Memory Box

Featuring Memory Box products

Autumn Cattails

Hi everyone!

Today I’m playing along with one of my favourite challenges –Freshly Made Sketches. They are celebrating their 500th challenge this week – what an inspiration! I think it’s wonderful that the challenge is still going strong and I’m so grateful to the Challenge administrators and DT members for all that they do in making this challenge blog such a fun and happy place. THANK YOU Freshly Made Sketches team!!

Anyway, this week’s sketch is a fun one! I was originally tempted to pull out my stems dies to create that left hand side panel but then I remembered that I have some ‘awkward’ dies that I never used because I can never come up with a decent design to showcase them! I was CONVINCED one of those dies was a tall tree, but it wasn’t in my ‘tree’ section so instead I used this beautiful Graceful Cattails die by Memory Box. I don’t think I’ve ever used it before, even though it’s five years old!

Anyway, I created a blended background using Distress Oxides – it’s been a while since I blended with them and I forgot how wonderfully they blend! I used the die to cut some brown card and then adhered image to the blended background. I layered it to a couple of panels and added a Hero Arts sentiment to complete my take. It’s not a totally autumnal card, but as it feels like autumn here today, I felt it was the right  one to go with!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Little white Willoughby butterfly

Hello Everyone!

Today I’m playing along with the Memory Box / Outside the Box challenge where the theme is ‘white focal point’.

Once I decided on my design and dies, I got to work blending a central oval. I die cut the Asti and Willoughby Butterfly wings dies from white card and white glitter card and adhered them all together. I worked out where I would position the butterfly before stamping the Altenew sentiment. After adhering my butterfly, I added a few baby sequins and hey presto, my card was finished!

Sounds simple doesn’t it! Believe me, the making of this card was certainly NOT a smooth process! This was actually my fourth attempt at the SAME card for this challenge. After messing up the stamping twice, when I went to write this blog post, I realised that I had inadvertently used POPPYSTAMPS dies for the card I had made specifically for for a MEMORY BOX challenge! Argh! As I was well-practiced with this design, I simply made it a fourth time with different inks and dies! You can see the other card here!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Christmas Card Throwdown – Birds

Hello everyone!

I’m honoured to be the Guest Designer for the current stash challenge over at the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown! The challenge theme is ‘birds’.

I decided to create a tree of robins and cardinals for my take on the theme – I used dies by Memory Box, Poppystamps and Simon Says Stamp. The sentiment is from an older SSS 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.

Smiles across the miles

Happy Saturday everyone!

Today I’m playing along with the sketch challenge at Freshly Made Sketches. When I saw this week’s sketch, I started thinking of a couple of oval dies that I thought would work perfectly! In the end, I chose the Memory Box Fairhaven Oval die which I coloured with my beloved Twinkling H2Os.

I added a few die cut butterflies from the Poppystamps Fern and Daisy Pop up Easel die set – I love how that set has so many different dies! The sentiment is a combination of two companies – Hero Arts and Whimsey Stamps.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Totally Amazing Poppies

Hello everyone!

Today I’m playing along with the colour challenge at The Paper Players and the sketch challenge at Freshly Made Sketches.

When I first saw the sketch challenge, I struggled with it a bit and it was only when I saw the colour challenge that I thought that tall poppies could work perfectly for both challenges! So I cut my Memory Box Prim Poppy die and coloured it with distress ink and added a bit of detail with a coloured pencil. Next I cut two yellow strips from some of my patterned paper mountain and added a Whimsy Stamps sentiment and a few die cut stars to complete my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

AAA Two Quarters with Favourite Colours Twist

Hi there!

It’s time for a new challenge at AAA Cards!  This fortnight we’d like you to create a CAS card using two quarters of your card. Lots of rules with this one:

  • there needs to be two distinct quarters on your CAS card
  • two quarters could be one half, but we’d like to see a space between the quarters if this is the layout you opt for
  • ideally we’d like to see all images and the sentiment confined to the two quarters, but we will allow a sentiment to straddle the two quarters or even a sentiment outside of the two quarters as long as it’s not too big or dominant
  • the rest of the card should be plain empty ‘white’ space without any pattern, texture or embossing

The optional twist is ‘favourite colours’.

I must confess, this is my least favourite challenge theme! I know DT members have to stick to the rules and I’ve really struggled with designs for this one. Luckily, I remembered that the last time we had this theme, there was some AMAZING inspiration in our gallery – I particularly loved the designs that Sent Sue and Darnell came up with. Many thanks to all of you for inspiring me with this challenge theme!

I chose the elegant Bali corner die by Memory Box for my take. At first I tried the design on a UK A6 card base but it looked like each die cut took up more than a quarter. So I tried it with a larger (7″x5″) base. It looked perfect! However, like Sue, I got out my ruler and calculator and got measuring. Turns out each die covers exactly one quarter of the card base! Amazing!

I used to say my favourite colour was purple but I don’t really have a favourite colour at the moment. I have lots of favourite colour combos but in the end I decided to keep the colouring very simple and just blended some wilted violet distress ink on the flowers.

To complete my card, I added a Clearly Besotted sentiment.

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 and one of my favourite cardmakers, Trina, who always comes up with the most beautiful cards. I’m guessing blue will make an appearance on her card!! You know, I still think Tim Holtz should have named his latest colour Trina Blue!

Hope you can play along with us!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.