Christmas, New Year and Winter

Day 4 – 25 Days of Christmas Tags

Hi there!

I’m playing along with Tracey McNeely’s 25 Days of Christmas Tags event this year.

The Day 4 sponsor was Reverse Confetti. Love love love their products and could not believe that I didn’t have anything Christmassy by them! Rather than re-purpose one of their sets, I decided to use a very old wood-mounted stamp from Funstamps as I had been absolutely inspired by the blue/white/snowmen tags that the DT had come up with – I guess my tag is a hybrid of tags made by Jen del Muro and Heather Hoffman.

I created a background using a stencil and the stamped a sentiment from Hero Arts before creating a shaker using a frame die from my Favorite Things. Then I turned to my ‘oldie but goodie’ snowman which I coloured with Twinkling H2Os before fussy cutting him out. I added him to the top of my shaker – thanks Jen, for that idea!

To create the ‘hanger’ for the ribbon, I cut part of a Simon Says Stamp ornament die and stuck that to the back of my tag and then stuck another piece of card on top to prevent it from moving.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

 

Dear Father Christmouse

Hi there everyone!

I love that participating in card challenges often means I reach for stamps I haven’t used for years… or have never used! Today I used a set that I haven’t opened for a long while – and chose a stamp that I don’t think I have ever used!

The theme for the current Casology challenge is ‘List’ and I remembered I had this Penny Black Christmas Critter stamp. I didn’t want to create a whole Christmas scene behind the mouse, so instead I masked off the image and embossed a Wendy Vecchi background stamp and did some soft ink blending.

I added a Penny Back die cut and a Dienamics frame to finish off the card.

I’m also entering this into the current Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge – ‘Creatures Great and Smlla’>

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Week 273 - List

Day 3 – 25 Days of Christmas Tags

Hi everyone!

I’m playing along with Tracey McNeely’s 25 Days of Christmas Tags event this year.

The sponsor for Day 3 was  CAS-ual Fridays. Unbelievably, I don’t seem to have any CAS-ual Fridays products! I though t I had one stamp set, but I can’t seem to find it. Anyway, the inspiration was great and I decided to use my Simon  Says Stamp/Avery Elle Stamptember 2017 set for my take on Shona Chambers’s tag.

I embossed the image and coloured it with my Twinkling H2os following Shona’s colour scheme. I cut it out (can’t believe I managed to fit the whole image within the circle!) and then stuck it onto a tag I had created from a Spellbinders die. Unbelievably, I found some ribbon in my enormous ‘ribbon river’ which matched the colours I’d used perfectly!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Day 2 – 25 Days of Christmas Tags

Hi there!

I’m playing along with Tracey McNeely’s 25 Day’s of Christmas Tags event this year.

The sponsor for Day 2 was Newton’s Nook. I love Newton so I had a lot of choice when it came to choosing supplies for this tag! The inspiration tags were fabulous – there were so many that I could have chosen for today, but as soon as I saw Larissa Heskett’s tag, I knew I had to use that as my inspiration! I loved the background she did and was so pleased to see that she had explained the technique on her blog post.

Here is my take. I stamped an older Newton’s Nook image and then masked it off to work on the background. Following Larissa’s instructions, I took a stencil (the one I used was by Altenew) and inked over it with various distress inks before applying a layer of versamark. I then added clear embossing powder before blending some distress oxide and distress ink over it. So happy with the way it turned out! I will be using this technique again!

Anyway, I coloured Newton and his snowman with Twinkling H2o’s and then added a piece of ribbon to finish off the tag.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Day 1 – 25 Days of Christmas Tags

Hi everyone!

I love to make tags for the gifts I give at Christmas but I must confess, while I am usually pretty good with Christmas cards, I am often finishing my tags early on Christmas morning!

I’m so happy that I found out about Tracey McNeely’s 25 Days of Christmas Tags! This event is so inspirational and I hope to keep reasonably up to date – provided I do, I should have at least 25 tags done by the end of the month. Each day has a sponsor and I am going to try to use products from each sponsor wherever I can.

Simon Says Stamp was the sponsor for Day 1 and I must say all the inspiration tags were amazing. In the end, I took Jo Nevill’s beautiful tag and put my own spin on it using stamps from Simon Says Stamp. The main image is from a Simons/Clearly Besotted collaboration for Stamptember 2014 – isn’t it fabulous? Anyway, both the image and sentiment are embossed in gold sparkle powder so this tag is really sparkly in real life.

I’m also entering this into the current Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – ‘Christmas Gift Tag’.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Pretty Christmas cards

Hi everyone!

I attended my first card making class in the UK for a long time yesterday and it was great fun! Kay Carley was running an all day class for the Craft Barn in Lingfield. Side note: the Craft Barn was where it all began for me many years ago – where I experienced the magic of embossing for the first time, learnt so many techniques and made friends with fellow crafters. I virtually lived there every Saturday and was heartbroken when the owner decided to close. The store was rescued and changed hands before relocating to another local town. It’s now an online-only business but I am glad it still provides some classes at the local community centre. It was sad to go back to Lingfield and see the ‘old place’ all boarded up, but that’s life I guess!

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me and that trip down memory lane. back to the cards…

Kay showed us how to make two cards using her new stamps from Paperartsy. When I saw samples for this class online, I thought the backgrounds had been made using distress inks – we actually used Paperartsy’s Fresco Finish paints. Totally outside my comfort zone but great fun to use and some beautiful colours!!

 For the first card, I followed Kay’s sample colours. I was a bit nervous about outlining the embossed images using distress markers, but that black line really makes the images pop, don’t you think?

 

 

 

 

Kay’s second card followed the same colour theme as her first one, but I decided to try a different palette. Some of these shades remind me so much of distress inks (especially Seedless Preserves and Broken China).

I enjoyed making the backgrounds with the paints – it was great to stamp on the backgrounds and then water colour the images… now I just need to decide if I want to explore this medium a bit more! I particularly like the metallic paint we used for the tree trunks (a bottle may have made its way into my basket!).

Thanks Kay for a great class, and great inspiration!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.