Thank you

Pinkfresh Studio Create and Connect February 2025

Hi everyone!

Last weekend, I took part in the Pinkfresh Studio Create and Connect ‘Cards by Theme’ event. I signed up for this event back in November after watching the unboxing video, knowing that it would be nice to have something to look forward to after Christmas – and it was such a happy January day when the box arrived at my door!

Class One – Birthday Balloons product suite

Yana Smakula’s class was up first and her theme was happy birthday. There was only one birthday stamp in the whole kit, but I have plenty of birthday stamps already! I love the balloons and the delicate coordinating die. I thought it was very clever to include floral stamps/die cuts separately as the balloons can be used with or without flowers. I switched up my colours to make it more me.

I also used the set for my interpretation of Dawn Woleslage’s Make and Take press plate/foil card. I just used the stamp with an older daisy Pinkfresh coverplate that I’ve had for a while. but still love!

Class Two – Altenew Briar Blossoms product suite

Next up was Bridget Casey for the guest company, Altenew. It’s been a long while since I bought Altenew stamps and I loved using the product suite they provided, which included an embossing folder. I ‘went rogue’ with my first card! The inspiration was delicate peach/pastel tones, with these amazing gold gel pen centres. I thought they would really stand out if I used vibrant colours and a black background! For the second card, I learnt a new-to-me technique to trap ink colour on vellum using adhesive sheets – I’ve already tried it out on another card.

Class Three – Pretty Blooms product suite

The theme of the final class of the day was ‘hello’ and Heather Hoffman used a fabulous floral product suite that included washi tape! I love these products as I have the ‘quick and easy’ route with washi or I can really put my own spin on it with the stamp and stencil combo.

Class Four – Majestic Swan product suite

First up on Day 2 was one of my favourite cardmakers, Raquel Arribas. We used my favourite product suite from the event, called Majestic Swan. So versatile and easy to use! I’ve already used it on other cards. I did another Make and Take with this set using Isha Gupta’s press plate/foil card as inspiration. Isha also designed this product suite.

Class Five – Butterflies in a Cloche product suite

Lea Lawson was up next with the ‘hello’ theme using the Butterflies in a Cloche set. I love how quickly I could create with this set! Another very versatile set! Once again I used Isha Gupta’s press plate/foil card as inspiration for my Make & Take card.

Class Six – Mix It all up!!

Final class of the day, and always the most involved, was Jennifer Maguire who focusses on ‘stretching’ our kits. I’m not an interactive cardmaker but I could be converted after making the amazing pop up balloon card. The second card was simpler, using that wonderful Majestic Swan product suite.

I’m not sure if I will sign up for the next class which is ‘Cards for Him’ but I will definitely be hitting that ‘buy’ button when registration for the August event opens up!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Pastel Always Smiling

Hello Everyone!

Last year I attended a few Pinkfresh Studio Create and Connect events and really enjoyed them. Since then I’ve been slowly growing my Pinkfresh collection and over Christmas, I picked up the beautiful Always Smiling stamp set and coordinating stencil and die sets.

The layered stencils mean that you can colour the image very quickly but of course I chose to do something different here! I loved how Raquel Arribas used different colours on different stencilled flowers so I had to try it! It was actually pretty straightforward and wasn’t as time consuming as I feared!

I used a sentiment from the set plus the largest dies from the Nested Elongated Ovals Blanket Stitched die set to create the frame. The base is the Honey Bee Stamps Dogwood Blooms 3D embossing folder.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Fluttering Butterflies

Hello again!

Next up today is my entry in this week’s Color Throwdown challenge which has a fun combo of yellow, pink and orange.

I fell in love with the beautiful Pinkfresh Studios Fluttering Butterflies product suite in August when only the dies and washi tape were available here in the UK. Fortunately Bumbleberry’s got the stamps and stencils in stock in September and I grabbed them straightaway!

I can’t believe I haven’t managed to use them but when I saw this week’s colour combo, I knew it was finally time to play with them!

I used Altenew inks to colour the butterflies and a Spellbinders embossing folder to complete my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Thanks a bunch

Hi everyone!

Today I’m using products kindly sent to me by Penny Black for my card for the Just Us Girls colour challenge and the 700th challenge over at Just Add Ink where the theme is ‘just add shimmer or shine’. Congrats to the JAI team for that amazing milestone and thank you for all your inspiration and support over the years!

After all my problems photographing my last grey card, I decided that I would not be using grey card for my base this time! Instead I blended some Hickory Smoke distress ink across my white card base before applying parts of the Shimmering Tune Stick & Shine Sheet (15-005) and covering it with foil from the Metallics foils set (21-001). Next I cut a tag from the Tagged die set (51-007) which I covered with Dried Marigold distress ink. I then cut and coloured three of the fabulous Flower Family dies (51-819) and arranged them on my tag. I added a small butterfly from the Flights of Fancy die set (51-132) to a small circle from the Encircled die set (51-074).

After working out where I was going to position my die cuts, I stamped a sentiment from the So Thankful set (30-914) and then adhered all my images using foam tape before adding a few gems to complete my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Thank you forget-me-nots

Hi there!

After a busy day in my garden yesterday, I rewarded myself with a full day in the craft room today. First up is the card I made for this week’s Color Throwdown challenge where the colour palette is light blue, grey and brown.

I pulled out a couple of older Greetery dies for my card – the Forget-Me-Not and Wood Slices die sets. I coloured the images with alcohol marker and distress inks – I was happy to use my brand-new Scorched Earth distress ink for the edge of the wood slice and also smooshed some Lost Shadow onto my card base!

After adhering the die cuts to my card base, I added a sentiment from a new set by The Greetery to complete my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Lighthouse thank you

Hello everyone!

There’s a really unique sketch for this week’s Freshly Made Sketches challenge this week! The team share amazing inspiration – it was quite difficult for me not to CASE a few of their brilliant ideas, but I really wanted to come up with something ‘different’.

In the end, I decided to make a graphic/deco design but as I was hunting for the deco stamp set that I wanted to form the basis of my design, I unearthed an old Altenew set called Be a Lighthouse…. and inspiration hit me! As a craft supplies hoarder curator, I knew I had some metal boats from back in the day when I used a lot of embellishments and thought that one of those would work perfectly in the centre of two stamped images. I was rather concerned that I wouldn’t be able to find them but can you believe that it only took me a few minutes? I usually spend longer looking on my table for a die I was just using!

Armed with my little boat and stamp set, I got crafty! I masked off a section of my card so that the rectangular sea stamp would appear more oval and I coloured the lighthouse image with my Twinkling H2O paints. I decided not to use a sentiment from the stamp set and instead used a small stamp from an older Simon Says Stamp set.

This ended up being SO different to what I had planned earlier today, but it was so much fun and BONUS – I used some very old supplies!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.