Gemini

Christmas in July 2022 – Day 9

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Day 9 of LucieG’s Christmas in July 2022! Today I’m playing along in the Freshly Made Sketches challenge .

I love this sketch! So many possibilities! In the end, I decided it was time to unleash the pinecones! I paired the Forest Pine Branch die with my absolute favourite pinecone stamp by Hero Arts! This little stamp went missing almost a year ago and I couldn’t find it anywhere! It was made worse by the fact that the set was retired and couldn’t be found here in the UK. In the end, my brother got hold of the set for me in the US. And would you believe that the little pinecone eventually turned up in my adhesives a few weeks ago! I was so happy – even though I have a duplicate, I am so relieved that I didn’t throw it away accidentally!

For the background, I blended some Speckled Egg distress oxide ink and die cut a section using a die from My Favorite Things. I then embossed it using the Pinecone Plethora embossing folder by Gemini. My original folder broke in an unfortunate embossing accident last Christmas, but fortunately a lovely IG friend alerted me to it on Ebay and I managed to snag it! Yay!

To complete my card I used a sentiment by Mama Elephant.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Jeu de l’Avent 2021 – 16

Hello everyone!

Next up today is the card I made for Day 16 of Simply Graphic’s advent challenge!

The theme was embossing! Oh how I love both heat and dry embossing! I selected the latter and used my fabulous Crafter’s Companion/Gemini Pinecone Plethora folder. I added SG label and foliage die cuts. The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted as I don’t have any Simply Graphic sentiments.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Day 15 – 25 Days of Christmas Tags 2021

Hi everyone!

As Tracey McNeely isn’t running her 25 Days of Christmas Tags event this year, I have created my own event using 25 days from Tracey’s event posts over the last decade, as I explained in this post.

Day 15’s inspiration is Day 15, 2018. I was particularly drawn to the more intricate nature of the tags in this blog post. You can see what I created back in 2018 here and this time I’ve chosen Tanja’s tag. I just LOVE how she created that background and I’m very grateful that she included instructions.

I used my brand new Pinecone Plethora embossing folder from Gemini. You may remember that my original embossing folder met with a rather sad end. But thanks to a lovely IG friend, I located and won its replacement in an ebay auction! Phew!

The dies are by Simply Graphic and Savvy Stamps.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

AAA Cards Along the edge with snowflakes twist

Hello everyone!

It’s also time for another challenge at AAA Cards!  This fortnight we’d like you to create a CAS card using just an edge of your card. Our optional twist is ‘snowflakes’.

I always seem to use blues and purples with white when I make snowflake cards so I’ve changed it up today and have used kraft! All products are by Penny Black – I used the snowflake edger die from the Spirited die set (51-721) – the partial snowflakes on the edger die are replicated in full in the Dancing Snowflakes die (51-708), so I cut them out and added them on top using tiny bits of foam. Finally, I stamped a sentiment from the When Snow Falls sentiment set (30-881) before adhering this to my kraft card base.

My team mates have come up with some beautiful cards which are on the AAA Cards challenge blog. We are also joined a previous challenge winner, Jane, who has some sweet inspiration on her instagram feed!

Hope you can play along with us!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Pinecone Plethora Trauma

Greetings and happy Saturday friends

Today I have to report that the craftroom was the scene of a Great Trauma. The savage destruction of a beloved embossing folder, the Pinecone Plethora by Gemini. It got mangled in my die cutting machine and the hinges split apart.  I am still now sure how it could have happened… I think I was trying to angle it a little too sharply and well, its demise was the result…. At least my Gemini Junior survived I suppose. But unfortunately I can seem to fashion an at home repair… Does anyone have any suggestions… or do you know where I might be able to locate a replacement? Google tells me that they are only to be found in a store in the Philippines!

At least I managed to create something with it – my entry for the sketch challenge at the Freshly Made Sketches challenge .

I blended various distress inks and then embossed the background before lifting some ink from the berries. I then added a sentiment from My Favorite Things to complete my entry.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Christmas in July 2021 – Day 25

Hello everyone and welcome to Day 25 of Christmas in July 2021!

It’s also time for another challenge at AAA Cards!  This fortnight we’d like you to create a CAS card using just an edge of your card. Our optional twist is one of my favourites, dry embossing, which is finally seeing a bit of a resurgence in popularity! Hurrah!

I have lots of embossing folders and last month, I spent some time creating a new system for organising them. I used some cheap cardstock to emboss each folder, added a label with the folder name and the plate sandwich needed to get the best impression and stored them on a book ring. It was totally worth it – I’m already using my folders more!

So this was actually the second card I created for this challenge. The first one looked fine in real life but I could not photograph it properly! So annoying as the image was perfect for along the edge challenge. A lot of my other festive folders create more of a focus on a corner, which is one of our other challenge themes and you know I’m a stickler for rules!!! In the end I embossed a section of a Gemini snowflake background embossing folder and added that to my card base after applying a bit of silver gilding wax. I also adhered a tiny strip of cardstock to the edge of the embossed strip. Finally I added a sentiment from my go-to Mama Elephant set!

And just in case you were wondering about the card I had to replace, here it is! This Darice embossing folder is fabulous but sadly I just couldn’t get a decent photo!

My team mates have come up with some beautiful cards which are on the AAA Cards challenge blog. We are also joined a previous challenge winner, Zoe, who has some lovely inspiration on her blog!

Hope you can play along with us!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.