Be Happy

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I’ve been struggling with my mojo recently. I was so motivated to create during my Christmas in July series but it’s just disappeared this month. To be fair, life has been busy with a few home/garden challenges…

To kickstart my mojo, I decided to play along with the Global Design Project, which has a colour challenge this week. I chose a fun set my PaperArtsy (ref EKD03) and got to work. I actually embossed and coloured the image first and then thought about the design. Not the way I usually work and I ended up spending a bit of time trying out various designs before settling on this one. I’m still not completely sure about it, but sometimes you just have to stop and tell yourself, ‘that’s enough’!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

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.

Hello lovely whittle cat!

Hi Everyone!

Well its been quite the stressful weekend with various house/garden issues; the atmosphere has not been conducive to creating. But I finally managed to make a card against all the odds today!

I’m playing along with a new-to-me challenge, the Global Design Project, which has a CASE the designer challenge this week. I loved the rustic feel of the inspiration card by Janneke de Jong and the design was fabulous. I’m so glad that it helped me get down to creating!

I used the cute Whittle Cat die from Poppystamps plus a couple of butterfly dies from Simon Says Stamp and Memory Box. The sentiment is by Mama Elephant and the embossing folder is by Taylored Expressions.

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.

Christmas in July – Day 31

Hi Everyone!

I seriously can’t believe it’s Day 31 of my Christmas in July challenge! I have LOVED creating mainly festive cards this month! I’ll be sharing a post on my challenge a little later today.

Today, I’m using a set of dies that I coveted from the moment they were launched – the Alpine Window die set from Ellen Hutson. I finally got them in March and I can’t believe it’s taken me four months to use them.

The dies were created initially for tri-fold cards but I decided to use them to create a layered scene, colouring each layer with distress inks and Twinkling H2Os. I also applied a generous layer of stickles. Love all that sparkle!

The sentiment is also by Essentials by Ellen/Ellen Hutson.

Thank for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Christmas in July – Day 30

Hi Everyone!

Day 30 of Christmas in July!

Today, I’m playing along with the sketch challenge at Try Stampin on Tuesday. I embossed a strip of white card using a Crafts-Too embossing die and adhered it to my card base before stamping a sentiment from The Ton. I then used snowflake dies from Simon Says Stamp and My Favorite Things to create some glittery snowflakes which I adhered following the sketch.

To finish my card, I added a few sequins and Nuvo glitter drops.

Thank for stopping by!

LucieG.