December quintiles

In even more of a rush than usual this month - why is it that Christmas always seems to suddenly leap out at you?
I did two different ones, as I thought that 2 with the huge  baubles background stamp would be cheating a bit, even if I did colour them in differently............ and to be honest. sponging skies in is far quicker than colouring baubles!
I did add some glitter to the reindeer from the old Christmas fusion set of stamps, and the buildings are from the town houses set randomly stamped along the bottom and coloured in with markers.

November quintiles

 As you may have expected, the theme for November was fireworks - sounds simple - and obvious- but finding any Choc Baroque stamps that fitted it wasn't easy.  I was beginning to think I would be reduced to splodging colour on randomly when I thought of the wild meadow stamp set, which includes this stamp- can never remember what plant it is though!
Anyhow, I just used the flower head, and stamped it twice in versamark onto dark blue card then added random embossing powders - they all came from a box of powders I was given, and I used the most lurid ones, the photo doesn't really do justice to the bright pink, orange and purple  (perhaps thankfully!). I added splodges of holographic powder using a versamark pen around the flower heads to try to create a glow around the main colours.
The diecut houses are from a Tim Holtz die, cut in black card.

spooky

 Thanks to winning a set of the new Chocolate Baroque halloween stamps  - many thanks Glenda - I have managed to make my October quintiles early (I know, wonders do still happen occasionally!). The set I won is called 'nevermore', and I loved the spooky candlestick. I also wanted to use the raven on the gravestones, so I excavated a crate of stamps and found a rather gothic-y window in a set of Christmas stamps (stained glass Christmas). I didn't want the candle design in the window, so for the first tile I inked up the edges of the stamp with a grey marker and stamped onto pale grey card, then drew in the stones around the window. I masked off the wall, then stamped the raven in the window using memento black ink. I coloured in the branches, gravestones and fence  with promarkers, and then sponged distress inks round the moon mask to create the sky.

The candlestick stamped with black memento ink and clear embossed, then the background was brushed with a mix of black, concord and sage inks. I coloured the candles with gel pen, drew a huge web with a grey promarker, dotted it with stickles, and added gilding flakes to the flames - the flames blowing in the wind haven't quite worked.
The second tile I stamped the window in smoky grey ink onto darker grey card and cut the window frame out. The raven was stamped in smoky grey onto white card, coloured with promarkers and distress inks, then glued behind the window. Candlestick stamped with versamark and silver embossed, candles in white gel pen again. Some dabs of bleach to show the candlelight on the wall, then the candle flames and the spiderweb were drawn in with a glue pen and gilded.

autumn days

 It's quintile time again - it seems to come round quicker each month at the moment, and I have yet again had to apologise for sending mine in late. This time I was searching for my build-a-tree set of stamps,  and eventually had to give up - doubtless I shall find them tomorrow, somewhere in plain sight!
Both tiles are landscape scenes, in what I hope you will see as autumn colours of distress inks with a couple of SU ones as well, using the traditional torn copy paper to make the hills
The first one uses the wall from landscape edges, stamped in black,
 then brushed with smoky slate and crumb cake inks, with a few patches of green marker pen in the cracks. The trees are from the  teeny tiny meadow set, coloured with green, coral and red markers.
The second tile again used the teeny tiny meadow stamps, with the foreground grasses from the floral edges set. This was the one that was due to have the tree on, and after much searching -every tree stamp i found was just the wrong shape - I decided to use one from let your heart sing. I inked up part of the stamp using versafine smoky grey, and stamped it off the edge of the tile. I used the grey as I didn't want ti to be too obvious, but thought afterwards that I should have used black and stamped off some of the ink.

April quintiles

 April's theme is April Fool - which absolutely floored me, until several people said that they had used jester or mask stamps. I don't have any of  these, so decided to just cut a mask shape out of black card and stamp a rather baroque floral stamp over it and emboss with gold EP. Then I needed a background - desperation ruled again, and I dug out my TH distress stains and very ancient Ranger Posh Rainbow inks. For the blue one I mainly used the distress stains in gold, brass, bronze and picket fence - the pinker one had a lot of the rainbow inks added and some fired brick distress paint as well round the edges- just splodged over the card and heavily spritzed with water. I wasn't sure if the inks would react horribly with the distress stains, but they didn't.

They looked ok, but a little plain when they eventually dried - then I remembered that I had some TH tissue wrap untouched in the packet, so dug that out and glued over the card using some aqua glass varnish from an old Graphicus lucky dip box (also previously untouched!). This stuff was originally for serviette technique, according to the label - worked fine on tissue wrap, and made a much more subtle background from my splodges.
Am not too happy with these, so will hang on to them for a couple of days, just in case inspiration strikes - you never know what may surface from the combined process of clearing out the rubbish and finally putting workshop stuff away!

CB spring quintiles

 Panic set in when I realized just how little time I had left to do this months quintiles, followed by increasing panic when my original idea of blossom -laden trees just would not work.
Our long-suffering organiser Margaret agreed to give a few days grace - which I ungratefully overran - before awarding me a  huge black mark - many thanks, Margaret!
In desperation, I binned the trees, and searched my stamp heaps for inspiration, and came up with several sets of bird stamps - as the local birds are rapidly costing me a fortune in bird seed , peanuts and fat blocks/balls I thought  they were very appropriate to this perishing cold weather.

The top one used the main stamp from Chocolate Baroque Let your heart sing plate, stamped in black versafine onto a sponged distress ink background .The feather stamp on the background was from the Wise owl plate, stamped in versamark, clear embossed, then the card inked with distress inks.
The not very successful second tile started out with a background of glimmer mists over the foliage stamp from Tim Holtz urban tapestry set offset in green and blue inks - the image didn't fade into the background as much as I had hoped it would though. The bird image and the foliage were stamped again in black versafine and clear embossed - parts of the bird were highlighted with SU white craft reinker as my white gel pen decided not to co-operate.
I added distress stains round the edges in picket fence and burnished brass to add a bit of colour.