sneaking in.....

A very quick post to add this one to the Chocolate Baroque challenge - definitely last minute!
Stamp from thistle butterfly, stamped in black versafine onto a brusho and distress ink background. Coloured with marker pens.
Butterflies stamped onto spare bits of brusho-ed card, decoupaged over main image, and extra one added at bottom

August tags

 The challenge this month at Chocolate Baroque was to use an acrylic background using 2 different colours, while the second layer is wet, remove some of it using a stamp, scrunched paper etc. I tried various methods, but ended up using stamps from the new harlequin fragments set, and the page I actually used for the tags was this one. I used some yellow card as a background - one I didn't like, and it saved on paint too, as I only had the remnants of a cheap kiddy set of paints from Wilko to play with- and splodged a mix of white and brown paint across it, then stamped into the wet paint with the harlequin stamp sprayed with water.

 I stamped the image from the poppy butterfly set onto white card and coloured with watercolour pencils, background sponged with distress inks, then fussy cut it out and added to the tag.
Did these early, so can't now remember which inks I used - but at least I did remember to scan the tags before I sent them!
Have several options in mind for September tags, but am not looking forward to October, which involves zentangling - definitely not my favourite technique, though I am always impressed by the results some very clever people get, to say nothing of their incredible patience

thistles

Still playing with my new stamps - but this one also uses an old thistle stamp from the wild meadow set and a butterfly from briar rose as well as the thistles from thistle butterfly.
Background was yet another brusho inks one, thistles stamped with dusty concord distress inks. Main image stamped with black versafine, clear embossed and coloured with promarkers- highlights were clear jelly roll and white gel pens. Butterfly stamped on another piece of brusho-ed card, embossed and cut out.
Base card is a 6" square white, mats dull silver and lavender.
Am entering this for two challenges
addicted to stamps - make your mark
butterfly challenge - summertime butterflies

thistle again....

Another card using the thistle butterfly stamp and brusho inks - warning, this may go on for awhile, have a fair stack of brusho backgrounds, and there are several unused so far stamps in this set!
Background this time started out similarly with very wet card, but I added a few sprinkles of purple ink and used a wide flat brush to spread the colour around. I mopped up most of the puddles with kitchen roll, then added as-tiny-as-I-could bits of black ink and let the colour spread. Once it had spread as far as it was going to, I mopped up again with scrunched-up kitchen roll, which spread some more  of the black around the card.
I left it to dry overnight, then stamped the thistle butterfly with versamark and white embossed it - then went over the butterflies with clear wink of stella, you'll have to take my word for that, as it doesn't show up on the scan.
Cut down a bit, matted onto black card, then onto a 5x7 white card base that had been sponged with dusty concord distress ink round the edges and black soot in the corners.
Am entering this into the addicted to stamps and more challenge, which is ' anything goes' - thanks to Val for the link!

thistle butterfly

As soon as I saw the new stamp from Chocolate Baroque I ordered it with the last of my birthday voucher, then waited impatiently for it to arrive.....which it duly did yesterday.
My excuse for playing this afternoon was that it was too hot and sticky to do any more baking - and I wanted to try out more of my new brusho inks as well.I don't have any watercolour paper, and just spraying water on card wasn't working too well as it dried too quickly, so I went for drastic and just held a sheet of card under the cold tap for a few seconds .Adding a very small amount of back ink and blotting with scrunched up kitchen roll produced this background - admittedly it took ages to dry, but I liked the effect.
I stamped the largest image with versafine and clear embossed it once everything was dry, then painted it with very dilute brusho in leaf green and purple. Butterflies were stamped and embossed onto a spare bit of card coloured with scarlet and yellow brusho, then cut out and glued on with gluegel.
Base card was stamped ramdomly round the edges with the large thistle head stamp using milled lavender and dusty concord distress inks, and more dusty concord sponged round the edges. mat is a dark purple card.
Another one for Make my Monday!

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.

Clarity East again

 A day playing with Clarity stamps was a good way to spend a very hot day, especially as there was a nice breeze through the open doors.
We used 3 stamps, crackle, urn and rose. The first card involved cutting a rectangle mask and stamping round it with the crackle stamp and black archival ink. We then stamped the urn, masked it off, stamped the rose spray so that it was coming out of the vase, then masked around the vase and overstamped it with the crackle stamp. Trimmed down to give 2cm borders from the masked area, coloured with promarkers and the vase clear embossed. Then matting l;ayers of black and green and some black card candi to finish.
This is straight on the card, just gave up trying to get it straight on the scanner!
I tried a variation using the swirls to overstamp the vase, coloured with watercolour pencils before clear embossing. I also stamped the swirls round the edge and sponged with distress inks before matting and layering onto a spare card blank.
The official second card involved cutting a circle mask using the new Christmas bauble stamps, then stamping the circle onto a square of white card, masking round it and stamping the roses in the centre. I coloured this with old paper and vintage photo inks, and also used these on the large background mat, which was stamped using the swirls part of the rose stamp in black and the crackle stamp in vintage photo.I did add a little glimmer spray to the centre circle.

 Our final card used gilding flakes, and this time was the only recorded time I have managed to use flitterglu without sticking myself to everything within reach!
The vase was stamped onto double sided adhesive, covered with acetate, then gilded on the back before being cut out. We stamped the roses using the flitterglu onto a strip of black card, then glued the vase into place before trimming the card down and gilding the edges - the brighter sparks among us used thin redline tape along the edges (not me!) and got a much better finish.
This was then stuck to a wider strip of black, torn at an angle along the bottom, and glued onto a tall thin base card - a very effective card.