Technique – stencilling

Featuring stencilling

Amazing Swan

Hi there!

I spent a wonderful weekend crafting along with Pinkfresh Studio and hundreds of cardmakers across the world! It’s a full-on event which starts mid afternoon and ends close to midnight for me, but totally worth it! The inspiration was amazing, the teachers were fabulous and I learnt new tips and tricks too! I’ll share my makes later this week.

In the meantime, here is my card for this week’s challenge at Freshly Made Sketches. I used the Majestic Swan product suite that we used this weekend. The super-talented Raquel Arribas taught a class using this and it may well have been my favourite one! I love how easy it is to colour and cut so many images in one go…. and the red rubber cling stamp gives such beautiful crisp lines. N0thing beats red rubber stamps in my view. The background circle was created with a Carabelle Studios folder and the sentiment is by Sugar Pea Designs.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Heart Week 2025 – Day 5

Happy Friyay everyone!

Welcome to Day 5 of Heart Week 2025!

What do you do when a crafty order lands on your doormat and you want to use it straightaway but it doesn’t contain any heart items? You use it anyway! I loved Waffle Flower Crafts’ February release and could’ve bought all of it… but I restrained myself and bought a few items… for now! Many thanks to Tracy at Dies to Die For for the incredibly fast shipping! My purchases included the Mod Blossom die and coordinating stencil – I was so inspired by how the DT had used them – so versatile.

I created a panel with the stencil and various distress inks and then used an old Ellen Hutson heart die to cut it. I adhered it to a base that I had embossed with a WRMK Next Level embossing folder that I got back in 2015. Who remembers those? I consider them to be the founding father of the amazing 3D embossing folders we have today!

The sentiment is an old wood-mounted stamp (don’t you just love the little heart above the ‘i’?) and I added a few clear heart gems to complete my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Pastel Always Smiling

Hello Everyone!

Last year I attended a few Pinkfresh Studio Create and Connect events and really enjoyed them. Since then I’ve been slowly growing my Pinkfresh collection and over Christmas, I picked up the beautiful Always Smiling stamp set and coordinating stencil and die sets.

The layered stencils mean that you can colour the image very quickly but of course I chose to do something different here! I loved how Raquel Arribas used different colours on different stencilled flowers so I had to try it! It was actually pretty straightforward and wasn’t as time consuming as I feared!

I used a sentiment from the set plus the largest dies from the Nested Elongated Ovals Blanket Stitched die set to create the frame. The base is the Honey Bee Stamps Dogwood Blooms 3D embossing folder.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

30 Day Christmas Card Challenge 2024 – Day 20

Hi everyone!

I’m playing along with Martin’s 30 Day Christmas Card Challenge this month.

 

The theme of Day 202’s challenge is ‘ugly sweater’.

Well, it may be difficult to believe but I don’t have any ugly sweaters in my crafty collection! So this was a real struggle to me! So I interpreted the challenge as ‘Christmas jumper’ instead! I pulled out the very old Hero Arts/Sizzix stamp/die combo that I finally got on ebay last year I think. I love the reindeers in their little Christmas jumpers – plus one of them looks like he’s jumping so I’ve got my own little play on words.

I don’t usually do scenes that cover a whole card but I bought this fabulous Sizzix stencil set a few weeks ago – I love how quickly stencilled scenes come together.

The sentiment is by from a very old Hero Arts wood-mounted stamp set. I stamped it from Cloud 9 Silver ink – unfortunately it dried with a rather mottled effect but I felt it went well with the card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

30 Day Christmas Card Challenge 2024 – Day 19

Hi everyone!

I’m playing along with Martin’s 30 Day Christmas Card Challenge this month.

The theme of Day 19’s challenge is ‘wrapped in wonder’.

Lots of ideas for this one but I really wanted to use my new Nellie Snellen Presents embossing folder and stencil – so I did! I used new Pinkfresh inks and I have to confess that I was a little disappointed with the pink which turned out MUCH brighter than I would usually choose.

The silver parcels are cut from the Memory Box Pretty Presents die set and the sentiment is an older set by Poppystamps.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.

Beautiful berries

Hello there!

Today I’m using products kindly sent to me by Penny Black from their new Christmas release, Wishing You Joy – Christmas Round 2 plus some products from previous releases.

I love embossing folders and I was delighted to see that Penny Black has just launched some 3D folders, one of which is my focal point for my card today. I was absolutely amazed by the depth and detail of the Berries Abound folder (65-022) when I used it for the first time – it really is stunning! I cut it with the coordinating die (51-851) and coloured it using the 3 stencil set (25-026) and distress inks with detail blending brushes.

This is a large image (I’m using a UK A6 card size for reference here) and I tried it with a few different sized cards and layouts before choosing this one! I added the basket from last year’s Berry Basket set (51-796) coloured with distress inks plus greenery for the basket (Garden Edgers 51-549) and the Holly Days branch die (51-741) – cut from white glitter card.

I added a sentiment from the Meaningful stamp set (30-919) to complete my card.

Thanks for stopping by!

LucieG.