Christmas, New Year and Winter

Skating Bear

Hi there everyone!

Well I’m clearly on a roll with my return to My Favourite Things’ challenges. After completing a card for the colour challenge yesterday, today I got to work on the current MFT sketch challenge.

I’ve been meaning to play along with the cute MFT polar bears again and the sketch seemed like the perfect opportunity! I stamped and coloured the skating bear using my Altenew Watercolours and then masked off the image to create a soft ink-blended background. To create the blue vertical panel, I embossed the MFT Scribble Circles background stamp and then applied a watercolour wash using one colour from the Altenew set.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Merry Snowflakes

Hi there!

It’s been a while since I participated in a My Favorite Things challenge. Not sure why as I have so many MFT products…. Anyway, today I decided to play along with the MFT Colour Challenge. It’s a  really interesting palette (two shades of blue, kraft and persimmon), which many of the team had used to create cute scenes, but I immediately thought of my snowflake dies! I agonised about getting these a few years ago, but I am so glad I did, as they are still amongst my favourite Christmas dies!

Anyway, I used the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge for my card – love the CAS design that Amy came up with!

Before I finish this post, I have to say that I still can’t believe I had glitter card that was the perfect shade of persimmon! Hmmm…. that might be because my glitter card collection is quite extensive!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Mod Tree

Happy Friyay people!

My mojo appears to have gone AWOL. I’ve tried to craft so many times this week, and have failed miserably. But look! I finally finished a card today! Hurrah!

I decided to use the colours from this week’s Color Throwdown challenge (lime green, green, aqua and eggplant) to create another Christmas card. The tree die is one of my very first Simon Says Stamp dies. I think it’s retired now, but I still love it!

I cut the tree and Savvy Stamps sentiment from eggplant cardstock although it looks quite brown on screen. It actually looks much closer in colour to the small bits of eggplant ink I added to my background panel, but they look quite different here.

Anyway, I’m also entering this into the current CAS Christmas challenge (tree).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Merry Christmas to you

Happy Sunday everyone!

It’s time for a new challenge over at AAA Cards and this fortnight we are challenging you to use a stencil. Our sponsor is Stamplorations.

I love stencils. The price point is great and you can do so much with them. Great for quick and simple cards and I often use part of a stencil to ‘ground’ an image in my CAS cards. My stencil collection has grown a lot over the last couple of years!

For my take on the theme, I decided to use a stencil by John Next Door as a main focal point for some quick CAS Christmas cards.

A few weeks ago, I bought some Ranger detail blending tools – they are tiny and perfect for detail stencilling! They made it very easy to use different distress oxide inks on parts of this stencilled tree! After inking the image, with the stencil still in place, I coated the tree with Cosmic Shimmer sparkle texture paste.

It was quite interesting to see how the paste changed the colour of the underlying distress oxide. For example, I used Dusty Concord for my second tree, but I think it looks like Seedless Preserves, don’t you? Once the glitter had dried, I stamped the small Simon Says Stamp sentiment to create a tree trunk!

My teammates have shared some gorgeous CAS cards on the AAA Cards blog and we are also joined by our wonderful sponsor, Sherry, plus the super talented Hannelie from Desert Diva and Steph from Morticraft as our Guest Designers. They have some fabulous creations on their sites!

I’m also entering my green tree card into the current CAS Christmas challenge as the theme is ‘tree’.

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

LucieG.

Stop! It’s Tinsel Time!

Happy Saturday, people!

It’s a typical British summer’s day (overcast, cool) and I should be in the garden as some shrubs need serious attention…. but I’m in the craft room instead playing with my fabulous new Avery Elle Quirky Trees stamp set!

Last month, I told myself I would be more restrained with Christmas supplies this year – I have so much already! And what do I do as soon as the first release hits the stores… But at least I only got the one set I suppose!

Anyway, I couldn’t wait to ink up those quirky trees and decided to use the lovely colour scheme that the Color Throwdown has this week (grey, teal and pink). I cut out a middle section of the card as I love the see-through effect and was please that the card turned out to be quite stable!

To finish off the card, I added some Stickles and my favourite sentiment from the set. Am I the only one thinking of the ‘Stop! Hammer Time!’ lyric from the MC Hammer song (U can’t touch this)?? Yes? I know, it’s not just these trees that are quirky!

Anyway, I’m also entering this into the current CAS Christmas challenge where the theme is ‘tree’.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Glittery holly berries

 

Hi everyone!

I’ve been playing with more Christmas supplies that I bought in the January sales. I’ve really enjoyed Christmas in July and plan to continue it into August!

For this card I used a holly die from Penny Black and a Tim Holtz stencil. The sentiment is by Clearly Besotted.

I coloured the leaves and berries using regular distress ink and used distress oxide to create the stencilled panel. To finish off the card, I added some Nuvo red gliiter drops. I really love how these dry in a beautiful dome! I’ve finally found a way of creating dots and easily adding them to my project when dry – I use waxy paper! I had previously used acetate and a clear block but it was so difficult to remove the dried dots! They comeoff the waxy paper very easily indeed!

I’m entering this into the current Color Throwdown challenge (red, green and grey), Freshly Made Sketches challenge and the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge (Christmas in July).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.