a card with the full landscape. I stamped the trees using various distress inks and pens and added some glitter to the background. I then added the cute deer from the Together die set (51-069) which I cut from gold glitter card and reversed the image. I always find that glitter card is the most forgiving card when reversing die cuts. I layered the deer on a few die cuts as its legs are very delicate before adhering it to my stamped panel. I added my most-used star from the Christmas Wonderland die set (51-562).

To create the shaker frame I cut the middle-sized image from the wonderful new Whirl die set (51-827) several times and adhered them together – you could also use foam tape instead of all the layers of card if you prefer. I added some sequin stars to create my shaker card.

For the card base, I used the new Comfy embossing folder (65-023)

This shaker card was really difficult to photograph in my photo/lighting box so I had to get a bit creative but I think I got there in the end!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Beautiful berries

Hello there!

Today I’m using products kindly sent to me by Penny Black from their new Christmas release, Wishing You Joy – Christmas Round 2 plus some products from previous releases.

I love embossing folders and I was delighted to see that Penny Black has just launched some 3D folders, one of which is my focal point for my card today. I was absolutely amazed by the depth and detail of the Berries Abound folder (65-022) when I used it for the first time – it really is stunning! I cut it with the coordinating die (51-851) and coloured it using the 3 stencil set (25-026) and distress inks with detail blending brushes.

This is a large image (I’m using a UK A6 card size for reference here) and I tried it with a few different sized cards and layouts before choosing this one! I added the basket from last year’s Berry Basket set (51-796) coloured with distress inks plus greenery for the basket (Garden Edgers 51-549) and the Holly Days branch die (51-741) – cut from white glitter card.

I added a sentiment from the Meaningful stamp set (30-919) to complete my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Pinkfresh Studio Create and Connect October 2024

Hi everyone!

Last weekend, I took part in the Pinkfresh Studio Create and Connect Christmas event. I signed up for this event back in July after receiving my August event box which was amazing. You can read my thoughts about the August event here.

We did some amazing folding for Anett Gelencsér’s class. I managed to do just one Make and Take over the weekend – and it was using images from her stamp/stencil/die set combo.

Next up was one of my favourite cardmakers, Nichol Sphor. We focused on adding text to cards and although my ‘heat resistant’ acetate curled a bit, I enjoyed the techniques! Lea Lawson’s class was the last one of Day 1. We used a fabulous cookie set and I deviated a bit to use kraft card and distress oxides!

I didn’t do the guest company class (class 4), but these are the cards I made for Classes 5 and 6. I adore the foliage die/stencil set that Heather Hoffman used – I think it will become a staple in my Christmas crafting for years to come! And Jennifer Maguire’s class was a lot of fun – we made cards that I wouldn’t make by myself – and that is why I love these events so much as they are an opportunity to try something new!