Love and Friendship

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

All Smiles 2024

Hello everyone!

Today I’m sharing cards I made with some products kindly sent to me by Penny Black from their new All Smiles release. This is a truly gorgeous release with some amazing stamps and dies. I was very excited to play with the teacups and flowers stamp sets – although I have to confess that I was a little apprehensive about colouring the larger images. But having spent a lovely morning with my paint brush, I think I had just fallen out of practice with water colouring! Before I started, I decided that I wouldn’t put any pressure on myself to create a specific card and would just practice with my different watercolours, card panels and paint brushes. It was such a relaxing time and I surprised myself with some images that I felt comfortable including on a card. So if you’re feeling like me, just focus on enjoying the colouring process and you may surprise yourself!

So onto the cards! First up is a card using a cup from the Brew-tea-full stamp set (31-063), cut with the Brew-tea-full Cut Out co-ordinating die (51-823) and coloured with a liquid watercolour. I love all the blooms in both flower sets that are in this release but in the end I chose to use the daisies from the Blooms stamp set (31-064) that I had coloured with a distress reinker. I cut the image with the Blooms Cut Out coordinating die set (51-824).

For the background, I embossed a panel of coloured card using the Rounded embossing folder (65-016), adhered it to a card base cut from the same colour card. Once I adhered the images, I felt it needed a little something extra so I added a branch, Airy (51-423), cut from glitter card and a small strip of green to ground the cup.

My second card also uses a cup from the Brew-tea-full stamp set (31-063), cut with the co-ordinating die (51-823) and coloured with a distress reinker. This time I wanted to do something a bit different, so used a Penny Black stamp from a few years ago as my inspiration – the stamp is called Sweet Sip (30-905) you can see the card I made with that fabulous image here.

I chose a kitty from the fun Fancy Cat dies set (51-347) and the gorgeous Dignified die (51-821) and coloured them with distress inks. I blended some Tumbled Glass distress ink on my card base and adhered the elements – I ended up separating the leafy branches when arranging the elements in my teacup. I added a leafy border from the Garden Edgers die set (51-549) to ground the teacup plus a sentiment from the Love & Light mini stamp set (31-037) and some stickles and sequins!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Bestest Folk Animals

Hello everyone!

There’s a super sketch for this week’s Freshly Made Sketches challenge – I love that it was a landscape design so I was determined to maintain the orientation, although I did tweak it a bit…

I wanted to use the Hero Arts Folk Animals stamp set from the April 2024 Add-Ons release. However, I wanted the fox to look towards the bird so that meant I needed to flip the sketch so that the  vertical strip was towards the right.

The sentiment is from an older Reverse Confetti set.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Colourful Folk Art

Happy Saturday everyone!

After clearing up last night’s craftermath, I decided to make a card for this week’s Color Throwdown challenge which has a bright combo of yellow, orange and fuschia.

A dear crafty friend kindly gifted me products from the April 2024 My Monthly Hero Add-ons. It’s been a while since I had some new Hero Arts goodies to play with and Hero Arts will always hold a special place in my heart as I spent many a happy Saturday at the Craft Barn in Lingfield making cards with their wood mounted stamps back in the day!

I pulled out the fabulous Colour Layering Folk Art stencils set and got to work. I loved how Nichol Spohr used Distress Oxides with this set and I followed her technique of adding a layer of white ink before applying Distress Oxides (Picked Raspberry, Spiced Marigold, Carved Pumpkin, Scattered Straw and Mustard Seed).

To complete my card I added a few orange enamel dots and a sentiment from the Folk Animals stamp set.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Meow You Doing?

Hello everyone!

There’s a fabulous sketch for this week’s Freshly Made Sketches – when I saw it, I had so many different ideas…. I think I will be using this again very soon!

For today’s card, I decided to use a couple of new Poppystamps products that I picked up in a sale at the start of the year. The focal point is the Napping Cat die and I’ve also used a sentiment from a Poppystamps sentiment set. The background stamp is from a Flora and Fauna set.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Red Bouquet

Happy June everyone!

How can it be June already? After a super busy May, I’m hoping to have more crafty time this month and I want to gear up for my annual Christmas in July challenge!

Today I’m playing along in this week’s Color Throwdown challenge which has a very patriotic red, white and blue combo. I briefly toyed with creating a litt;e London scene with some of my older stamps but my dies won the day and so I ended up with a non-patriotic card, although I do feel this could also be used as a remembrance card.

The two flower dies are by Simon Says Stamp (Layered Perky Flower and Cosmos Stem) and I adhered them to a background embossed with my favourite Stampin Up folder called Painted Texture.

The stamp is by The Greetery.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Inspired by Wedgwood

Hello there!

This evening I suddenly remembered that I wanted to play along with the Poppystamps Bloom Where You Are Planted challenge.

I had originally planned to use the flower dies I had purchased from Poppystanos’ newest release, but time was short and the card I had in mind would be a little too fiddly to complete by the deadline (well, OK as I’m in the UK – my bedtime really!).

So, instead, and using Wedgwood pottery as my inspiration, I pulled out a ten-year old die and got creating! The die I used is called Brighton Flower Border. Isn’t it pretty! I really must remember to use it again when time is not of the essence – I can just imagine a card with the Brighton flowers in cheery colours!

So although this card came together really quickly, I spent far too long looking for the Memory Box paper stack that I wanted to use for it! Whenever I want to use this stack, it seems to disappear on me. I found it in the end, but I’m definitely going to make a note of where I hide/store it next. It’s so frustrating when things go AWOL isn’t it? One of the least joyful parts of crafting me thinks!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.