Technique – Stamping

Featuring stamping

Santa’s sleigh

Hi Everyone!

Today, I’m playing along with this week’s Freshly Made Sketches challenge where their 400th anniversary celebrations continue!

This week’s sketch was the one used for challenge number 200…. and it’s really minimalist! I decided to make another festive card, using a die I had forgotten – the Pine Tree Border from Poppystamps, dated 2011! Hard to believe that’s 8 years ago now! Anyway, I cut a panel of white card using the die and stamped a Clearly Besotted sentiment. I then masked off a circle on my card base and blended some distress inks to create a night sky. Maybe I should have gone a little darker, but let’s just imagine that the bright moon is making the sky seem blue, ok?!

I removed the masking paper and dabbed on a little watered-down distress ink to add some depth to the moon. I then stamped a Clearly Besotted Santa image over the moon. Finally I added my die-cut panel to my card base using some foam tape et voila, another Christmas card done! Yay!

Thank for stopping by!

LucieG.

Sunshiny Day

Hi there!

It’s time for a new challenge at AAA Cards! This fortnight we’re challenging you to use one edge of your card only and the optional twist is ‘inspired by a song’. Our sponsor is CASual Fridays

When I saw the optional twist, I thought of a set, called My Sunshine, that I bought on sale from Simon Says Stamp. It contains quite a few song lyrics  and I thought this lyric from ‘I can see clearly now’ would work well along the edge of my card. Who remembers that song? I know the Jimmy Cliff version and remember when it came out over 25 years ago!

I decided to use a light blue card base and inked up the large sun image from the set using a couple of Distress Oxide inks (Squeezed Lemonade and Wild Honey). I was so pleased with the ink coverage – the colours seem to be pretty vibrant and yellow, even though I didn’t use a white card base.

This card is super simple and came together so quickly! Once I stamped the image and sentiment, I added some sequins to help guide the eye along the edge! A few understated embellishments are fine, as long as they support a CAS design!

My team mates have come up with some beautiful cards which are on the AAA Cards challenge blog. We are also joined by the talented Angie from Cimba Creative Fun – I love her card – you must check them out!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Winter Wonderland

Hello!

I’m here with my first Crafts-U-Love DT post for September.

This month, I received a couple of products by Studio Light, the Essentials Clear Stamp Set – No.393* and the A6 Paper Pad – No.121* plus the Eleganza Craft 4 mm Glitter Gems – Silver* .

Unfortunately, only the clear stamp is in stock right now, so I have just used that one for my card this time. If you are wondering about the paper pad, I thought that it was great value for money – some fabulously festive designs and the perfect size for A6 cards – no trimming needed! The glitter gems remind me very much of Nuvo glitter drops – but of course no worrying about getting the drops the same size.. or waiting for them to dry! Two really useful products with a great price point!

I kept things simple with my card as the image contains a sentiment already so it would be perfect for using for any batch cards you needed. I embossed the image using white embossing powder and then simply blended distress ink (Antique Linen, Dried Marigold, Victorian Velvet and Seedless Preserves) over it. I used a microfibre cloth to remove ink from the image before splattering some water on top of the scene and blotting the ink dry.

There are some festive fabulous images in this line from Studio Light. I particularly like this Tree and the Reindeer!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Products marked with a ‘*’ were sent to me by Crafts-U-Love for this DT assignment.

Color Throwdown Guest Designer Week 2

Hello everyone!

This month, I have the honour of being the Guest Designer over at one of my favourite challenges, the Color Throwdown. I’m beyond thrilled!

It’s another beautiful colour palette this week – green, yellow, light blue, kraft. I decided to use kraft as my base colour and do a little colouring with my Prismacolor pencils.

I stamped the fabulous Penny Black Flower Cascade image using versamark ink and started colouring. First, I applied white pencil and then added layers and layers of colour. I wasn’t too sure about the leaves – I found it difficult to get the depth of colour that I wanted. Anyway, once I was reasonably happy I stopped colouring and revisited my initial plan…

You see, I’d originally intended to heat emboss the image in gold once my colouring was complete, but I really liked the subtle brown lines the versamark had made. So in the end, I stamped over the image a second time using Frayed Burlap Distress Oxide. Thank goodness for my MISTI!

For full details of how to enter this week’s challenge, please head over to the Color Throwdown challenge blog. As usual, the design team has some amazing inspiration:

Amy Rohl

Amy Rysavy

Barbara Anders

Broni Holcombe

Jodi Collins

Lisa Henke

Lori Tecler

Lynn Put

Vickie Zimmer

Wanda Cullen

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Be Happy

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I’ve been struggling with my mojo recently. I was so motivated to create during my Christmas in July series but it’s just disappeared this month. To be fair, life has been busy with a few home/garden challenges…

To kickstart my mojo, I decided to play along with the Global Design Project, which has a colour challenge this week. I chose a fun set my PaperArtsy (ref EKD03) and got to work. I actually embossed and coloured the image first and then thought about the design. Not the way I usually work and I ended up spending a bit of time trying out various designs before settling on this one. I’m still not completely sure about it, but sometimes you just have to stop and tell yourself, ‘that’s enough’!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

LucieG Christmas in July 2019 Challenge

Hi everyone!

My Christmas cardmaking always tends to be a bit of a rush, especially as I like to devote my crafty time to Tracey McNeeley’s tag challenge in November. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been trying to find a way to make cards earlier in the year, but generally failing! However, I think I’ve found a better way of achieving that this year!

Christmas in July!

I actually decided to attempt Christmas in July earlier this year but then Kathy Racoosin announced her Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge, which would fall partly into July and that threw my into a bit of a quandry… but that turned out to be an added bonus! I only used wood-mounted stamps for the colouring challenge, so I was able to ink up some oft-neglected wood-mounted Christmas stamps for my cards in the first half of the month!

I LOVED devoting a whole month to Christmas cards. While I was very ready to move on from stamping/colouring at the end of the 30 day colouring challenge on  15 July, I’m not ready to move on from making Christmas cards now! I think that’s because I didn’t restrict myself to one main technique (like stamping/colouring) and also because I have some really gorgeous festive supplies! Anyway, I’ll definitely be creating more Christmas cards on and off during August.

I also enjoyed being able to create my cards without the ‘distraction’ of new stuff! In autumn, I often end up waiting for new release stamps and dies to arrive and this adds to the pressure to get my cards done quickly! By creating so many cards in July, I was able to ‘shop my stash’ and use some old favourites as well as newer stamps and dies that I didn’t have a chance to create with last year.

It was also fun to create festive cards for challenges which were not focussed on Christmas-themed cards! I ended up with cards using non-traditional colours – some challenges really stretched my creativity!

Thanks to everyone who followed along and shared kind comments with me – I really appreciate all of you!

Have a great day!

LucieG.