blue postcards

My postcards for the September Chocolate Baroque postcard potpourri swap - had to go with the colour this month, wasn't any too sure exactly what an aster or a forget-me-not looked like, though there must have been a CB stamp featuring them at some point!
I used a brusho background for both of them (why are you not surprised?) - the silver came from a can of webbing spray that I discovered in a drawer. I was a bit heavy handed with it, and think it would look better if the can was further away from the card, but can se it coming in useful for Christmas cards.
The poppy stamp was stamped onto the base with versafine, and again onto another piece of brusho card. I cut the poppies and the butterfly out, and glued them over the first image after colouring the stems and leaves with promarkers.
The Mackintosh beauty stamp was done the same way, apart from the second stamping onto white card, and more promarkers. I was very pleased to pick this set up in a sale bin at the recent Thetford show, so another one crossed off the wanted list!

CB challenge 12 - again - again!

Another entry, again a get well card for a WI friend, this time using a stamp from pretty poppies and the same Crealies patchwork die and sentiment stamp. Thanks to Lesley for identifying the stamp - have used the others from this set lots of times, but never this one before!
Flowers coloured with promarkers and fussy cut. Background circle stamped with same stamp in grey ink, edges of everything inked with an ancient apricot inkpad.
Really enjoying playing with this borrowed die, waiting for mine to arrive

June postcards

 The theme for the June postcard potpourri swap at Chocolate Baroque was rose/gold - I have used two different stamps and gold embossing powder, so two for one this month.
Both also have brusho backgrounds.
The large rose was stamped and embossed first, then the the brusho powders in yellow, green, grey and turquoise sprinkled in roughly appropriate places and spritzed with water - I was holding my breath while I did it, and would have had fingers crossed too if I hadn't needed to hold the spray!
It did work ok though, much to my relief.

The smaller stamp was stamped on a bit of brusho-d card and embossed, rose coloured with promarkers. Torn edges were also embossed with gold, mounted onto black card that was stamped in versamark and clear embossed using the leafy edges stamp all round to give a bit of interest to the black card.

CB colour challenge

Chocolate Baroque now have a challenge blog of their own, and the first challenge is a colour one - turquoise, green, yellow and red.
I started out with backgrounds using distress inks on a craft mat, spraying with water and mopping up with card - well, after I had got a yellow ink pad first. I used peeled paint, mustard seed, peacock feathers and fired brick - admittedly not much fired brick!
The briar rose stamp was stamped with versafine across a paler patch of card, then the flowers,leaves and butterflies bleached out - I should really have embossed the stamp first, as the outline suffered a bit from the bleach...............leaves and rose centres coloured with green  promarker and a lot of blender pen, though maybe that should be the other way round as I used the blender first!

Butterflies were stamped and embossed (I do learn!) on a bit of card from a brusho experiment using red and yellow, cut out and decoupaged on top. Mounts are black and turquoise card and the base card is a 7" white square.
I tried a much brighter version using brusho inks in blue and green sprinkled round the edges of another piece of distress inked card - it was originally very similar to the first one. I discovered that brusho is very potent, and that if you add more water to tone down the colour it spreads very quickly.........also had a surprise when I opened the green tub and found it contained orange powder! (but it did come out green when I plucked up the nerve to try it).
The main image after again bleaching was coloured with inktense pencils, butterflies with promarkers and a touch of wink of stella to sparkle them.
By a strange coincidence, butterflies are the theme of Make my Monday this week, so I can enter these for that as well.

owls....

 Spent nice afternoon with Moira yesterday, playing with her new owl stamps from Hobby Art - have to admit I drew the line at the fairies! Most cute stamps leave me cold, but these owls have great expressions - think exasperated depairing mum  for the big one - and I didn't really mind cutting them out.
The first one is my version of Moira's sample card - she kindly diecut the frame for us first. I used distress inks for the background, braqch stamped onto the background and coloured with promarkers, owls cut out and glued on top. I slit each side of the branch and slid - eventually- the wing through for the dangling owl.  I brushed more distress ink round the edges of the frame before adding mum on foam pads and a gold matt.

