Love and Friendship

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

Woodblock Wednesday: Silly Pup

Hi there!

Today I’m playing along with Amy Tsuruta’s Woodblock Wednesday challenge which is a monthly challenge celebrating our fabulous wood-mounted stamps. If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know I love my old wood-mounted stamps and could never part with them! Back in 2019 I even challenged myself to use them for the duration of a couple of the Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge – you can read about that here and here.

I saw a post about the challenge by Lin on instagram today and knew I had to play along. I love seeing how some cardmakers use their older stamps with newer products and I decided to do the same for my card! I chose the fabulous Silly Pup by Hero Arts. This stamp is dated 2006… Seriously, how can this be 17 years old?? I remember buying him – I generally buy cat stamps as I’m surrounded by cat lovers and so it was a Big Deal for me to buy a puppy stamp. But look at his spots!!! How could I not get him?!

I stamped and fussy cut him before adding coloured spots with my Twinkling H2O paints. I stamped his head a second time and adhered that to his body some foam tape – I did toy with using an action wobbler which would have been quite fun!

For my background, I dug into my newer supplies – the Birch Press Design String Art Frame die. The sentiment is also newer – by My Favorite Things.

Amy also said she wanted to know how we store our wood-mounted stamps. I store mine in A4+ Tuff boxes which I keep in my craftroom cupboards. I’ve taken photos of each Tuff box and indexed them so I know the exact location (cupboard/shelf). When I want to use a wood-mounted stamp, I look through my photos and can locate my stamp very quickly. I’ve had this system in place for YEARS and it works really well for me. Wish I could be that organised with my clear stamps and dies!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

 

Bellina Stem

Hi there!

Next up today is my card for this week’s Freshly Made Sketches challenge. It is a fabulous sketch and I have to say that I feel that the card I made over the weekend for this challenge didn’t do it justice!

So I just made this card very quickly instead – hope I make the deadline! I used the beautiful Bellina Butterfly stem card and a butterfly from the Emelia Butterfly trio, both by Poppystamps.

I used an older Simon Says Stamp stamp for the brushstrokes and the sentiment is by My Favorite Things.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Yellow Wispy Flowers

Hello everyone!

Today I’m playing along in the Color Throwdown challenge which has a combo of blue, navy and yellow.

Whenever I use my Birch Press Design’s Wispy Blooms Contour Layers die set, I always mention how much I coveted it when I first saw it. Sadly I don’t seem to play with it enough so I was very pleased to think of it today when I was planning this card. I coloured the images using distress inks and set to one side to work on my background. The blue frame is part of the Spellbinders Infinity Punch & Pierce plate die which I picked up in the early August sale. I also bought the Stylish Ovals which coordinate so nicely but they oversold on their sale stock so they refunded those sadly. It kind of put me off using the plate die, especially when I saw the die set was in stock at full price. I’m glad I finally got round to using it!

I applied some more distress ink to the edges of my card base to add more navy contrast to my card and adhered the frame. I then stencilled some glitter paste to the white background to add something a little extra! Once that was dry I adhered my blooms and added a die cut sentiment by The Ton.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Colourful Coneflowers

Happy Monday everyone!

Today I’m playing along with the Color Throwdown which has a colourful combo of pink, green, magenta and white.

A few months ago my friend, the talented cardmaker Trina shared a beautiful coneflower card.  As a result, when I spotted the Taylored Expressions Cornflower dies, I snapped them up!

I finally used them this weekend – I thought the challenge colour combo would be perfect! I paired them with a Mama Elephant frame and a sentiment by Karen Burniston.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Duet

Hi everyone!

For my second card of the day, I’m playing along with the ‘double’ challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches using products kindly sent to me by Penny Black. This challenge combines colours AND a sketch… and can be quite tricky… but hey, that’s why they are called challenges, isn’t it?

For my card, I used the beautiful Duet die (51-736) and Airy die (51-423). I coloured them using regular distress inks and distress oxides and added them to part of a die cut circle.

I adhered the die cut cluster to a panel that I had embossed with the Variegated folder (65-008) and added a bow and sentiment from the Trust Me builder set (30-710) to complete my card.

(The challenge allows subtle texture as long as it doesn’t detract from the main focal point. I think my bold flowers stand out – hopefully the challenge DT agrees that this falls within their guidelines!)

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Hello Dearhearts

Hi there!

Today I’m playing along with the sketch challenge at Just Add Ink challenge using products kindly sent to me by Penny Black.

I love seeing what other cardmakers create with cute critter stamps but I rarely use them myself nowadays. But when I saw the cute cows in Penny Black’s Sending Smiles release, I knew I wanted to create with them! They remind me of Ermintrude from the Magic Roundabout…. I think it was the flower in the mouth and the shape of their cute little faces!

Anyway, the In the Moooo’d mini stamp set (30-986) and the Cow are You set (30-988) have been on my desk for a while and today I finally got to ink them up!

I fussy cut each cow and coloured them with my Twinkling H2O paints. I then created circular frames using a die from the Stitched Circles set (51-551) and adhered them to a couple of coloured circles. I die cut an ink-blended background from the Stitches of Love (51-597) and then adhered all my images to my card base, following the challenge sketch. I would have loved to have used Ermintrude’s signature phrase ‘Hello, Dearheart’ but I think that the sentiment from the Cow Are You set works very well!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.