Love and Friendship

This category includes: Valentines Day, engagement, wedding, anniversary, friends

All Things Merry

Hello everyone!!

Today I’m playing along with the current Pinkfresh Studio monthly challenge which has a theme of ‘Texture & Shine’.

I used a few of my new Pinkfresh products – the fabulous Bloomlight Stitches Coverplate die that landed on my doormat yesterday plus the Holiday Express dies (trees) and some patterned mirror card and got crafty! I added some glittery thread for added texture and replaced a few little circles on the background with glittery circles.

The sentiment is from a set that was the October 2025 Create & Connect event swag.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Basket of flowers

Hi there everyone!!

I’ve been taking a break from card challenges recently but when I saw that one of my favourite challenges, Freshly Made Sketches was celebrating a major milestone, I had to play along. This week’s challenge is number 700 meaning that the weekly challenge has been running for 14 years! 14 years!! Isn’t that amazing?! I’m really grateful to the team who always work so hard each week – coming up with amazing inspiration and leaving kind and uplifting comments. Thank you so much – I know being a challenge DT member is quite a commitment and I really appreciate all you do.

The challenge this week uses sketch number 14 and each DT member shared when they first started playing along with the challenge. I got curious and I think I started back in November 2016 for challenge number 261 – I didn’t have a blog back then but shared on Instagram only.

For my card, I used the gorgeous Into The Blooms – Above Ground die set by Papertrey Ink. This beautiful set was just released last month, and I just had to buy it from the US as I haven’t found a UK retailer for Papertrey. I love that basket and all the little elements… although I think some of those tiny dies may end up on the AWOL list before too long! I coloured the images with various inks and then arranged them on a card base that I had covered with four squares from the Dotted Postage Squares die set by Pinkfresh Studio.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Sunshine and Smiles all around!

Hello from an incredibly HOT London!!

Before I throw myself into Christmas in July, I wanted to share a few more cards that I made with Pinkfresh Studio’s Sunshine and Smiles release that I won last month.

I bought a few products when Pinkfresh arrived on the scene a decade or so ago but I didn’t really embrace their amazing product suites until I took part in the August 2024 Create and Connect event. I LOVED it and in particular how easy it is to colour their beautiful images with the coordinating stencil sets. Since then I’ve been tuning it to all their amazing Your Tube Live events, learning lots and buying a product suite or three!

First up are two more cards made from the beautiful Garden Medley product suite. I suspect that I wouldn’t have bought this suite because it’s not really my style (I probably would have bought the Keepsakes of the Heart). My goodness, how I would have missed out! I’m really hoping Pinkfresh creates something similar for Christmas!

I’ve shared these in other blog posts, but here are the two cards I created earlier this month, plus the cards I made with the Keepsakes and Timeless Tulips product suites.

Next up is the amazing lighthouse scene created with the Guiding Light suite. Oh, how I loved creating this! I had a lot of fun with the sky, but sadly the colours dried quite light – I need a heavier hand or darker inks next time.

 

 

 

 

The Playful Petals stencil/die set was also great fun to play with but again, I need to use darker inks I think – the colours are subtle in real life and don’t really show up in my photo. I played with lots of different layouts for these images but in the end I paired them with one of my oldest Pinkfresh die sets called Noteworthy Frames – dated 2018!

 

 

 

 

 

Last but by no means least is a card I created with the Summer Fun stencil/die combo. I confess that I wasn’t going to play with this one just yet but with it being the hottest day of the year so far I HAD to get it out today. I also used a background/frame die by Mama Elephant. The sentiment is from the Sunshine and Smiles sentiment set.

 

 

 

I had SO much fun with these products and I know I will be reaching for them time and time again – after Christmas in July of course. Many thanks once again to Pinkfresh for their amazing prize!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Amazing Potted Shelves

Happy Saturday everyone!!

There’s quite a classic sketch for this week’s Freshly Made Sketches challenge but when I saw it I decide that I could actually use a new stamp and die set – the Mini Delight Potted Shelves stamp and die set.

I started by ink blending part of my card base and then stamped the shelf images using Distress Archival inks. I wish that the connectors had been a little longer so that I could stamp them from the top of the ink blending but I wanted to align the three shelves like the squares in the sketch so I decided I would use a die cut to anchor the top of the shelves.

I then had a lot of fun creating my little pots with Craft Consortium paper and also added a few Penny Black die cuts as well. Once I was happy with the images, I played around with various die cuts for the shelf anchors and ended up doing with The Stamp Market’s daisies cut from vellum.

To complete my card, I added a sentiment by The Greetery.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Timeless Tulips

Hello everyone!!

I’m still playing with the Sunshine and Smiles release from Pinkfresh Studio that I won last month. I just love how easy it is to colour their beautiful images with the coordinating stencil sets! I coloured the Timeless Tulips image this weekend and decided it would work well with the sketch for this week’s Freshly Made Sketches challenge.

The image is large – maybe 10cms tall so I decided to use a larger card base – this is 7″x5″ (yes, you know I hate inches but the whole inches I can cope with, it’s when I have to deal with fractions of an inch that my metric head can’t cope!). For the background, I embossed a white panel with the Radiant Burst embossing folder by Spellbinders and adhered the tulip image.

The sentiment is from the Sunshine and Smiles sentiment set. I rarely stamp sentiments in coloured ink but the brown version of this sentiment got lost in the tulip stems so I stamped it with one of the Pinkfresh inks that I had used to colour the image – I much prefer how it turned out!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Garden Medley delight

Hello again!

Next up today is my entry into this fortnight’s Color Throwdown challenge which has a combo of green, turquoise and orange.

I decided to use the stunning Pinkfresh Studio Garden Medley product suite which was part of the release that I won last month. When I watched the Sneak Peeks live, I ADORED the cards that Raquel made with this suite but felt that there was no way I could justify buying it because I don’t use background stamps enough. Well after winning it, you can guess that it was the first thing I inked up! It’s a true joy to colour with the stencils. In fact, I love using it so much, I ended up creating two cards with different shades of the combo.

Another member of the DT, Debby, shared an acetate card with this image and I had to give it a go! I love how they turned out, but they are so difficult to photograph! If you look at the first card, you can see that a square section has not been die cut – I thought I could use the reverse of this area for my message. I decided to try it without that square in the second image. I think I prefer it that way as you can see more acetate, although my message will be written in very small letters!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.