I had a Clarity Stamp stencil in my bag which I had been using when playing with tags for the latest Chocolate Baroque tags challenge, so used that for a background for the second card. Blue and green distress inks brushed over fairly lightly through the stencil, then again after removing the stencil to tone down the white of the tree trunks.
Branches and small owls stamped directly onto the background, coloured with promarkers. The  branch and large owl stamped on spare card, coloured and cut out - I used the branch upside down - and stuck on with pinflair gel. Matt is a dull silver this time.
Both cards are white 6x6 blanks.

black/white/red

The challenge on 52cct. this week was a colour one, use black and white, with a splash of red. Took me a while to come up with this one, until clearing the desk revealed this old SU santa stamp  at the very back, unused since it arrived a while ago as part of an assortment of stamps from ebay.
Base card is a black square cut down from A4, and the embossed backing panels are using a snowflake die, I think an old quickcutz one. The black panel was swiped with a white ink pad after embossing, then sprayed with crafters companion silver spray - the white panel was just torn, edged with versamark and vanilla ice EP. The top note die was cut from the same black card as the base, spritzed with the silver spray, edged with versamark and vanilla ice EP again. The santa image was stamped in black versafine, red is poppy promarker, cut using an xcut die - the red layer uses the next size die from the same set, just twisted round.
This card also fits the simply stampin challenge I found a link to somewhere in blogland

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.

moonlight 2

Another one for Cynthia's challenge this week - this was one of the first attempts that I decided to try to rescue! I originally stamped it too close to the edge of the card, but then thought that if I used a nestie it would be useable..............Anyhow, this one was just coloured with promarkers in various greys, with olive green added for the grass and a liberal splodge of blender pen, then black for the foreground; sprayed with Crafter's Companion silver glitter spray before cutting out.The silver mat usd the next size up nestie, and it went onto a green base card overstamped with grasses in versamark again.

LIM recipe

The LIM challenge this week is a recipe - combine any 3 previous challenges! I have been searching for some time for American Football images, as my son is a keen player, and eventually found this old set by Stampin up on ebay a few weeks ago - the postage from the US cost me more than the stamps, but they looked practically new when they arrived.
I wanted to try them out, so the 3 challenges almost chose themselves - obviously no 7, masculine; no 4 use 3 squares; and then no 29, things that move. Images simply stamped with black memento ink, coloured with gold promarker  (the team colours of his last team),  cut out with a square punch originally bought for teabag folding papers and matted onto yellow card.

LIM 29

I was planning on using a butterfly stamp for this challenge, which was 'things that move' - then I got my new stamps from Chocolate Baroque today - the 'home sweet home' set that I had resisted buying earlier. This image of waving grasses is one definitely my favourite from the plate, and I couldn't resist using it! Simply stamped in black memento ink, the moon was coloured with promarkers - pumpkin,gold and sunflower - masked off and the sky sponged around it with a dark blue from my set of old Stampin up inkspots (not quite navy). The ground had more black memento brushed over it, which was carried up into the sky.

bah humbug 33

Bah Humbug 33 is to use something new - the stamp by Wendie Rhodes is new to me, it was part of the set of stamps I borrowed to use for challenge 25, penguins - I quite liked this scene, so stamped a few images before returning the stamp set to Moira. The one that made it to the card was rhe 3rd attempt, so I may be asking to borrow it again!   I coloured the image with promarkers, then covered it with versamark and clear embossed it. The background was brayered and masked. The sky began with  the waterfall big n'juicy pad, then stampin up night of navy over the top - I found that the waterfall on its own was too bright, and the navy too dull, but both together was fine! The sand dunes in front were done with stampin up crumb cake ink.

After I had finished the colouring, I thought that my new top note die would go well with the oriental image, so cut it out, with fingers firmly crossed that the cut would be in the right place! (I did mark the die first with white marker so I had a fighting chance of getting it right). The matting layers were cut freehand, 2 in linen-effect silver and one from paper from the Artylicious decadent brocade cd (from Chocolate Baroque) and mounted onto an A5 dark blue card.

Have reloaded the photo, hope the zoom works now - Blogger was playing up when I did the original post, and didn't want to load the photo at all

                                                                                          

LIM 27

This weeks is a colour challenge, to use the colours of your national flag - I went for the Brisitsh colours of red, white and blue, and used a sailing image for an island nation. Very very simple card, image from Stampin Up stamped onto a 5"sqaure white card in black memento ink, clear embossed, red promarker over the hull and flag, then DIs waterbrushed over to create a background - I used  a mix of tumbled glass and stormy sky.

