rose candle

Another sample from the latest Chocolate Baroque TV show, this actually was shown, a candle in a gift box, using the rose image from steampunk butterfly

I made the candle first, and was so pleased that it ended up still looking like a candle - thanks to helpful tip from Anne Waller to use a baking parchment wrap when heating the design onto the candle.

The steampunk rose was stamped onto white tissue paper, coloured with marker pens and fussy cut out before heating gently to fix it to the candle. I did this twice.

Having got a decent candle, I then decorated a kraft box to go with it. The sides of the box were covered with gesso, crackle mediem and acrylic paint, and quite a decent crackle finish appeared. I tried to get a crackle finish on the corners of the box lid but failed, not sure why - I suspect a combination of not enough medium and too much green paint!

The steampunk rose image was inked with memento black ink and pressed into a splodge of paper clay. Once it was dry, coloured with promarkers and fussy cut out again then glued onto the lid  It made quite a dimensional image, but too thin a layer of the paper clay was too difficult to cut out.

pastel steampunk

 This was a bit of a mad idea (for me, anyway!) - a heart-shaped hanger I found in my local craft store. I painted it with white gesso first, the brushed the edges with emulsion paint, using a couple of those little tester pots - mine even came with a brush included.  I used mineral mist and gentle lavender, as I thought I would try pretty steampunk instead of grungy.
Once the paint was dry, I used the studded lattice stamp and a grey ink to stamp the background, then added the small butterflies from steampunk butterfly in dark blue ink. I stamped the butterflies again, once onto a sticky label and once onto card, and fussy cut them out.
The sticky label one went on the top butterfly, the card one on the lower one. A lavender ribbon replaced the string hanging loop to finish.

The Country Market that I bake for is held at a local ex-servicemen's club, and they have far more beer mats than they can use from the breweries, and I was given a whole pack of them. So four got transformed into posher coasters.
White gesso again, then the blue and lavender paints as before, but this time the background was stamped using the cogs stamp. The butterfly was stamped onto the mat again, then again onto sticky labels, fussy cut out and glued over the original image - this way you have the antenna from the original stamping and don't need to try to cut them out. I found that the very textured surface of the mat didn't lend itself to a detailed stamp like the butterfly, and sticky labels were a much better solution.
I glued felt over the back of the mats to hide the original advert - not too sure how well they will stand up to use, suspect they will really need a coat of a matt varnish to last at all, will find out over Christmas!

thanks for reading, and have a very happy Christmas with lots of crafty goodies

steampunk rose box

I had a spare image of the steampunk rose that had been stamped into paper clay from when I was working on a sample for the recent TV show on the Craft Channel, and found that it just fit onto this small square box lid. Red, black and white just seemed to fit it, so I got out the paints.
The original box was kraft coloured, so a couple of thin layers of black acylic paint on the lid, and red on the base to start with.
The lid then had a coat of crackle medium,, then a thin coat of white acrylic once that was dry. I was hoping for small crackles, and was lucky this time. I coloured the rose with alcohol markers, then cut them out and glued them onto the lid.
I stamped the cog stamp onto the sides of the lid using versamark and a red EP - I inked the stamp up, put it face up on the desk and then pressed the lid onto the stamp.

The base looked a bit plain, so I added the same stamp to the sides of the base, this time using black versafine and clear embossing.

December postcards

A very quick post - these are my December postcards for the Chocolate Baroque postcard potpourri swap. The themes this month were poinsettia and/or dark blue, and for once I have used both.
The candle is from the Christmas angel of light set and the poinsettia from holly bells set. Both stamped using versamark , candle with a sparkly gold EP and pearlescent paints, ponsettia with a pearl green EP and glitter glue on the top layer.

candle and box

Loving the new background stamps, this one is called baroque orchids and reminds me of brocade, and it seems  a shame to cover any of it up!

Recently I finally managed to get a candle that looked ok when finished – previously they have looked decidedly the worse for wear and rather mis-shapen. Using baking parchment wrapped tightly round when heating the tissue paper onto the candle makes all the difference! Pushing my luck, I thought that I would have a go with this stamp and my last remaining candle.......

I stamped with black memento ink on to what I thought was white tissue paper (reminder, don’t choose your tissue paper by artificial light next time!) then cut out around the image to make a strip to fit the candle, which was too short for the whole image.  I tightly wrapped the candle with the baking parchment, and held it by this while heating gently – I still have a very old hairdryer type heat gun, which has a more gentle heat than the newer guns.

Those who saw the fab shows at the weekend with Lesley on the Craft Channel will notice that the image is actually upside down - it was a bit late by the time I realised this, so I carefully made sure that the image on the box lid was the same way up as on the candle when I took the photo...in my defence, I think it works any way up!

 The box was painted with black acrylic paint, and I smudged the corners with versamark and copper EP to make it a bit more interesting. The image for the lid was stamped in versamark onto black card, embossed with copper EP, cut to size and glued down.

Finishing touch was the tissue paper, black paper  randomly stamped using a copper pigment ink pad.

Fortunately my daughter doesn't have time to read my blog, as this is part of her Christmas present!