Christmas, New Year and Winter

Cheery Mr Snowman

Hello everyone!

I’m so excited that one of my favourite challenges is having a DT call over the next couple of weeks. I love playing along at Freshly Made Sketches, so here is my take on their current sketch – and my entry for the DT call.

I had originally planned a one-layer background, but after creating a blended background with regular distress ink, I tore the front of the card when I was removing the masking tape. Argh! In the end, I cut out my panel and adhered it to another base card. Before adhering it, I applied some luna paste through a Tim Holtz stencil. Oh my! I love this paste so much – it is so sparkly!

I stamped, coloured and cut a cute snowman from the My Favorite Things Frosty Friends set and added that to the centre panel and finally added a small Clearly Besotted sentiment to finish off the card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Tree Trio

Happy Sunday everyone!

It’s time for our last challenge of 2018 over at AAA Cards. The challenge will run until 5 January and the theme is ‘three of something’. Uniko is our sponsor.

I decided to make a quick CAS card with a couple of dies. I used a quirky tree die from Flora and Fauna to cut a remnant of a background I had created with some Color Bursts. I then added a sentiment from the Simon Says Stamp Words in a Line die set – one of my best buys from 2018!

I’m going to enter this in the current Simon Says Stamp Flickr challenge where the theme is die cutting.

My teammates have shared some gorgeous CAS cards on the AAA Cards blog and we are also joined by the talented Ishani from Quillish as our Guest Designer. She has a wonderful style – you must pay her a visit!

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

LucieG.

 

 

Advice from a Snowman

Hello everyone!

Today I’m playing along with the current challenge over at Freshly Made Sketches – it’s a fabulous sketch and perfect for quick and easy cards.

As soon as I saw the sketch, I knew I wanted to use the fabulous new Snowman Advice stamp by Newton’s Nook. I thought I could pair it with some snowman patterned paper, if I had some…. so I went to my paper mountain and found at least SIX different snowman designs! Honestly! SIX!!!

I just had to choose a Basic Grey design. Isn’t it cute? I miss Basic Grey so much. I have many fond memories of being in the Craft Barn in Lingfield back in the day, choosing 12×12 sheets from their new releases…. at least I still have my own Basic Grey mini paper mountain in my craft room!

Anyway, onto the card. I embossed the wording and then blended Altenew and distress inks over it, before wiping the excess from the embossing.

I cut a rectangle of patterned paper and adhered both to my card base. Super quick and simple! I may use this design for some of the Christmas cards I have left to make!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Happy 1 Diecember!

Happy Saturday and Happy 1 Diecember everyone!

I’m very excited that my Simon Says Stamp Thanksgiving Day order arrived this morning and I immediately started playing with my new crafty items!

First up was the stunning Alicia Snowflake die. Isn’t it gorgeous. I have so many snowflake dies that I’ve tried to ban myself from buying them and use the ones I have instead. But I have seen this snowflake all over the place and eventually I caved!

I cut the snowflake from white glitter card. The word die is also from an older SSS die set (Happy Winter) and the embossed stamp is from a SSS sentiment set.

I’m entering this into the current SSS Flickr challenge (Christmas/Holiday) and the SSS Wednesday challenge (anything goes)

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Puffed up

Hi there!

I’m back with another Crafts-U-Love DT card.

Earlier this month I shared how I used the Studio Light stamp and die set to create a paper-pieced card. Today I’m using one of the dies from the set plus another item I received in my DT pack – the intriguingly-named ‘white fluffy stuff’ by Cosmic Shimmer.

It has been YEARS since I played with this sort of product. I recall buying something similar the first Christmas that I was crafting and used it on Santa beards! The Cosmic Shimmer version is very similar… but my style had changed and I was concerned that the Fluffy Stuff might be a little too…. heavy… for the countryside scene that I was originally planning to make as my second card using the Studio Light set.

In the end, I settled on a masked ink blended background to showcase the Fluffy Stuff. I used just one die from the set and cut it several times before masking off a section of my base card and then adding the trees on top.

I gently blended four shades of distress ink (Antique Linen, Victorian Velvet, Seedless Preserves and Dusty Concord) and then removed the masks to reveal my white trees! Then I die cut the Creative Expressions Merry Christmas die a few times from card, adhered the layers together and then onto my card. I planned to add a top layer cut from gold glitter card but as I would be using a heat tool for the Fluffy Stuff, I thought it may be safer to add the glitter layer after heating the Fluffy Stuff.

Once my sentiment was in place, I started to play with the Fluffy Stuff. I wanted to create smaller dots of snow, so I tested the dot size on a piece of spare card. A little goes a LONG way.

In the end, I added very small dots to my base card – I needed quite a steady hand as the Fluffy Stuff flows freely from the bottle and I didn’t want to apply too much by accident!

 

 

Then I got to work heating the Fluffy Stuff! Once this stuff gets hot it certainly puffs up – and actually puffs up a lot more than I expected! And that is where I made a mistake! I was convinced that the two small dots in the bottom left should puff a little more… so I went back to heat them a little more. Result = burnt Fluffy Stuff.

 

 

 

Well I guess this would be ok if I was creating an image of a Baked Alaska but this is not the look I was going for on this particular card!Luckily, once cool, the Fluffy Stuff comes off really easily! Phew!

 

 

 

 

Actually, I managed to knock off a couple of my fluffed up dots when I was adding the top layer of the sentiment. So to prevent this from happening when I added some shimmer to the trees, I positioned a couple of clear blocks on the card to ensure my hand was away from the paper.

In hindsight, I would use the Fluffy Stuff as my very last element to reduce the risk of losing some dots.

 

 

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.

Studio Light tree stamps and dies*

Cosmic Shimmer Fluffy Stuff*

Distress inks

Creative Expressions Merry Christmas die

Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Midas Touch

Spiralling around

Happy Sunday everyone!

It’s time for a new challenge over at AAA Cards and this fortnight we want to see CAS cards that are mostly white. Our sponsor is Stamplorations.

I love white on white and don’t use it enough! As we like to keep layering to a minimum over at AAA cards, I started by dry embossing a frame in the centre of my base card to support the focal point – the beautiful Dixi Craft Christmas Spiral Tree die which I cut from white glitter card. I added a silver die cut star and a sentiment from the Simon Says Stamp Holiday Words on a Line set.

My teammates have shared some gorgeous CAS cards on the AAA Cards blog and we are also joined by our wonderful sponsor, Shery, plus the super talented Sandie from London Days. She has some fabulous creations on her site!

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

LucieG.