Sunday 27 November 2011

Sue's White Christmas

This is the card my Baroque Guild buddy Sue Stone made for Glenda's White Christmas challenge. Sue doesn't have her own blog yet, so she's piggybacking on mine for now.
She created the background using torn paper masks and sponging inks over them, stamping trees to create the landscape for the house (CB home sweet home), which was stamped and cut out.She has added glitter paper, ribbon, sentiment and snowflakes from the CB winter wonderland plate.
A very wintery card, with subtle shading - nice one, Sue

Friday 25 November 2011

White Christmas

Glenda Waterworth has a White Christmas challenge until the middle of December - check out this post for details - the possible prize is well worth winning!                                                                                      I decided to do an all-white card, which believe me I regretted when trying to photograph it, though I was quite pleased with how it turned out.The base card is a pearl 8x8", the plain white layer was embossed with a snowflake folder (no name on it, and I can't remember where it came from ). The angel image from  the angel of light plate from Chocolate Baroque was embossed with white detail EP onto a pearly vellum, torn out and matted onto another torn piece of plain white card, which had the edges swiped with versamark and embossed with vanilla ice EP - I used pinflair glue gel to attach the layers, so they are ever so slightly raised up. the flowers were cut from a pearly paper using crealies dies - 2 with flower die no 1 and one with no 11 - leaves were an x-cut embossing punch. I sprayed the flowers with a homemade glimmery spray - isopropyl alcohol mixed with Tsukineko shimmery ink in frost white - and added a dab of stardust stickles in the centre of each.
I am also entering this into the Make my Monday challenge, which is for a Christmas card with foliage, flowers or snowflakes - I've got all 3 here!

Sunday 20 November 2011

Bah Humbug boxes

The latest Bah Humbug challenge 45 is for a gift box - so I used my Sizzix pillowbox die from Stampin Up. This is  a disappointingly small die - ok for jewellery, but too small for the mini chocolate bars I wanted to use.  I did try folding the card before cutting it to get a longer box, then decided it was far easier to just cut 2 out of different cards and put them together. I trimmed the flaps from the red card, and cut the gold one in half before glueing the halves  behind the red one. The greeting from Chocolate Baroque was stamped on white card with black memento ink, coloured with promarkers  - the extra fine tip was a great help - cut out and glued on top.
 The second  pic shows 2 more pillow boxes, the smaller one is the original size, stamped with a lovely flowery pear stamp by Artemio and embossed with detail gold EP - I went over the design on the par with a white gel pen, as I didn't think it stood out enough - next time, I will stamp onto white card and cut it out! The second box is another extended one, with a flower made from glassine and baking parchment using the Tim Holtz tattered florals die - the leaves were punched using an EK punch.
The bottom pic is what I call a cheese slice box, made from 1/3 A4 piece of card. The reindeer was from a die - Marianne?- cut from white card, glittered and a gem on his nose. The trees are from a chocolate Baroque stamp.

cd sunday trees

This week's challenge on CD Sunday is trees - having come across this Chocolate Baroque trees stamp, I decided I have better use it now - I have recently set out to do challenges and found that they had already ended..............so am trying to reform! The dp background is from the Artylicious Essence of Nature cd (also from Chocolate Baroque). The main image panel was a mixture of brayering and sponging for the background, with the trees stamped using black memento ink. The reflection was brayered on first before stamping the trees - it is quite a large stamp, so the brayer only takes  part of it.

Friday 18 November 2011

November craft club

last Sunday was the delayed craft club meeting at Moira's, and this was based on the card Janet designed. The background used the faux pearl technique, with white acrylic paint mixed with mica powder dabbed over the car first using crumpled cling film. Once this was dry, then we used various distress and dye inks sponged over to create the sky before multi-stamping the trees stamp by Clarity stamps in the foreground.  Greeting was also a Clarity stamp. My sky was supposed to be a sunset, but now I think it looks more like a misty landscape! I mounted the finished scene onto matt silver, then onto a white card previously stamped with the Tim Holtz pine needles stamp in weathered wood along one side.
The second card from an idea by Moira was a large card, basically a back-to-front easel card with a battery tealight inside, with a very fancy aperture cut using a big die and a caliber diecutter. Snag here was that I assembled it the wrong way, so took it to pieces once home and redid it. The image was originally a large Papermania nativity stamp, but I stayed with the Clarity stamp from the previous card, and did a proper misty sunset scene on vellum. As it was a large aperture, I could rescue it by using my largest oval to cut apertures from two A5 cards once home and sandwiching the vellum between them to make the easel card base.  The scan was done with white card behind the image, as I have found it almost impossible to get a good photo with the tealight in position. Actually, the easel card is lined with mirri card, which reflects the tealight.
Having got on a roll, I made two more, using the stamp I had originally hoped to use, from Chocolate Baroque, which was far too small for the original aperture.
this time, I used black card for the base, and stamped using black versafine ink and clear embossing powder  onto a tinted vellum. This was the best shot I could get with a tealight lit, and i think you can just see the gold mirri card lining the base card.
the second one used a slightly larger card, with a handcut rectangle aperture - as the aperture was offset, I cut both layers together so that they would line up properly. This version is lined with silver mirri card, and the palm tree image and greeting  (also Chocolate Baroque) are embossed in silver.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

