Technique – Stamping

Featuring stamping

Have the courage to imagine

Hello everyone!

It’s time for a new challenge over at AAA Cards and this fortnight we have a word to inspire your CAS creations – ‘imagine’. Winnie & Walter is our sponsor.

I decided to use a quote as the starting point for my male encouragement card. I knew I wanted to create a simple one layer card so I started with a background stamp to ‘ground’ my quote and image. Before stamping the background, I used a paper towel to remove some ink so that the pattern would be subtle.

I spent a little while choosing the image… I toyed with spaceships and hot air balloons but in the end I chose a vintage plane. All stamps are by Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous and I used regular distress ink and distress oxide.

My teammates have shared some gorgeous CAS cards on the AAA Cards blog and we are also joined by the super talented Izzy from Izzy Scrap as our Guest Designer. She has some beautiful creations – you must pay her a visit!

Thanks for stopping by – I do hope you play along with us!

LucieG.

 

Simply the best

Happy Sunday everyone!

Life has been busy with no time for cardmaking, sadly, but I managed to find a couple of hours today to play along with some of my favourite challenges – the Color Throwdown and Freshly Made Sketches.

There’s a great seasonal colour palette over at the Color Throwdown challenge this week – red, orange and blue. I used distress oxide ink and one of my new Hero Arts glimmer paints to create blue and red background which I then cut with a Penny Black background die. I also used the die to cut a piece of orange glitter card – got to have a bit of sparkle somewhere.

The background die is rectangular but the sketch calls for a square background, so I simply cut an extra section and stuck it to the end of the blue die cut as I knew I could use my sentiment strip to hide the join. I then inlaid the die cut leaves from the orange and red background pieces.

Once I completed the inlaid die cutting, I stamped a Penny Black sentiment and adhered it to the card.

This week, Penny Black announced a holiday challenge (covering autumn, Thanksgiving etc as well as Christmas) – I often play along with other Penny Black challenges but I was so pleased to see one from Penny Black themselves, so I’m entering my autumn card in that challenge as well.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Sweetest Fluffles

Hello everyone!

Who remembers the wonderful Fluffles the Cat by Stampendous? Such a cute fun kitty! I still have all the wood-mounted Fluffles stamps I bought probably a decade ago and today I had fun reminiscing about the happy hours I used to spend at a couple of ‘local’ craft stores back in the day. I love how the internet has connected us all and we have so much more online choice nowadays. But I really miss those days in the craft stores.

Anyway, when I saw that the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge had a theme of ‘anything goes’ with Stampendous products, I immediately thought of my Fluffles stamps and decided to use one of them with the sketch from the current Freshly Made Sketches challenge.

I was originally going to fussy cut Fluffles and put him on an action wobbler but in the end I decided on an ‘out of the box’ die cut instead.

I went through my backgrounds box and pulled out the remnants of a Hero Arts background that I created with Satin Pearl embossing powder and distress oxide inks last year and adhered it to my base card before adhering the Fluffles image. To finish off the card, I added a sentiment from My Favorite Things.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

 

Birthday leaves

 

Happy Sunday everyone!

It’s time for a new challenge over at AAA Cards and this fortnight we have a sketch for you. Our sponsor is Happy Little Stampers.

I love this CAS sketch – lots of ‘white space’ with a great focal point! As we’re now into September (how did that happen?), I decided to use a stamp from Happy Little Stampers’ Doodled Flowers set and create an autumn-themed card. I had such fun using my Altenew watercolour paints again. Love how vibrant they are!

I then cut a circle from a square piece of white card to create a frame to go on top of the leafy background. I knew I wanted to raise the frame a little, but didn’t want to use funky foam. Instead, I created another frame from card and adhered one on top of the other to give my card some very subtle dimension. Finally, I added a Happy Little Stampers sentiment.

My teammates have shared some gorgeous CAS cards on the AAA Cards blog and we are also joined by Alex as our Guest Designer. She has some fabulous creations – you must pay her a visit!

Thanks for stopping by – I do hope you play along with us!

LucieG.

 

Sparkly Peacock

Happy Friyay everyone!

The theme for the current Blog Named Hero challenge is ‘sparkle and shine’. A fabulous excuse to get out the glitter paste, stickles and mirror card….. not that I need any excuse really!

I started by blending some distress ink though a Creative Expressions (That Special Touch) stencil. I then spread a generous layer of Nuvo glimmer paste over the inked background.

I used my go-to inks from Altenew for the Hero Arts Layering Peacock and cut some mirror card using a sentiment die from the March My Monthly Hero Kit. Love that font! Finally I added a few dots of stickles to the peacock’s tail – you can never have too much glitter can you?!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Just keep swimming!

Hi there!

Two posts in one day! I can’t believe I forgot to post my card for the current Poppystamps challenge (‘make a splash’) earlier, but I’m glad that I remembered before the challenge closed!

I decided to use stamps from Poppystamps’ ‘Yes I whale’ set. As it’s the end of summer and people are heading to new schools, unis, jobs etc, I thought it would be appropriate to make an encouragement card, so I paired the whales with a stamp from Avery Elle. After colouring the whale images, I had to fussy cut them because the coordinating dies have gone AWOL – so annoying!

I then created a watery background using the faux alcohol ink technique demonstrated by Tim Holtz/Jennifer McGuire using glossy cardstock, distress oxide ink, water and distress glaze. I really like how this turned out. As you may know, I can’t use the alcohol inks as the strong smell triggers migraines so I love that I can still create a similar look! (I’m actually wondering if I should enter this into the current Ellen Hutson challenge (which is about alcohol inks) – as an alcohol-free alternative!!)

I used the Ellen Hutson strands die to cut a piece of white card which I stuck on top of my watery background before adhering the whales and sentiment.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.