Technique – Stamping

Featuring stamping

Day 1 – 25 Days of Christmas Tags

Hi everyone!

I love to make tags for the gifts I give at Christmas but I must confess, while I am usually pretty good with Christmas cards, I am often finishing my tags early on Christmas morning!

I’m so happy that I found out about Tracey McNeely’s 25 Days of Christmas Tags! This event is so inspirational and I hope to keep reasonably up to date – provided I do, I should have at least 25 tags done by the end of the month. Each day has a sponsor and I am going to try to use products from each sponsor wherever I can.

Simon Says Stamp was the sponsor for Day 1 and I must say all the inspiration tags were amazing. In the end, I took Jo Nevill’s beautiful tag and put my own spin on it using stamps from Simon Says Stamp. The main image is from a Simons/Clearly Besotted collaboration for Stamptember 2014 – isn’t it fabulous? Anyway, both the image and sentiment are embossed in gold sparkle powder so this tag is really sparkly in real life.

I’m also entering this into the current Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge – ‘Christmas Gift Tag’.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Feline Spooky!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

I just had to create a Halloween card today – I have so many cute stamps I still haven’t used!

For this card, I stamped and then masked the cute Poppy Stamps ghost cat from the Feline Spooky set. I then created a blended background using regular distress inks and oxide distress inks. Once I finished blending, I lightly stamped a Hero Arts background stamp in white ink. It looks more bluey/grey than white – which I like as I didn’t want the background to detract from my ghost scene!

I’ve been waiting for a new background tree die to arrive so I could use it for this card. Unfortunately it hasn’t come yet, but I decided that the Memory Box Forest Archway worked pretty well with this design. I stuck it on top of the base, removed the mask from the kitty and coloured his tail and cheeks! Don’t you just love that shadow underneath him? So cute!

To finish the card, I added a sentiment from the Poppy Stamps set and a few ghosts that I had cut from the Poppy Stamps Ghost Collage die!

Have a spooky evening!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Pretty Christmas cards

Hi everyone!

I attended my first card making class in the UK for a long time yesterday and it was great fun! Kay Carley was running an all day class for the Craft Barn in Lingfield. Side note: the Craft Barn was where it all began for me many years ago – where I experienced the magic of embossing for the first time, learnt so many techniques and made friends with fellow crafters. I virtually lived there every Saturday and was heartbroken when the owner decided to close. The store was rescued and changed hands before relocating to another local town. It’s now an online-only business but I am glad it still provides some classes at the local community centre. It was sad to go back to Lingfield and see the ‘old place’ all boarded up, but that’s life I guess!

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me and that trip down memory lane. back to the cards…

Kay showed us how to make two cards using her new stamps from Paperartsy. When I saw samples for this class online, I thought the backgrounds had been made using distress inks – we actually used Paperartsy’s Fresco Finish paints. Totally outside my comfort zone but great fun to use and some beautiful colours!!

 For the first card, I followed Kay’s sample colours. I was a bit nervous about outlining the embossed images using distress markers, but that black line really makes the images pop, don’t you think?

 

 

 

 

Kay’s second card followed the same colour theme as her first one, but I decided to try a different palette. Some of these shades remind me so much of distress inks (especially Seedless Preserves and Broken China).

I enjoyed making the backgrounds with the paints – it was great to stamp on the backgrounds and then water colour the images… now I just need to decide if I want to explore this medium a bit more! I particularly like the metallic paint we used for the tree trunks (a bottle may have made its way into my basket!).

Thanks Kay for a great class, and great inspiration!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Autumn greetings

Happy Friyay everyone!

I pulled out a rather neglected Penny Black background stamp today and coloured it with some distress inks. The Crushed Olive turned out a little lighter than I originally intended, but I decided to stick with it, rather than try to darken it!

It was quite nerve-racking to cut into the painted background once I had finished it, but I do love the hidden greeting technique and I am glad that I did it!

I’m entering this card into the current Color Throwdown Challenge – plum, rust and olive.

Have a great weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

So many merry snowmen

Hi there!

I fell in love with Mama Elephant’s ‘So many Snowmen’ stamp the moment I saw the sneak peak on Instagram and snapped it up as soon as I could! I can’t believe it landed on my doormat a week ago and I am only just getting round to stamping it up!

Anyway, it was just as fun to colour as I imagined. I used my Twinkling H2O paints and also my Nuvo Aqua shimmer pen and this card is so shimmery in real life! The die is from Mama Elephant as well and I used ‘Christmas’ from a Simon Says Stamp set.

I’m going to enter this into the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge – anything goes.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG

Love Monster

Hello!

I must confess I was a bit stumped when I saw this week’s Less Is More challenge theme – ‘monsters’. There are loads of cute monster stamps on the market nowadays but I haven’t bought any as I know I just wouldn’t use them…

Then I remembered a very old wood-mounted stamp from Amuse Art Stanps that I bought a decade ago in Boston! Of course, I still have it because I can’t bear to get rid of any of my old rubber stamps!! Anyway, it’s called ‘Love Monster’ – perfect for the challenge theme!

I kept the card very simple as the image is very small – just a bit of soft ink blending and a sentiment banner to anchor the monster image. I also used a Penny Black snowflake frame to add a little more detail to my card.

The theme for the new Casology challenge is ‘cherish’ and I’m going to enter this card for that challenge as well – a quirky take on the theme!

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.