All Smiles 2024

Hello everyone!

Today I’m sharing cards I made with some products kindly sent to me by Penny Black from their new All Smiles release. This is a truly gorgeous release with some amazing stamps and dies. I was very excited to play with the teacups and flowers stamp sets – although I have to confess that I was a little apprehensive about colouring the larger images. But having spent a lovely morning with my paint brush, I think I had just fallen out of practice with water colouring! Before I started, I decided that I wouldn’t put any pressure on myself to create a specific card and would just practice with my different watercolours, card panels and paint brushes. It was such a relaxing time and I surprised myself with some images that I felt comfortable including on a card. So if you’re feeling like me, just focus on enjoying the colouring process and you may surprise yourself!

So onto the cards! First up is a card using a cup from the Brew-tea-full stamp set (31-063), cut with the Brew-tea-full Cut Out co-ordinating die (51-823) and coloured with a liquid watercolour. I love all the blooms in both flower sets that are in this release but in the end I chose to use the daisies from the Blooms stamp set (31-064) that I had coloured with a distress reinker. I cut the image with the Blooms Cut Out coordinating die set (51-824).

For the background, I embossed a panel of coloured card using the Rounded embossing folder (65-016), adhered it to a card base cut from the same colour card. Once I adhered the images, I felt it needed a little something extra so I added a branch, Airy (51-423), cut from glitter card and a small strip of green to ground the cup.

My second card also uses a cup from the Brew-tea-full stamp set (31-063), cut with the co-ordinating die (51-823) and coloured with a distress reinker. This time I wanted to do something a bit different, so used a Penny Black stamp from a few years ago as my inspiration – the stamp is called Sweet Sip (30-905) you can see the card I made with that fabulous image here.

I chose a kitty from the fun Fancy Cat dies set (51-347) and the gorgeous Dignified die (51-821) and coloured them with distress inks. I blended some Tumbled Glass distress ink on my card base and adhered the elements – I ended up separating the leafy branches when arranging the elements in my teacup. I added a leafy border from the Garden Edgers die set (51-549) to ground the teacup plus a sentiment from the Love & Light mini stamp set (31-037) and some stickles and sequins!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Sunset Potpourri Flowers

Hello again everyone!

This week’s Color Throwdown challenge has a sunset combo which is quite similar to last week’s – yellow, orange and red (instead of fuchsia) so I was determined to create something that I felt was quite different to last week.

I chose a white base, oriented it as a landscape card, pulled out the Potpourri Flower Set die by Poppystamps and got crafty!

I quickly coloured the flowers with distress inks but I have to confess that it took me FAR TOO LONG to arrange the die cut flowers…. I love this style of card but I can never seem to get the positioning right when I create them!

Eventually, I found an arrangement that I felt was OK, adhered the die cuts and added some coordinating Nuvo Jewel Drops to the centres of the flowers. The sentiment is by Clearly Besotted.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Festive tree

 

Happy Festive Friyay!

Today I’m playing along with the current colour challenge over at the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown!

When I saw that this week’s colour palette was green, white and gold I knew I would have to make a card with a tree!

I decided to use the larger tree from the Concord & 9th Cloche die set that I bought before last Christmas and oddly used for the February Colour Challenge! I cut it from Craft Consortium paper and then die cut elements from glitter and mirror card. for the card base, I used a Simply Graphic die and a few hand punches.

To complete my card, I added a sentiment from a Hero Arts set from 2005!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Bestest Folk Animals

Hello everyone!

There’s a super sketch for this week’s Freshly Made Sketches challenge – I love that it was a landscape design so I was determined to maintain the orientation, although I did tweak it a bit…

I wanted to use the Hero Arts Folk Animals stamp set from the April 2024 Add-Ons release. However, I wanted the fox to look towards the bird so that meant I needed to flip the sketch so that the  vertical strip was towards the right.

The sentiment is from an older Reverse Confetti set.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Colourful Folk Art

Happy Saturday everyone!

After clearing up last night’s craftermath, I decided to make a card for this week’s Color Throwdown challenge which has a bright combo of yellow, orange and fuschia.

A dear crafty friend kindly gifted me products from the April 2024 My Monthly Hero Add-ons. It’s been a while since I had some new Hero Arts goodies to play with and Hero Arts will always hold a special place in my heart as I spent many a happy Saturday at the Craft Barn in Lingfield making cards with their wood mounted stamps back in the day!

I pulled out the fabulous Colour Layering Folk Art stencils set and got to work. I loved how Nichol Spohr used Distress Oxides with this set and I followed her technique of adding a layer of white ink before applying Distress Oxides (Picked Raspberry, Spiced Marigold, Carved Pumpkin, Scattered Straw and Mustard Seed).

To complete my card I added a few orange enamel dots and a sentiment from the Folk Animals stamp set.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.