Other cards

Color Throwdown Guest Designer Week 1

Hello everyone!

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to say that I have the honour of being the August Guest Designer over at one of my favourite challenges, the Color Throwdown. I’m so excited!

I have to say that this week’s fabulous colour palette of green, yellow, pink and lavender was a little challenging for me… It’s a beautiful palette with some amazing possibilities BUT I have a bit of a difficult time with lavender! Whenever I try to use it for a colour challenge, I always end up with a shade I feel is too purple or too pink!

So, for this week, I played it safe and used Milled Lavender distress ink!

I thought this palette would be perfect for a flowery card and decided to use a somewhat neglected background die that I bought last year (Daisy Mosaic by Creative Expressions) and one of my favourite techniques – inlaid die cutting. I started by creating four ink blended panels (in addition to Milled Lavender, I used Spun Sugar, Scattered Straw and Mowed Lawn). I then cut each of these panels using the background die. I also cut a piece of white card with the die.

I removed all the little pieces from the white die cut panel, adhered the negative to my card base and got to work inlaying all the little bits from the ink blended die cut panels. It’s time consuming but I think it’s totally worth it!

I had originally planned to add a green frame to the card, but as I was about to cut the frame, the green negative die cut panel fell onto my card base. I really liked the green outline and so I adhered the whole green negative panel on top of the inlaid background, effectively hiding all the white!

I added a Winnie & Walter die cut sentiment and a Penny Black butterfly to complete my card.

For full details of how to enter this week’s challenge, please head over to the Color Throwdown challenge blog. As usual, the design team has some amazing inspiration:

Amy Rohl

Amy Rysavy

Barbara Anders

Broni Holcombe

Jodi Collins

Lisa Henke

Lori Tecler

Lynn Put

Vickie Zimmer

Wanda Cullen

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

LucieG Christmas in July 2019 Challenge

Hi everyone!

My Christmas cardmaking always tends to be a bit of a rush, especially as I like to devote my crafty time to Tracey McNeeley’s tag challenge in November. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been trying to find a way to make cards earlier in the year, but generally failing! However, I think I’ve found a better way of achieving that this year!

Christmas in July!

I actually decided to attempt Christmas in July earlier this year but then Kathy Racoosin announced her Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge, which would fall partly into July and that threw my into a bit of a quandry… but that turned out to be an added bonus! I only used wood-mounted stamps for the colouring challenge, so I was able to ink up some oft-neglected wood-mounted Christmas stamps for my cards in the first half of the month!

I LOVED devoting a whole month to Christmas cards. While I was very ready to move on from stamping/colouring at the end of the 30 day colouring challenge on  15 July, I’m not ready to move on from making Christmas cards now! I think that’s because I didn’t restrict myself to one main technique (like stamping/colouring) and also because I have some really gorgeous festive supplies! Anyway, I’ll definitely be creating more Christmas cards on and off during August.

I also enjoyed being able to create my cards without the ‘distraction’ of new stuff! In autumn, I often end up waiting for new release stamps and dies to arrive and this adds to the pressure to get my cards done quickly! By creating so many cards in July, I was able to ‘shop my stash’ and use some old favourites as well as newer stamps and dies that I didn’t have a chance to create with last year.

It was also fun to create festive cards for challenges which were not focussed on Christmas-themed cards! I ended up with cards using non-traditional colours – some challenges really stretched my creativity!

Thanks to everyone who followed along and shared kind comments with me – I really appreciate all of you!

Have a great day!

LucieG.

LucieG Wood Stamp Challenge Part 2

38 wood-mounted stamps

15 general cards

15 Christmas cards

30 days of colouring

12 brands

1 happy stamper

 

Hi everyone!

When Kathy Racoosin announced her latest Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge, I decided that I would play along with my own challenge again. Last time, I challenged myself  to only use my wood-mounted stamps, and you can read my thoughts about that here.

I had been wanting to do Christmas in July for a while and decided that I would only use wood-mounted stamps again, but as the challenge crossed into July, that gave me the opportunity to use my Christmas stamps, which have been most neglected!

I was really looking forward to the challenge, but my biggest mistake was that I didn’t come back and read my post from the last challenge! I didn’t build in any time for creating cards with different techniques, especially die cutting, and I started to get a bit bored with finding images to colour everyday. Plus a lot of my Christmas stamps are solid images which don’t need to be coloured, so although I really wanted to use them, I couldn’t because I wanted to complete the colouring challenge.

Overall, I really enjoyed the 30 day challenge and all my thoughts still remain the same. Focussing on my own challenge with existing supplies made me very happy! I am much more confident with my wood stamps now and my storage system means that I can choose and pull out one I want to use very quickly, far quicker than choosing a clear stamp actually (I need to get back to adding my stamps to Evernote).

However, I HOPE I remember to read these wrap-up post next time a colouring challenge comes around, as my advice to my future self remains the same – build in ‘rest days’ for other techniques, especially die cutting!

Thanks to everyone who followed along and shared kind comments with me – I really appreciate all of you!

Have a great day!

LucieG.

PS After this, I went on a die-cutting frenzy! Expect to see a LOT of die-cut cards in the next week!

Striped Vase

Hello everyone!

I’m still playing catch up with the Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring challenge and my personal wood stamp challenge.

For my Day 15 colouring, I decided to use another Hero Arts oldie but goodie, the Striped Vase Sketch stamp. I stamped it on Bristol cardstock and coloured it using my Zig Real brush markers.

I decided to play along with the latest My Favorite Things sketch challenge – I loved how Michelle used a sentiment die in her inspiration so I added an older die from MFT that I got in a set a few years ago. Annoyingly, I dropped the sentiment on my card as I went to adhere it! Glue ended up all over the front of my card, but luckily I managed to rub it away with my adhesive eraser.

To finish off my card, I added a few Nuvo glitter drops to the centre of my flowers.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Pocketful o’ posies

Happy Friyay friends!

Life just got a little busy so now I’m playing catch up with The Daily Marker 30 Day colouring challenge and my wood stamp challenge. This is my colouring for Day 12. I decided to play along with the current CAS Colours & Sketches challenge. I love how they have such unusual sketches! I immediately thought of my Hero Arts stamps when I saw this one. Back in the day (15 years ago apparently!), Hero Arts produced the ‘Pocket O’ Posies’ sets – a trio of flower stamps in a little box. I LOVED them and collected quite a few sets. I used the Country Garden Posies for this card.

To be honest, I’m not sure about this card now that I have completed it. I feel like I should tweak something, but not sure what. So instead I shall walk away and look at it again tomorrow!

The sentiment is also by Hero Arts and I used dies by My Favorite Things and Simon Says Stamp.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Garden Girl

Hello everyone!

Day 10 of the latest Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring challenge and my personal wood stamp challenge.

Today I’m playing along with the latest Case This Sketch challenge.

I seem to spending a LOT of my free time in my garden at the moment – it’s become quite overgrown and so I’m doing a lot of weeding and pruning. A lot of hard work, but very rewarding! So today, I inked up the Great Impressions Garden Squares stamp and coloured it with my beloved Twinkling H2Os. I really must try another medium tomorrow!!

Anyway, I added a sentiment from an older Kelly Purkey clear set and a Penny Black butterfly to complete my take on the challenge.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.