blue butterfly

Had a quick play  with my new butterfly flourish swirls stamps from Chocolate Baroque- thought they would go well with the St Luke's challenge to use black, white and one colour - admittedly several shades of blue promarkers! this is the large swirl image from the plate, just stamped in black memento ink and coloured - very very simple!

poppy

this is a card for two challenges I haven't entered before - St Luke's Charity and Forgotten Friday - both of which have sat on the to-do list each week without actually anything happening.
During the on-going clear-up of the craft room - admittedly very slow going there!- I came across this poppy stamp by Funstamps, which must have been among the first stamps I bought more years ago than I  care to remember; as I love poppies, it was never going on the 'dump' pile. The St Luke's challenge is for a black and white card with one colour, so that was the colour scheme sorted, and Judith's Forgotten Friday is self-explanatory!
The background uses a collection of assorted stamps from Chocolate Baroque - the far ones were from the teeny meadow set, and I think the front ones were from eastern grasses - poppy was coloured with promarkers.

bah humbug22

this challenge theme was 'surprise' - and I have to admit that I surprised myself by actually doing it! My mojo had totally gone, and my first thought of a shaker card was that it was hardly a surprise, and the next ideas were dismissed as too complicated for the time available. My clearout produced remnants of an ancient Christmas-themed goody bag - complete with unused paper and reindeer stamp - and with time running out I decided to go dead simple and wrap a chocolate bar. Having forgotten then to buy a decent choc bar to wrap, I had to use a cheapo supermarket bar from the baking stock, so hope it fits a better bar later on. Just a  piece of paper wrapped round the bar, with the reindeer stamped onto a nestie shape and coloured with promarkers and stuck on top - sorry the scan is a bit squiffy, and cropped a bit tight as well.............. must do better next time!

bah humbug bells

Challenge 21 from bah humbug is to include bells - I was getting worried ,then I unearthed this stained glass image from Funstamps when doing some much-needed clearing up (I am one of those people who would never dare to put a pic of my desk on the blog, 'cos I can very rarely actually see the desk!), partly driven by having to find the bed for my daughter's threatened visit and also by a clearance sale at the local Focus store.
Anyhow, I stamped the bells with black memento ink, coloured them in with promarkers, cut them out and glued them onto a kraft card also found during the mammoth event. The wallstones were hand-drawn with sandstone promarker, deliberately squiffy to look ancient, and heavily smudged with blender pen.

2B's

The challenge this week on MAWTT is 2B's - or more! I had this unused stamp that was a magazine freebie, and immediately thought of this, as there are 3 B's just in the stamp - boy, balloon and baseball cap - so that gave me a headstart! I stamped him in black memento ink, coloured with promarkers, with blue jeans and brown shoes and hair just to add a few more Bs. Don't think I can count the Bigshot I used to cut the oval shape out with - I cut the mat oval out with some fancy scissors, mounted everything onto a card covered with dp from an old K&co pad, and added a bit of green ribbon (with a flat bow thanks to a lot of dst) and then some buttons - I know the ribbon bow and buttons are not normal for me, but sometimes needs must!

Christmas stocking

The challenge on Bah humbug this week is to use a Christmas stocking - I have a lovely stocking stamp by Elusive Images (now available from Chocolate Baroque) which I had never used last year. It is a very detailed stamp, stamped and embossed and coloured with promarkers - I felt it needed to be in dark colours to stand out from the glimmery background (the first version was stamped in gold, and painted with H2Os, and just looked way too gaudy with the background).
The background took a little while to do - I randomly stamped the stockings in versamark across the paper and clear embossed them. Distress inks came next, peeled paint, forest moss and red brick sponged on fairly randomly to cover the paper - then it was ironed through copy paper to remove the embossing. The next step was spraying a mix of english ivy glimmermist and cosmic shimmermist in rich gold over the page, ;eaving overnight to dry thoroughly. I cut out an interesting-looking piece to fit the 5x5 card blank, and added the stocking matted onto gold mirri card.

grace

I first saw this little cutie on Edna's blog quite some time ago, and was very tempted, especially as it is available as a digi image - I did eventually buy it, plus another one in the range. It is very different from the images I usually use, actually a point in it's favour! I had just finished colouring several in with promarkers, and feeling quite pleased with how they had turned out, when I discovered the sugarbowl blog while bloghopping - the current challenge was for a purple and green colour scheme and a sketch -  as I had just finished colouring this in in purples,  I followed the sketch  using a green base card, with papers from K and Co and Artylicious. The green mat was cut using fancy edged scissors.