artist trading hearts

 Lesley Wharton has created artist trading hearts for Chocolate Baroque, just that little bit different from the trading coins, and much easier to work on as they are larger.
I enjoyed playing with these, especially as I had just discovered the trading coins....
I stamped the geometric trading heart onto white card and cut it out after colouring with watercolours and adding the words stamped onto a scrap of brushoed card.
The other two I used the plain heart from artist trading heart stamped onto some leftover marbled card, created using the shaving foam technique.  The magnolia was stamped directly onto the heart and coloured with pencils.
The butterfly stamped directly ontot he third shape and coloured with watercolour paints.

The small canvas board was an experiment that didn't quite work. I sprayed the board with some very elderly glimmermist sprays in greens and silvers, then spread texture paste diagonally across it. I stamped into the wet paste using the filigree heart stamps but got a very blurred result. Once dry, i resprayed the whole board and sprinkled some copper embossing powder into the wet inks. White words are from a stencil, the geometric heart was stamped onto a spare piece of card cololured with brusho using versafine and clear embossed. Words and the arrow wer stmped onto tissue paper, torn out and added using modpodge

Tomte wreath

It's been months  since I made anything for Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas challenge, but I couldn't resist this one, when I saw the challenge #459 had a stocking as an added ingredient - plus the fact that I really need to make a start on my Christmas cards!
Both sets of stamps used are from Chocolate Baroque - the mistletoe foliage is from the Christmas Garden, and the lovely gnomes and words from a Tomte Christmas.
The wreath is really easy to create if you have a stamping platform, or you can use a circle diecut to stamp round.

magnolias

  The stamps for the Chocolate Baroque September TV shows were all lovely, but I am sharing my absolute favourite today , the magnolia from the the happy flowers day sheet. It is a large image, just perfect for colouring, and suitable for so many occasions - I never got round to making the sympathy card version.
Both of these card are 8" square, so that gives you some idea of the size of the stamp. very similar technique for both. The first version began with white card, spomged with distress oxide inks, mostly using antique linen and wild honey, with a heart shape masked off (I used the heart stamp to create the mask) after stamping the heart from geometric trading hearts. I randomly stamped the same heart stamp in the background using it hand held. The m  agnolia was stamped in versamark and white embossed before colouring with koh-i-nor watercolours. The sentimnent and butterfly were stamped with black versafine

The second card has a base of kraft card, stamped with various small wordstamps from the sets in the show, using vintage photo distress oxide ink, which was also sponged round the edges.
Magnolia again white embossed and watercoloured - the colours were those in the first card, but the darker base really makes them pop. The sentiment was also white embossed.

ragged dragon butterfly

 I'd had this stamp from Artisan Design for a while before I got a chance to play with it.  Whilst my favourite brusho was drying, I thought why not try it on a candle ....as i was just back from a WI craft day where I was demonstrating how to decorate candles,  while all the gear was out I would see if it would work .... as luck would have it, I had a candle just the right size!
Stamped onto white tissue with black versafine ink, and coloured with promarkers on the reverse. A bit fiddly tearing it out, but it did work!

When the brusho was dry, I decided I didn't like the version in red - looked too muddy on the butterfly - and the blue butterfly  didn't stand out enough from the background. Fussy cut the blue butterfly out, decided I quite liked it on the red background, so added the sentiment and edged it with black  marker pen, mounted onto a 6" square white card.

I am adding this to the following challenges
addicted to stamps -for a lady/girl
corrosive challenges - anything goes
we love 2 create - anything goes mixed media
colour crazy challenge - anything goes