bah humbug 44

Bah humbug 44 challenge is to use a snowman - took me quite a while to remember that I had this Tim Holtz stamp, which had never seen ink before today. I made a tag, using DIs in antique linen, tattered rose, milled lavender, shabby shutters and tumbled glass for the background, and chipped sapphire round the edges. I ran the tag though the big shot with a snowflake embossing folder - no name on it though - brushed shimmer paint over the snowflakes and glued some snowflakes cut from glitter card with a Martha Stewart punch over some of them.
the snowman was stamped in chipped sapphire, and embossed with a holographic EP, then stuck on top - ribbon is a bit of shiny pale blue organza that was lurking in the bottom of the drawer

Tuesday 8 November 2011

a time to remember

Cynthia has challenged us to use poppies this week, and this is the first of my efforts (at least, I hope I can finish the second improved version!)
The stamp is a very old one from Funstamps, stamped in black memento ink and coloured with promarkers. I used a post-it note mask, and stamped the grasses stamp from Chocolate Baroque several times in varying DI green inks before sponging some shabby shutters over the bottom of the card. and pink, purple and blue inks over the sky to try to give a sunset effect.
I cut it out with a Sizzix topnote die, trimmed it down and mounted in onto a gold card using the same die. The backing paper is from the Essence of nature cd (Chocolate Baroque), so making this card eligible for the CD Sunday challenge as well

gift tag

Another challenge site that I haven't  been to for a long time is Moving along with the times - this week their challenge is food and drink. I couldn't find the original stamp I had intended to use, but did find this Christmas pudding from Chocolate Baroque, and decided to turn it into a gift tag to go with one of the Christmas cakes that I have started to bake.
The tag was stamped with a pine needle stamp from Tim Holtz using forest moss DI, then stippled and sponged with antique lined, shabby shutters and fired brick DI in a random way. once it was dry, the needles were stamped and embossed in gold round the edges, edges distressed and gold embossed as well.
Pud was embossed in gold on white card, then again with the image coloured in inks applied over versamark with cotton buds then clear embossed. It didn't work as well as I had hoped, so after cutting the pud out, I added more brown inks to the pud again with cotton buds. I cut the image out with an Xcut die, then sponged antique linen and shabby shutters round the edges, ran a versamark pen round the edges and gold embossed them. The coloured pud was decoupaged onto the original gold image, which was then added to the tag, with red and gold ribbon to finish.

Tuesday 1 November 2011

flower die

  I have not been able to keep up with all the challenges that I would have liked, and this is the first one for Playdate that I have managed for quite some time. The colour scheme was kraft, flesh and pale blue for challenge 105, and I thought that would do nicely for a Christmas card that would also fit Bah humbug 43, to use die cuts - also a chance to play with my new stamps from Chocolate Baroque! I started with a kraft card blank, cut down from A4, and stamped the image from the Christmas cheer plate in bashful blue ink - so far, so good - problem was matching the blue ink with card to make the flowers, almost had to resort to colouring white card with the ink ( can quite see the attraction of stampin up's colour co-ordination now!) I used a Marianne die to cut the flowers, and a top note die to cut the backing shape from glitter card, the nearest I could find to a flesh colour. I partially decoupaged the trees and tree trunks in the front of the image, cut it out and glued it over the die cut before adding the flowers. I added some shimmer paint round the edges of the petals, and a quick squirt of silver spray as well.                                                              The second card will also qualify for Bah humbug, as I used the same dies. the stamp is from the Peace on earth plate, embossed with copper EP onto white card. The card was then brayered over using the waterfall big'n'juicy pad, before using night of navy ink to darken the sky immediately round the star, then chipped sapphire DI over the rest of the card. Cut out, mounted onto a thin layer of copper card, then onto a piece printed from the peacock summer party cd (also chocolate baroque) before adding to an A5 card in dark blue. Copper card for the marianne die flowers, with the leaves from an EK punch in green.