Merry Snowflakes

Hi there!

It’s been a while since I participated in a My Favorite Things challenge. Not sure why as I have so many MFT products…. Anyway, today I decided to play along with the MFT Colour Challenge. It’s a  really interesting palette (two shades of blue, kraft and persimmon), which many of the team had used to create cute scenes, but I immediately thought of my snowflake dies! I agonised about getting these a few years ago, but I am so glad I did, as they are still amongst my favourite Christmas dies!

Anyway, I used the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge for my card – love the CAS design that Amy came up with!

Before I finish this post, I have to say that I still can’t believe I had glitter card that was the perfect shade of persimmon! Hmmm…. that might be because my glitter card collection is quite extensive!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Mod Tree

Happy Friyay people!

My mojo appears to have gone AWOL. I’ve tried to craft so many times this week, and have failed miserably. But look! I finally finished a card today! Hurrah!

I decided to use the colours from this week’s Color Throwdown challenge (lime green, green, aqua and eggplant) to create another Christmas card. The tree die is one of my very first Simon Says Stamp dies. I think it’s retired now, but I still love it!

I cut the tree and Savvy Stamps sentiment from eggplant cardstock although it looks quite brown on screen. It actually looks much closer in colour to the small bits of eggplant ink I added to my background panel, but they look quite different here.

Anyway, I’m also entering this into the current CAS Christmas challenge (tree).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Thinking of autumn colours

Hi there everyone

It’s time for another guest post for CAS Colours & Sketches challenge.

This week, the team has come up with a beautiful autumnal colour palette for us.

As I mentioned before, the team uses Stampin Up! colour names as a reference which always made me a little reticent to play in the colour challenges as I don’t have any Stampin Up! inks. Luckily, this month it’s proving quite easy to match up the colours quite well using distress oxide inks.

I created a blended background using Wild Honey, Fired Brick and Candied Apple. I then cut an oval from some white cardstock and adhered the frame to the blended background. I added a Memory Box die cut (the fabulous Arboscello Tree) and a stamp from an older Hero Arts set to complete my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Sunflower thoughts

Hi there everyone!

I’ve been getting to know my new Altenew Watercolour paints and thought it would be fun to practice and enter a watercolour challenge at the same time. The theme of this month’s CAS Watercolour challenge is ‘sunflower’ – perfect opportunity for me to ink up my wonderful Penny Black sunflower wreath stamp and practice on that.

I really love the consistency of the Altenew paints. The colours are quite vibrant (especially the lighter ones) – which is different for me as I generally favour more muted colours, but it’s fun using something different, right?! I admit, I had to walk away and come back to this a few times!

Once I had finished colouring, I splattered some gold paint on top of the image and mounted it to my base card before adhering a frame with foam tape. I added a Hero Arts sentiment to finish off the card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Merry Christmas to you

Happy Sunday everyone!

It’s time for a new challenge over at AAA Cards and this fortnight we are challenging you to use a stencil. Our sponsor is Stamplorations.

I love stencils. The price point is great and you can do so much with them. Great for quick and simple cards and I often use part of a stencil to ‘ground’ an image in my CAS cards. My stencil collection has grown a lot over the last couple of years!

For my take on the theme, I decided to use a stencil by John Next Door as a main focal point for some quick CAS Christmas cards.

A few weeks ago, I bought some Ranger detail blending tools – they are tiny and perfect for detail stencilling! They made it very easy to use different distress oxide inks on parts of this stencilled tree! After inking the image, with the stencil still in place, I coated the tree with Cosmic Shimmer sparkle texture paste.

It was quite interesting to see how the paste changed the colour of the underlying distress oxide. For example, I used Dusty Concord for my second tree, but I think it looks like Seedless Preserves, don’t you? Once the glitter had dried, I stamped the small Simon Says Stamp sentiment to create a tree trunk!

My teammates have shared some gorgeous CAS cards on the AAA Cards blog and we are also joined by our wonderful sponsor, Sherry, plus the super talented Hannelie from Desert Diva and Steph from Morticraft as our Guest Designers. They have some fabulous creations on their sites!

I’m also entering my green tree card into the current CAS Christmas challenge as the theme is ‘tree’.

Thanks for stopping by – I do hope you play along with us!

LucieG.

Happiest of birthdays

Happy Friyay people!

My Altenew Watercolour paints arrived this morning so I had a fun afternoon swatching and playing with them! They made using this week’s Color Throwdown challenge palette (aqua, peach, light grey and white) very easy indeed!

I finally inked up and embossed part of the Simon Says Stamp Centre Cut Flowers stamp and coloured it with my new paints.  I dry embossed a strip of grey cardstock and adhered it to my base card before adding the coloured image.

To finish off the card I added a sentiment from My Favorite Things.

I’m also entering this into the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge and the Simon Says Stamp Flickr challenge (anything goes).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.