dreaming skies

 If you saw Lesley and Chocolate Baroque on Hochanda last month, you would have seen these cards. I owe my friend Janet for the inspiration, she let me play with her new distress oxide ink pads - and did make sure she got them all back too! I loved the effect on black card, though it did seem to fade with time, so tried to get the same effect with what I had.
I used the silhouette palace 1 mask on black card, and sponged white pigment ink across the card to be the base of the sky, not worrying about any streaks.Once it was dry, I sponged ordinary distress inks over the top, to try to give a northern lights effect, using purples and greens - not quite right, but near enough for me!
The winged horse and the fairy were stamped using versamark and a glittery black embossing powder. Fairies are not really my scene, but I did like this one - so tried  a different version.
I used far more of the white pigment ink this time, and positioned the mask towards the bottom of the card - the sky looked better this time to me, the colour showed up more. The faory and the horse were embossed again with the same glittery powder, I added white to one side of the masked image, and the sentiment from the see beauty clear set with white embossing powder at the bottom.

new dawn

 2017, the start of a new year and for many people resolutions - I usually make one, to have a tidy craft space, which lasts about as long as the next craft session.........then normal chaos is resumed!
The after-Christmas restoration of craft space means the chaos is already well-established, as I can't find anything I need after my daughter reclaimed her bedroom temporarily.On the bright side, I re-discovered lots of stash I had forgotten I had, including several little-used (if at all in some cases!) stamps, which led to an immediate suspension of sorting out in favour of playing.

This small landscape card is one result, using a stamp from owl edges with a sentiment from a set of clear stamps , with distress inks.
I have to admit that I normally avoid sentiment stamps, as I am a genius at getting them on crooked, but this set are clear stamps, so I risked stamping onto the card blank.
I though that it was appropriate to use this, as 2017 is the start of a new adventure for Chocolate Baroque, with Lesley's first show on Hochanda at 1100 on Wednesday, although the DT theme for January is romance.......my first official sample is this one, using stamps from harlequin rose. I have used the two largest stamps, with the border stamped using wild honey distress ink  as a background and the other as the main image, using black versafine and clear EP.
This was coloured with brusho powders, using Lesley's technique of applying the powder to the dry card and using a waterbrush. The gold swirl was painted with mica powder, also using a waterbrush.
A narrow mat of gold mirri card, then both layers were mounted onto a  7" square white card blank.

I would like to wish you all a very happy, healthy and peaceful new year, with lots of crafting fun thrown in