Technique – die cutting

Featuring die cutting

Just Us Girls Guest Designer Week 3

Happy Saturday!

I have the honour of being June Guest Designer for the Just Us Girls challenge!

Time for a colour challenge this week – using the three primary colours plus one other. I knew I wanted to use a white card base but wasn’t sure if that would have to be the fourth colour… I went back over past colour challenges and saw that neutrals were allowed in addition to challenge colours so I then felt comfortable choosing another colour – green!

I kept my card super simple, using  just one die set (Memory Box’s Seed Stems), distress inks and lots of stickles! I added a Memory Box sentiment and will send this card to an old friend who has had a rather torrid 2022 so far.

Head over to the Just Us Girls challenge to see the amazing inspiration from the talented design team – we hope you can play along this week!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

June 2022 Get Cracking on Christmas

Hello everyone!

Maybe it’s because of the long Platinum Jubilee weekend at the start of the month, but I find it very hard to believe it’s actually the third Thursday of the month! It’s kind of ironic that it’s one of our hottest June days ever, but here I am creating a festive card for Jenn Shurkus’s ‘Get Cracking on Christmas’. Today I’m also playing along with this month’s CAS Christmas card challenge where the theme is ‘wreath’.

I pulled out an oldie but goodie Memory Box die called Frostyville Wreath and used it to cut a reject distress ink background! I added the Dancing Snowmen (also Memory Box/Open Studio) and a sentiment by My Favorite Things.

Of course, after I had assembled it, I remembered that I was going to use an embossed background.. by then it was too late (and far too hot in my craft room) to try to fix it!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Birthday circle

Hello Everyone!

Today I’m playing along with the Freshly Made Sketches challenge.

When I saw the sketch, I decided it would be perfect for the die fleur double by Simply Graphic! So I chose a couple of pieces of card and got crafty! I stencilled some Nuvo Moonstone paste on my card base and added a Memory Box sentiment plus a few gems to complete my take.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Just Us Girls Guest Designer Week 2

Happy Saturday!

I’m so honoured and excited to be the June Guest Designer for the Just Us Girls challenge! Thank you to all the lovely design team for making me feel so welcome last week – you are all so kind!

The theme of this week’s challenge is ‘add a moving element’. Now I’m not really into making interactive cards but I have always had fun making them in various cardmaking classes! Today I decided to keep it super simple with an action wobbler. And I have a story again too!

First, the card, which I made using some products sent to me by Penny Black. I started by masking an area on my card base and blending some distress ink. Then I cut and adhered the Geometric Circles background die (51-644) on top. Then I turned to the fabulous Sweet Sip mini set (30-905) which I stamped twice with my Frayed Burlap archival ink. I fussy cut the kitty and her tail from one image and fussy cut the whole of the second image, and trimmed off most of the kitty so that I would have room for the wobbler. I coloured in the images using my Twinkling H2O paints.

I then adhered kitty’s tail to the mail image and then used two layers of foam tape to adhere the cup to the card base (I didn’t want a big gap between the kitty’s head and the cup). I added the action wobbler under the kitty’s head and positioned it on my card. I then stamped out the sentiment, which I had straightened slightly on my stamping block (as it is a curved sentiment) and added it to my card base along with some tiny gems.

And now for the story. My action wobblers had gone AWOL but while I was searching for them, I finally found a tiny pinecone stamp that I have been searching for for ALMOST ONE YEAR! It was from a long-retired set and was one of my favourite pinecone images. I was so upset when it went missing during Christmas in July 2021 – I knew it hadn’t been thrown out with my craft room rubbish, but also knew it could have ended up anywhere in the house… I never gave up hope, but didn’t expect to find it in a drawer right to where I sit!

Head over to the Just Us Girls challenge to see the amazing inspiration from the talented design team – we hope you can play along this week!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Just Us Girls Guest Designer Week 1

Happy Saturday!

I’m so honoured and excited to be the June Guest Designer for the Just Us Girls challenge!

The theme of this week’s challenge is ‘paintbrush’ – and I wanted to share the story behind the card! Sorry this is rather on the long side!

I’ve been crafting for almost 15 years…. but do I own any paintbrush dies or stamps?? The short answer is no. The longer answer is I spent a ridiculous amount of time going through ALL my craft supplies as I was CONVINCED I had a paintbrush stamp from back in the day. I was SO SURE that I even recalled colouring the image…. but ‘it’ was nowhere to be found. I did come across an old Elzybells Art Stamps set which included some fun sentiments and a small image with some paintbrushes, but I wanted the brushes to be more of a focal point….

I have a rule that I don’t buy supplies just to make a challenge card and although I could think of ways of incorporating brush MARKS, I felt I had to stick to the theme of paintbrush…. so I broke my rule and ordered the My Favorite Things paintbrush die set from my go-to craft store that usually dispatches the same/next day… can you see where this story is going?

Well, yes, this time they did not dispatch my order for 3 days and as it’s the Platinum Jubilee super-long weekend in the UK, I knew that I wouldn’t get the die set before the challenge launch.

So what did I do? Well, I went through my dies and created my own paintbrushes using parts from die sets by My Favorite Things and Simon Says Stamp!

I stencilled some glitter paste on my card base before I added the ‘paintbrushes’ and a pot. And all that searching wasn’t wasted as I even used a Pablo Picasso quote from that old Elzybells set!

What do you think of the outcome?

Head over to the Just Us Girls challenge to see the amazing inspiration from the talented design team – we hope you can play along this week!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Butterflies Galore!

Hello there!

Today I’m playing along with the Color Throwdown challenge which has a fun retro palette of aqua, red, yellow and black.

After prevaricating for far too long, I went for a simple take on the challenge colours using some of my patterned paper mountain and all the butterflies from the new Intricate Mini Butterflies set by Memory Box. The sentiment is also by Memory Box.

ETA unfortunately I missed the challenge deadline this week – only by a few minutes!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.