Technique – die cutting

Featuring die cutting

Shimmer and snow

Hi everyone!

It’s been a long busy week with no time for crafting. Hoping to carve out some time to get crafty today… but first I want to share my next DT card for Crafts-U-Love!

I was delighted to receive a couple of die sets from the John Next Door Christmas collection this month. Aren’t they pretty? I couldn’t wait to use them.

Apologies in advance for the quality of some of my process photos in this post. I was having a few lighting problems…

I decided I’d make a shaker card and showcase the dies against a blended distress ink background… of course once I sat down at my craft table, the card evolved a bit differently…

When I sat down, I spotted a couple of bottles of Nuvo Shimmer Powder that I bought a few weeks ago and still hadn’t tried, so I decided to use them to make a background rather than my distress inks.

Step 1 – prepare the surface 

As I knew I’d be adding a TON of water and heat drying the background, I decided to use watercolour paper and taped it to a wooden chopping board I use when I create inky backgrounds before ‘painting’ a coat of water.

I’ve since tried the powders on regular cardstock and they work just as well, although the card did get more warped during the wetting/drying process.

 

 

Step 2 – sprinkle the powder(s)

I then gently sprinkled the powders randomly across the paper. A little goes a long way!

Step 3 – spritz with water/blot as desired!

The pigment from the powders didn’t flow as much as I wanted as my paper had started to dry so I spritzed water onto the paper to spread the pigment a little more across my background. I added a few more sprinkles of powder where I had a lot of white and then started to dry the background with my heat tool.

I also blotted some of the ink to lighten the background a little. I ended up with a very shimmery paper towel and was worried that I’d removed the shimmer from the background. I needn’t have worried! The background was still super shimmery!

Once I finished the background, I started to assemble the card. At this stage, I was still planning to make a shaker card so I cut a square frame and adhered the die-cut snowdrifts to the top and bottom of the frame. As I was holding the frame against the background, I realised that the shimmer wouldn’t be as obvious in a shaker so I decided to simply frame the background instead!

I cut down the background and adhered the frame using foam. One of the snowdrift dies from John Next Door also includes a single whole snowflake so I cut that MANY times and stuck them across the card. Then I added the fabulous sentiment.

I was originally going to use the sentiment cut from mirror card, but when I tried this against the background, I thought a white die cut would stand out a little more. So I cut the sentiment from white cardstock a few times and adhered them together before adding it to the card.

I wanted to add EVEN MORE sparkle so I applied some Nuvo aqua shimmer to the snowflakes and sentiment and some gems across the card. After all, you can never have too much sparkle and shimmer can you?!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Supply List

Here are the links to the products I used on my card. Products marked with an asterisk (*) were kindly sent to me to use.

John Next Door – Snowflake Edges die set*

John Next Door – Festive Greetings die set*

Nuvo Shimmer powder  

Nuvo Aqua Flow pens – glitter gloss

Papermania adhesive stones*

If you decide to buy any of the products I’ve used after reading this post, please let Crafts-U-Love know by using the drop down menu on the checkout page and selecting ‘Design Team’. Please note this is simply to help Crafts-U-Love and I do not receive any compensation if you choose this menu option. I do not use affiliate links.

 

Best wishes to you

Hello everyone

There a fabulous bold colour palette over at the Color Throwdown challenge this week – purple, green, yellow and red.

It did take me a little while to decide how I was going to use the colours but in the end I chose the fabulous Penny Black potted plant die which I painted with my Altenew watercolours.

I stuck the image to a background I created with by smooshing some mustard seed distress ink onto a base card. (I painted the brown with some distress oxide ink once I worked out where I was going to adhere the coloured die cut).

To finish off the card, I added sentiment from Penny Black and some Nuvo drops to the centre of the flowers – but they are quite difficult to see in my photos.

I’m also entering this into the Penny Black Saturday Challenge (anything goes).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Dancing Snowmen

Hello everyone!

I’m so pleased that I’ve been able to make quite a few Christmas cards over the past couple months – and it’s helpful that some of my favourite challenges have had Christmas themes this summer!

Today I’m playing along with one of them – the Memory Box challenge where the theme is ‘keep cool and carry on’.

I used the fabulous Frostyville Wreath die to cut a background I’d created from some distress oxide inks and them adhered it to a couple of wreaths that I’d cut from plain white card to add some dimension to the wreath. I then cut the fabulous Memory Box/Open Studio Dancing Snowmen from glitter card and altered card and adhered them inside the wreath on a square card. I toyed with adding a sentiment, but I actually felt the card looked fine without one! Besides, I can always add one later before I send it!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Merry Snowflakes

Hi there!

It’s been a while since I participated in a My Favorite Things challenge. Not sure why as I have so many MFT products…. Anyway, today I decided to play along with the MFT Colour Challenge. It’s a  really interesting palette (two shades of blue, kraft and persimmon), which many of the team had used to create cute scenes, but I immediately thought of my snowflake dies! I agonised about getting these a few years ago, but I am so glad I did, as they are still amongst my favourite Christmas dies!

Anyway, I used the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge for my card – love the CAS design that Amy came up with!

Before I finish this post, I have to say that I still can’t believe I had glitter card that was the perfect shade of persimmon! Hmmm…. that might be because my glitter card collection is quite extensive!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Mod Tree

Happy Friyay people!

My mojo appears to have gone AWOL. I’ve tried to craft so many times this week, and have failed miserably. But look! I finally finished a card today! Hurrah!

I decided to use the colours from this week’s Color Throwdown challenge (lime green, green, aqua and eggplant) to create another Christmas card. The tree die is one of my very first Simon Says Stamp dies. I think it’s retired now, but I still love it!

I cut the tree and Savvy Stamps sentiment from eggplant cardstock although it looks quite brown on screen. It actually looks much closer in colour to the small bits of eggplant ink I added to my background panel, but they look quite different here.

Anyway, I’m also entering this into the current CAS Christmas challenge (tree).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Thinking of autumn colours

Hi there everyone

It’s time for another guest post for CAS Colours & Sketches challenge.

This week, the team has come up with a beautiful autumnal colour palette for us.

As I mentioned before, the team uses Stampin Up! colour names as a reference which always made me a little reticent to play in the colour challenges as I don’t have any Stampin Up! inks. Luckily, this month it’s proving quite easy to match up the colours quite well using distress oxide inks.

I created a blended background using Wild Honey, Fired Brick and Candied Apple. I then cut an oval from some white cardstock and adhered the frame to the blended background. I added a Memory Box die cut (the fabulous Arboscello Tree) and a stamp from an older Hero Arts set to complete my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.