Christmas in July 2024 – Day 6

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Day 6 of LucieG’s Christmas in July 2024! Today I’m honoured to be the Guest Designer for the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown’s Sketch challenge.

I have to confess that it took me some time to create this card. I wanted to be true to my CAS style but there are a lot of panels in the sketch. Eventually I chose a subtle Taylored Expressions embossing folder to create two white background panels – they’re a bit difficult to see in the smaller photos, but they are there – promise!

I then added the beautiful Memory Box Frosty border that I trimmed a little plus additional die cut snowflakes and a sentiment from a very old Hero Arts wood-mounted set.

The Design Team has some amazing inspiration on the challenge blog – I hope you can play along!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2024 – Day 5

Happy Festive Friday everyone!

Welcome to Day 5 of LucieG’s Christmas in July 2024 and today I’m playing along with the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown’s technique challenge using stamps kindly sent to me by Penny Back.

When I saw that the challenge was to colour an image, I knew I had to build on my watercolouring practice! I used distress inks and my Twinkling H2Os to colour the beautiful Bulb Basket cling stamp (40-859). I really enjoyed colouring this… and I’m so pleased to have rediscovered my joy of colouring!

As I wanted to use a UK A6 card base, I fussy cut around a section of the image to free up more space to the right of my card base. The sentiment is from a set called Meaningful (30-919).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2024 – Day 4

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Day 4 of LucieG’s Christmas in July 2024!

Today’s CAS card was made using two Simply Graphic dies, glitter and holographic card plus a Mama Elephant sentiment.

Although this card looks pretty simple, I tried a LOT of different permutations before landing on this one!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2024 – Day 3

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Day 3 of LucieG’s Christmas in July 2024!

Today I’m playing with Poppystamps dies to create a little Snowglobe!

The focal point is actually made from two die sets released a year apart – the Pine Needle Shoots set that I used for this card last year and the Wide Pine Needle Shoots that was released for Christmas 2023. When I saw the wider die set, I had an idea to combine the two sets so I was happy to put that idea into reality today! I’ve gone for a snow-tinged effect with the thin white glitter card shoots but this could work with different shades of green or whatever colour you want your little tree to be!

The snowglobe itself is made with the Simple Rings and Snowglobe Bases die sets plus some Lawn Fawn patterned paper.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2024 – Day 2

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Day 2 of LucieG’s Christmas in July 2024! Today I have one of those cards that is created for ‘November me’ (I hope!).

I thought that Creative Expressions ‘One Liner’ die cut collection was amazing – here’s a card I made with the tree from this collection. I was very excited to play with the One Liner Holly die that I also picked up in a sale earlier this year.

I wanted to let those bold lines shine so I decided that I wouldn’t include the centres of the leaves and berries. I coloured the image with alcohol markers and then adhered it to my card base. I added a thin frame from an Altenew die and a sentiment from a very old Hero Arts set.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2024 – Day 1

Happy Monday everyone!

It’s that time of year again! LucieG’s Christmas in July! Woohoo! How can we be at the start of July already? The first six months of the year have flown by!

Since 2019, I’ve dedicated July to Christmas cardmaking and had always felt thatI reaped the benefits in November/December when life always seems to get super busy! Up until last year, I had a good supply of cards to send to all my friends and didn’t stress about making them before the posting deadline.

However, last year, I noticed that I ended up making a lot more cards to post out in late November last year because many of my Christmas in July cards didn’t really seem ‘right’. It’s difficult to explain, but by November many of the cards seemed a little too… engineered. Some were larger than I wanted to mail, others were a little too busy – I know many of my recipients prefer my CAS cards.

So this year, I will be making Christmas in July cards with this in mind. It may be that I don’t participate in certain challenges but that’s OK! I just want to have fun with some amazing products and create cards that I KNOW I will want to send in November!

First up, for Christmas in July Day 1, I’m playing along with the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge .

I used a couple of older Memory Box dies – the Fresh Pine Curved Border and the Quiet Cabin Landscape. I actually cut the border die on the reverse of my glitter card and then flipped it over so that the curve aligned more closely with the sketch. There’s a bit of artistic licence with the strip in the sketch though as I used the Santa sleigh from Spellbinders’ Simon’s Snow Globe die set and a few die cut stars instead!