Other cards

Just Us Girls Guest Designer Week 2

Happy Saturday!

I’m so honoured and excited to be the June Guest Designer for the Just Us Girls challenge! Thank you to all the lovely design team for making me feel so welcome last week – you are all so kind!

The theme of this week’s challenge is ‘add a moving element’. Now I’m not really into making interactive cards but I have always had fun making them in various cardmaking classes! Today I decided to keep it super simple with an action wobbler. And I have a story again too!

First, the card, which I made using some products sent to me by Penny Black. I started by masking an area on my card base and blending some distress ink. Then I cut and adhered the Geometric Circles background die (51-644) on top. Then I turned to the fabulous Sweet Sip mini set (30-905) which I stamped twice with my Frayed Burlap archival ink. I fussy cut the kitty and her tail from one image and fussy cut the whole of the second image, and trimmed off most of the kitty so that I would have room for the wobbler. I coloured in the images using my Twinkling H2O paints.

I then adhered kitty’s tail to the mail image and then used two layers of foam tape to adhere the cup to the card base (I didn’t want a big gap between the kitty’s head and the cup). I added the action wobbler under the kitty’s head and positioned it on my card. I then stamped out the sentiment, which I had straightened slightly on my stamping block (as it is a curved sentiment) and added it to my card base along with some tiny gems.

And now for the story. My action wobblers had gone AWOL but while I was searching for them, I finally found a tiny pinecone stamp that I have been searching for for ALMOST ONE YEAR! It was from a long-retired set and was one of my favourite pinecone images. I was so upset when it went missing during Christmas in July 2021 – I knew it hadn’t been thrown out with my craft room rubbish, but also knew it could have ended up anywhere in the house… I never gave up hope, but didn’t expect to find it in a drawer right to where I sit!

Head over to the Just Us Girls challenge to see the amazing inspiration from the talented design team – we hope you can play along this week!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Just Us Girls Guest Designer Week 1

Happy Saturday!

I’m so honoured and excited to be the June Guest Designer for the Just Us Girls challenge!

The theme of this week’s challenge is ‘paintbrush’ – and I wanted to share the story behind the card! Sorry this is rather on the long side!

I’ve been crafting for almost 15 years…. but do I own any paintbrush dies or stamps?? The short answer is no. The longer answer is I spent a ridiculous amount of time going through ALL my craft supplies as I was CONVINCED I had a paintbrush stamp from back in the day. I was SO SURE that I even recalled colouring the image…. but ‘it’ was nowhere to be found. I did come across an old Elzybells Art Stamps set which included some fun sentiments and a small image with some paintbrushes, but I wanted the brushes to be more of a focal point….

I have a rule that I don’t buy supplies just to make a challenge card and although I could think of ways of incorporating brush MARKS, I felt I had to stick to the theme of paintbrush…. so I broke my rule and ordered the My Favorite Things paintbrush die set from my go-to craft store that usually dispatches the same/next day… can you see where this story is going?

Well, yes, this time they did not dispatch my order for 3 days and as it’s the Platinum Jubilee super-long weekend in the UK, I knew that I wouldn’t get the die set before the challenge launch.

So what did I do? Well, I went through my dies and created my own paintbrushes using parts from die sets by My Favorite Things and Simon Says Stamp!

I stencilled some glitter paste on my card base before I added the ‘paintbrushes’ and a pot. And all that searching wasn’t wasted as I even used a Pablo Picasso quote from that old Elzybells set!

What do you think of the outcome?

Head over to the Just Us Girls challenge to see the amazing inspiration from the talented design team – we hope you can play along this week!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Neighbourhood Houses

Hello everyone!

Today I’m playing along with the sketch challenge at Freshly Made Sketches. When I first saw the sketch, I thought about using hearts or butterflies but then yesterday my new Dies to Die For order arrived and I knew it was the perfect opportunity for me to use my brand new My Neighborhood die set from My Favorite Things.

I coloured the images with distress ink and added Clearly Besotted sentiment. I thought it was finished, but when I was photographing the card, it felt a little bare so I added a few die cut hearts and sequins. Maybe a few too many? I’m not too sure… what do you think?

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

LucieG Christmas in July 2021 Challenge

Hi everyone!

Once again, I LOVED devoting a whole month to Christmas cards, although I’m not quite over the emotional trauma of losing a tiny little pine cone stamp last week! I hate losing things and this was such a perfect pine cone from a now-retired set. I still hope it will surface somewhere unexpected. The upside is that my craft table is super clean and tidy!

Unlike the colouring challenge, where I’m keen to move on after 30 days, I’m definitely not ready to move on from making Christmas cards now! I’ll definitely be creating more Christmas cards on and off during August!

Like last year, I generally ‘shopped my stash’ to create my cards although I did buy a few new bits!!

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.

AAA Cards One Layer challenge with coffee twist

Hi there!

It’s time for the a new challenge at AAA Cards!  This fortnight we’d like you to create a one-layer CAS card; our optional twist is ‘coffee’! As we don’t have a sponsor this time our lovely admin, Jane is offering a £10 gift voucher to a craft store of the winner’s choice.

I have a rather vast stamp collection and a lot hold little memories, so bear with me as I take a trip down memory lane…. For my card, I used a stamp from the Tim Holtz Stamptember 2015 collaboration with Simon Says Stamp. I actually won this set during Simon Says Create 2015 – I remember Heidi said she had a few sold out sets as prizes for us and I hoped one would be the Stamptember Newton’s Nook set! I LOVED it but it sold out before I could buy it… luckily a few years later Newton came out with a very similar set as part of their regular releases which I was able to get hold of! I was still very excited to win the coveted Tim Holtz set of course, although I have to confess this is the first time I’ve used it. Almost five years later. Where does the time go?

Anyway, on to my card…I masked off the sentiment that is part of this stamp and coloured the stamped image using my Twinkling H2O paints – that shimmer is so difficult to photograph though! I covered the image and also used a Taylored Expressions mask to contain the ink splatters that I added as my finishing touch.

My team mates have come up with some beautiful cards which are on the AAA Cards challenge blog. We are also joined a previous challenge winner, Stephanies, who has some lovely inspiration on her blog!

Hope you can play along with us!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.