Technique – die cutting

Featuring die cutting

Seeing dots

Happy Saturday everyone!

So, it should come as no surprise that I LOVE background dies. The Altenew Doodled Dots cover die is no exception and I was fortunate enough to get mine during Dies to Die For’s recent Easter discount weekend. It is such a beautiful die – I’m looking forward to using it with an ink blended background, but first of all I decided to play along with this week’s Color Throwdown Challenge (pink, red, mint) and used it with some coloured cardstock.

(That cardstock really is mint-like in real life, honest! Unfortunately it looks quite aqua in my photos…)

I’d love to say these were quick makes. That would be a lie! It took HOURS to inlay all those little dots….. I may have got a little frustrated… but now that it’s over, I like having the set of three cards to compare! Plus three more cards to add to my ‘stock’!

To finish off the cards, I used dies from Savvy Stamps and Penny Black.

So, which one is your favourite?

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Purrfect Birthday

Hi Everyone!

I have the honour of being the GD over at the Case This Sketch challenge. This week was a throwback sketch from a few years ago – before I discovered the challenge! I had LOTS of ideas for this one as it’s wonderful for creating CAS cards, don’t you think?

Anyway, for my card, I used some of my patterned paper mountain plus some cute kitty dies from Impression Obsession and a sentiment from Altenew.

There’s lots of inspiration over at the Case This sketch blog – I hope you can play along!

I’m also entering this into the current Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge (a trio of something).

LucieG.

You totally did it

Hi everyone!

It’s been quite cloudy here so I decided to pull out some sunny Distress Oxide inks to play with today.

After creating the blended background, I added some water speckles and then die cut a Simon Says Stamp circle and sentiment. I used another scrap of card to blend some yellow ink for the fringe (cut using a Mama Elephant die).

The embossed sentiment is by My Favourite Things.

I’m entering this into the current Case This Sketch challenge and the Simon Says Stamp Flickr challenge (ink blending).

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Birthdays are full of sunshine….

Hi everyone!

The theme for the Time Out Challenge’s 4th birthday challenge is ‘birthday’ and here is my take. I decided to play along with the Where Creativity Meets C9 challenge as well as I have a few Concord and 9th products that I was itching to use.

I started with a background I created with a couple of distress oxide inks to cut the rosette from the Hooray Ribbon die set. I followed the helpful C9 video to fold the rosette – I must confess that this took MUCH longer than I expected mainly because I’d used a very thick cardstock so it was quite difficult to fold the card along the score lines.

For the sentiment, I inked up a stamp from the Cuddles and Hugs stamp set and cut the ‘happy’ from the Happy Balloons die set. Finally to create the background, I used the Polka Dot Turnabout stamp with distress oxide inks.

Although it took a long time, I really enjoyed using so many of my C9 products – great fun!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Bunny in leaves

Hello everyone!

For today’s card, I used an older Memory Box die (Jasper Leaves) with a very new one (Sweet Bunny). Isn’t that bunny the cutest? Perfect for spring/Easter cards, but could also be used any time of the year I think, don’t you?

I used a background I created from various green distress oxide inks some time ago. Think I used Peeled Paint, Twisted Citron and maybe some Iced Spruce as well. The bunny is cut from glitter card – love that sparkle.

I’m not sure if I’ll use this card for Easter, so I decided that I wouldn’t add a sentiment at this stage, but I may add one just before I send it.

I’m entering this into the current Memory Box challenge (green) and the current Anything Goes with Dies challenge at Happy Little Stampers..

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Searching for my missing mojo

Happy Saturday everyone!

I have a question for you…. has anyone seen my mojo? It seems to have gone AWOL. I want to get crafty, but I can’t… so frustrating.

In an attempt to get back on track, I decided to CASE one of my favourite Easter cards this year – by the talented Koren Wiskman using stamps and dies from Your Next Stamp. What a cute set!

While I was on her site getting the link, I spotted that Your Next Stamp actually has a challenge and that spurred me on to do another card (this time to enter into the challenge), using the sketch and Koren’s card as inspiration!

For those of you interested in my first Koren-inspired card, here it is! I added a Simon Says Stamp sentiment die to my card so I’m going to enter this into the current Simon Says Stamp Flickr challenge where the theme is Easter/Spring.