Christmas, New Year and Winter

Purple winter birds

Hi everyone!

I love my old wood-mounted rubber stamps, I really do! Yes, they take up a lot of storage space and you can’t ‘restamp’ an image like you can with a cling or clear stamp, but I still love them and could never part with them! I have a storage system that works well for me, it’s just that with all the new crafty stuff being released each month, they don’t get as much ‘airtime’ as they should!

And this Christmas has been no exception unfortunately. I’m going to make a conscious effort in 2018 to use at least one of my old wood-mounted stamps a week!

Anyway, on to today’s card! This week’s Less is More challenge is ‘birds/feathers’, so I pulled out this older Magenta image which I coloured with my Prismacolor pencils. The purples look more vibrant in the photo than they are in real life. I think I need to revisit my light setting!

Anyway, I cut some of my older patterned paper with a banner die and then stuck the image panel on top. To finish the card off, I added a Penny Black sentiment and some Nuvo glitter drops.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Colourful Penguin Parade

Hi Everyone!

‘No more layering stamps’. That’s what I told myself in September. Don’t get me wrong I love them. Probably too much as I have quite a few sets in my cupboard that I have used for one card….

My resolve cracked at the end of last month when my local craft store had the gorgeous Hero Arts Baby Penguin set on offer for Black Friday. I loved it when I saw it in the Hero Arts winter catalogue and I still love it!

Anyway, I finally inked it up today! It’s been a while since I made a rainbow card so I pulled out my Altenew ink sets – my ‘go to’ for the layering stamps. This is actually my second attempt – the first one included a yellow penguin, but quite honestly it just looked weird. And I didn’t like the background I created. So, I stamped all the penguins again! I used stencils by Echo Park Paper Co and My Favorite Things for the background and then spent I while wondering what to do about the sentiment….

Then it dawned on me – I could incorporate yellow in another way! I stamped the sentiment banner on yellow cardstock and called the card finished!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Silver Christmas wishes

Hi Everyone!

For today’s card, I pulled out one of the new Hero Arts background dies that I bought with the November kit – isn’t it pretty!

After embossing the image in white, I blended some distress ink over it. I mounted the background onto some coloured card – in real life, the cardstock is much closer to the shade of purple ink I used, honest!

I cut a Simon Says Stamp word die three times – once in silver glitter paper and then twice with plain cardstock and adhered the die cuts together. I added an embossed word banner and called the card finished…. well, almost!

I felt it needed a little something extra so I added some snowflakes from the Simon Says Stamp snowflake banner die as a finishing touch!

I’m entering this into the current challenge over at a Blog Named Hero and also the Simon Says Stamp Flickr challenge (anything goes).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Glittering Holly

Hi there!

For my second card today, I wanted to play with some new Nuvo glitter paste that I bought with Christmas in mind. Can’t believe that I didn’t get round to playing with it until a week before Christmas!

Anyway, I chose the sketch from the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge and used a stencil fromEcho Park Paper Company. Lots of masking with this as I masked off the berries when I did the leaves and vice versa. Totally worth it for the effect!

Unfortunately, when I ran this through my Big Shot, it flattened/dulled the red berries a little – I think the paste may have still been a little damp, althought it felt quite dry to me. Anyway, I popped a little bit of red Nuvo drops on top of each of the berries to make them glisten again! I actually really like the effect, although it did take quite a while to dry!

I added a couple of strips of patterned paper and a die cut from Concord and 9th to finish it off!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Shimmering Ornaments

Hi there!

There’s an absolutely beautiful colour combo over at the Color Throwdown challenge this week – pink, green, kraft and white.

So many possibilities but alas my mojo seemed to have completely disappeared when I sat down to make a card…. luckily a trawl through my older, much-neglected wood-mounted stamps helped considerably!

I embossed beautiful older Magenta stamp with gold embossing powder and coloured it using my Twinkling H20’s. This card shimmers sooo much in real life! Always so hard to capture in a photo.

I cut a square out of a larger square of white card to create a thick frame and stamped a Clearly Besotted greeting in kraft coloured ink before mounting it on top of the image with foam.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.