Christmas Card Throwdown – January 2024 Guest Spot

Hello everyone!

I’m honoured to be the Guest Designer for the first sketch challenge of 2024 over at the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown!

When I saw the sketch, I immediately thought of a bauble for the main image and a hanger/bow for the smaller one. Then began the hunt for the ‘perfect’ bauble. I have lots of bauble images but most were either too big or too small! In the end I landed on a die set by Tim Holtz/Sizzix. I cut off the spike at the bottom of my first die cut to make it more similar to the sketch but decided that it looked a bit weird! I coloured the die cut pieces with distress inks and added a few bows to the ornament to reflect the smaller image in the die set.

The background is embossed with a Spellbinders folder and the sentiment is from an older Hero Arts wood-mounted set.

The Design Team have some amazing inspiration over on the challenge blog – you must check it out! Hope you can play along with the challenge!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Under the Tree

Happy Festive Wednesday (!) everyone!

I know the big day was less than two weeks ago, but making Christmas cards throughout the year definitely reduces my stress levels in November and December. So I’m kicking off my 2024 challenge participation with the 52 Christmas card challenge where the technique is one of my  favourites – clean and simple! I mean, how could I not play along with that one?!

I ‘ve had my eye on the Creative Expressions one liner die collection since 2022 and just before Christmas, I managed to pick up this beautiful die called ‘Under the Tree’ in a great sale. I used it for a card for my dad and decided it would be perfect to use again for this challenge. I coloured the tree with Cracked Pistachio, Rustic Wilderness and Evergreen Bough distress inks and used Unchartered Mariner and Tumbled Glass for the presents. I adhered the tree to a base that I had embossed with a Stampin Up folder and added a sentiment from a set by My Favorite Things.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Love yoga

 

Hello everyone!

Today I’m paying tribute to my yoga journey with a card using products kindly sent to me by Penny Black.

In late 2020, a post popped up on my instagram feed about Adriene’s 30 day yoga programme and in January 2021 I rolled out my old, seldom-used mat with zero expectations… I had no intention to practice daily beyond January! Yet that is exactly what has happened! Today, we had our first day of yoga for this year’s 30 day programme and I had my 1,095th consecutive day of practice. Some days my practice has been short, other days I’ve done a long practice or even two sessions… but the important thing is that I made time for it EVERY SINGLE DAY. I love it and feel much better because of it!

So onto the card… This one certainly evolved and what started as a CAS card ended up using a lot of fun products. I stamped, coloured and fussy cut one of my favourite images from the New Adventures set (30-902) and then I just went wild with dies!! I used: Immense Love (51-757), Border Collection (51-717), Cloudy (51-728), Flourish and Butterflies (51-198) and Nestlings (51-755). I almost didn’t add that little bird because the robins are driving me wild at the moment – constant chirping, even at 2am!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Happy New Year 2024

Happy New Year friends!

I often feel drawn to bright colours, glitter and a dark card base for my New Year’s cards but this year I ended up creating cards with a white base and softer colours.

Here’s the card that I made for my lovely mum. I was inspired by this card by Karin. As I was thinking of trimming sprigs from the Poppystamps’ Fairhaven Oval die, I realised it would work very well with the card design. I coloured the image with distress inks and I added a bit of vellum that I had covered with Tumbled Glass distress oxide ink which I felt was softer than a card-based background. The background die is by Pinkfresh Studio and I used an alphabet die by My Favorite Things to create the greeting.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

One wood block stamp, two New Year cards

Hi there!

It’s that short time of year when my cardmaking attention turns to New Year cards. Ordinarily I use a lot of die cuts but today I wanted to use a pretty wood-mounted stamp that I’ve had for AGES plus some newer products kindly sent to me by Penny Black.

The stamp du jour is called Falling Stars (3890H) – mine is dated 2008 (I think I may have bought it in 2010) and is still available online at the Penny Black store. I know many people are nervous about stamping with wood-mounted stamps, but they leave a beautiful impression – I will always love all mine! I do a few practice impressions when I’m stamping multiples of the same image, like I did with these cards.

 

 

My first card uses minimal supplies – the stamp, a sentiment from the Smile All Season stamp set (30-516), some versamark ink and glitzy embossing powder. I also used a frame from the Stitched Frames die set (51-709).

 

 

 

It’s a product explosion on my second card! I used the same stamps from my first card, plus a tag die from the Tagged set (51-007) and dies from the Peaceful Pines set (51-705) and Little Ornaments set (51-090) (bow) plus a tiny bit of branch from the On A Limb set (51-749). The beautiful embossing folder is from the most recent colllection and is called  Filigree (65-010).

 

I’m going to enter these into Amy’s December Woodblock Wednesday challenge.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.