Christmas, New Year and Winter

Poinsettia in a pot

Greetings!

Another day and another Christmas in July card! For today’s card, I worked with a lovely stamp from Magenta Art Stamps which I got five years ago! It’s another large image and I have struggled to use it in many cards… but I love colouring it in!

I heat embossed the image and then used two shades of red from my Twinkling H2O collection to colour the flowers but you can’t really see the two shades in my pictures unfortunately.

After colouring the image, I added lots of gold splatters using some diluted Cosmic Shimmer powder. On reflection, I feel this may make the card a little busy for a CAS card…. or maybe I feel that because I added a blue card frame rather than my ‘safe choice’ of white card…

To finish off my card, I added a sentiment from Penny Black.

I’m entering this into the CAS Christmas challenge – poinsettia.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Botanical tree

Hi everyone!

I’m fully embracing Christmas in July this year and today I’m playing along with the CAS Christmas challenge which has the theme of ‘poinsettia’.

I decided to use the wonderful Botanical Tree stamp set from Power Poppy. I first saw this stamp on Instagram almost three years ago and bought it after Christmas. Sadly, like most of my Christmas supplies, I don’t use it enough!

The tree is quite large – and I always find it challenging to use a large stamp on a CAS card. So I stamped the image on the left of my card and trimmed off a small part of it. Believe me, I didn’t want to cut anything off that beautiful image, but I think it actually helped to ground the image on the card.

As I wanted to focus attention on the poinsettias within the stamp, I kept the colour scheme very simple and coloured just the poinsettias and leaves at first. However, I felt the image was still unfinished, so I coloured the roses and added some sparkle to the rest of the image using my Nuvo Aqua Shimmer pen. Although this is bit different from my original plan, I still think the poinsettias are very prominent!

The sentiment is also from the same Power Poppy set.

I’m also entering this into the current Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge – Christmas in July.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Blue Christmas trees

Hello there!

The palette for this week’s Color Throwdown challenge is cobalt blue, aqua, grey and white and although the inspiration photo was of a gorgeous Mediterranean sea view, I thought of Christmas cards!

I decided to enter the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge as well and so this is my take on both challenges.

I used dies from Simon Says Stamp and Tonic Studios and blended Blueprint Sketch and Salty Ocean distress oxide inks to create the die cuts.

After I finished the card, I felt the background still needed a little something extra, so I added some stars and dots from a Lawn Fawn background die.

I’m also entering this into the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge (use a die or punch), the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge (Christmas in July) and the Simon Says Stamp Flickr challenge (a favourite technique – inlaid die cutting).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Dashing through the snow

Hello there!

I’m sharing another one of my Christmas in July cards today. Seriously, I can’t believe we’re over halfway through the month! Time is certainly flying by!

Anyway, I’m playing along with the current Case this Sketch challenge and decided to use one of my sweet Memory Box reindeer dies. I coloured the deer using distress oxide inks which I sponged onto the body with an ink blending tool. I then coloured the scarf using the inks with a splash of water.

To create the background, I applied a light coat of Shaded Lilac distress oxide ink through an Echo Park stencil and then added a coat of Tonic Studio moonstone glimmer paste! Love all the sparkle!

The sentiment is from a set by Marianne Designs. I’m delighted to say that I located it very quickly using my new Evernote system. I’ve only just started uploading my supplies to the system (that process is going to take forever!) but really pleased with it so far!

I’m also entering this into a number of other challenges:

CAS Mix Up challenge – colouring die cuts, stamping and my choice (stencilling)

Shopping our Stash challenge – Christmas in July

The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge – Anything Christmas goes

Happy Little Stampers Christmas Challenge – Anything Goes

The Merry Christmas Challenge – Anything Goes

CAS on Friday challenge – Christmas in July

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Let it snow… in July!

Happy Sunday everyone!

It’s time for a new challenge over at AAA Cards! This fortnight we are celebrating Christmas in July and want to see your CAS Christmas Cards!

AS I mentioned in an earlier post, I actually decided to embrace Christmas in July after a crazy cardmaking frenzy last year! I was determined to avoid that again! I’ve already made a few cards – it’s the perfect chance to use the supplies I purchased in the sales or when they came back into stock. It’s also a chance to show some love to some overlooked supplies before I get dazzled by this year’s products!

Anyway, for my card, I used an older snowflake stamp set from Hero Arts and stamped them with various layers of distress oxide inks (picked raspberry, wilted violet and seedless preserves). Once I was happy with the colour mix of each stamped image,  I spritzed them with perfect pearls. I even used one of my very old square punches to cut out the snowflake squares as it was the perfect size for the images!

The sentiment stamp is also from Hero Arts.

My teammates have shared some gorgeous CAS cards on the AAA Cards blog and we are also joined by our sponsor Kylie from Happy Little Stampers as well as our Guest Designer – Maria from White Mood. She has some fabulous creations – you must pay her a visit!

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

LucieG.

Poinsettia Flourish

Happy Friyay people!

It’s ridiculously hot here in the UK but I’m powering on with my Christmas in July cards!

For today’s card, I used a gorgeous Memory Box die and my current favourite product – Tonic Studios Nuvo Crystal Glaze. After colouring the petals, I added some Nuvo Aqua shimmer to the petals before applying the glaze – I just can’t seem to capture the shimmer on camera, unfortunately. It’s really interesting to watch the colour lighten as the glaze dries – the petals were coloured with dark red but clearly I must remember to make my colours evendarker before applying the glaze in future! The sentiment is by CAS-ual Fridays.

I’m entering this into the current Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge, Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge (both red, white and/or blue), the CAS Christmas challenge (poinsettia) and the CAS-ual Fridays challenge (heat embossing).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.