Technique – die cutting

Featuring die cutting

Merry Geo Tree

Hi there!

I must say that the inspiration board for September’s Pin-sights Challenge is absolutely gorgeous. In my view the best I’ve seen!  So many possibilities….

In the end, I went with something totally outside my comfort zone – I created a watercolour background using a number of colours from the board.

When I was happy with how that was looking, I added some gold watercolour – love how this turned out!

I cut out the tree using the Ellen Hutson/Essentials by Ellen Geo tree die set and used it to cover a section of my finished background. Finally, I added an Essentials by Ellen sentiment to complete the card. I was toying with adding a few stars to the background, but decided to keep it CAS.

And the added bonus? I still have enough of my background left to use in more cards, so don’t be surprised if you see it make a reappearance here before Christmas!

I’m also entering this into this week’s Less is More challenge as the theme is ‘watercolour’.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Autumn colour

Hi everyone!

The Color Throwdown challenge has another fabulous colour combination this week – rust, green, orange and aqua! They were such fun to play with and I ended up creating two cards!

I used Impression Obsession’s background fancy leaf stamp with distress inks for both cards. For the first card, I trimmed down the background to fit a card base and simply added a rectangle of vellum and a Memory Box sentiment die. I added a few sequins to finish it off.

For the second card, I embossed a piece of cardstock using a Spellbinders embossing folder. I cut my stamped panel with an Essentials by Ellen die and then added a Concord and 9th sentiment.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Striped birthday

Hi everyone!

There’s another eye-catching sketch for this week’s Case This Sketch challenge. For my CAS take, I used some double-sided tape and gilding flakes to create the silver strip and then added a few strips of coloured cardstock either side. The Happy Birthday strip was cut using a @lilinkerdesigns die. I added a few silver nailheads to finish off the card. Super quick and simple!

I’m also going to enter this into the current Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge – add metal.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Think Big!

The cue word for this week’s Casology challenge is ‘big’ and I thought it would be a great opportunity to play with my fabulous Cityscape dies from Altenew. Alas, EVERYTHING went wrong with this card, and it took me ages to create. I should’ve known it wasn’t going to be easy when the dies weren’t where they should’ve been…. the packaging was, just no dies!

I was sorely tempted to enter yesterday’s HUGE card into the challenge, but I persevered and I’m glad I did! The dies are fun to play with!

I created my own shimmer paper for the buildings using some Tonic Studios Embellishment Mousse. Unfortunately, it had dried up, but I added some water and it seemed to be fine! I also used my Prismacolor pencils to create the background – really unusual for me as I usually rely on my distress inks for that. It was good to practice with my pencils!

I feel I need to add a sentiment to the top right – like I did the first time I used this die set. I’ve seen the ‘perfect’ stamp and it will be going in my basket the next time I place an order!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

First galaxy card

Hi everyone!

The theme for this week’s Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is ‘Written in the stars’. I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to attempt my first galaxy background. There are some amazing galaxy cards on Instagram and I have been itching to give it a go.

It turned out to be super easy and incredibly quick!

Step 1

I used a few bright distress inks to create my first layer. I didn’t worry too much about smoothing out the blending as I knew any uneven patches would be hidden by the next layer.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2

 Next, I added a layer of dark ink – I chose to use Black Soot Distress Oxide. On reflection, maybe this could have been a bit darker. I’ll see what that’s like next time I do a galaxy background.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3

I added some splashes of water to give the impression of distant light. I decided that OI wouldn’t add any white splatters to this background as I was going to be adding a busy die cut to the foreground. Otherwise, I would definitely add them!

 

 

 

 

 

To finish the card, I added a Technique Tuesday die cut, a Dienamics frame and a sentiment from Hero Arts.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Green and…blue leaves?

Hi everyone!

I’ve been playing with my Distress Oxide inks and Color Bursts today and had great fun making different backgrounds for future projects. It was my first time using colour bursts! Oh my! They are amazing! I only have a couple of colours (at the moment) so I decided to combine them with my distress oxide inks to see what happened – love the effect!

I used one of my backgrounds to make this card. Believe it or not, I actually used Lucky Clover distress oxide ink here but somehow it looks much lighter in places – almost like Cracked Pistachio. Weird, but I like it!

I used a fabulous background die from Altenew and inlaid the pieces that I’d cut from my coloured background into a white die cut panel. To finish it off, I added a small piece of vellum and a greeting cut using some of the Altenew inline alpha set.

I’m entering this into the current Color Throwdown challenge – blue, green and white make up this week’s colour combo!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.