Happy birthday

 

 For my first post this month for Chocolate Baroque I chose this card, which was quite quick to make, so long as you use a stamping platform

The  greeting was from the slim  word strip 2 plate, and I coloured the words i wanted to use with distress marker pens, gave a good huff on the stamp and then stamped onto a square of white card..I re-inked the larger letters again and stamped again - using a stamping platform means you have no problem lining the second stamping up, and also that you can put the sentiment just where you want it

The flower from not more flowers! was also inked with distress markers and stamped above the greeting , and i used a water brush to pull some of the colour out into the petals.. For the mat I coloured round the edges of a piece of white card with a matching marker pen - easier (and cheaper) than searching for a matching bit of coloured card.

i would like to link this to the following challenges

creative fingers -#237, always anything goes

seize the birthday #246 anything goes

happylittle stampers. birthday, - anything goes

thorugh the craft room door  - anyhting goes

allsorts - #692, anyhting goes

stamping sensations , feminine

nature book

 

I made a little book featuring several of the stamps from the  Chocolate Baroque shows last month  - it didn't quite go to plan, either in making it or posting it!

The first pic is of the covers, I used grey boards from Tando covered on both sides with some designer paper that had been around for ages, overstamped with the nature words strip on the back and the F is for on the front. 

 I tried a concertina fold that was shown by Di Oliver on a Tando show to add the inner pages, and discovered that I should have a) recorded the show so didn't have to rely on my memory and b) left a gap between pages  - but too late, as it was well stuck down by then. I found that out when trying to open it flattish to take the photo - you can see the epic fail on the next pic, but at least I know for next time......

The inner pages were a mix of inked and brusho backgrounds , and I have shown as many as possible , but not in order as blogger kept losing the pics - sorry, but I gave up trying to sort them out, if it's simple OK, complicated, no way 

Most of the colouring was done with pencils, both watercolour and a cheaper version of polychromos 

I did enjoy making the pages , and even assembling them straight , just not happy with  the obvious mistakes!

 

graph paper

 Good morning everyone, I hope that you are all not melting in the heat at the moment - as far as I am concerned, it's a close run thing!

Two more samples from last month's tv shows for Chocolate Baroque to share today today , this time using the Small graph  paper stamp as the main image. I have to admit to a feeling of relief when others also went a bit wild!

The first one just has the graph part of the stamp stamped in black in the centre of a 5.5" square white card. The letters from Just Useful  and the scribble from Make More Marks also stamped in black, and the squares from Make More Marks stamped in red. I also filled in some of the scribble loops with a fine line pen.

 For the second card most of the graph stamp was stamped in blue ink, with the line from Making More Marks in green to make the graph line. The A from Just useful in black, and then a sentiment from Words of Comfort and Cheer added in black to finish

thistle butterfly

 

I used a second generation brusho background for this card, first stamping the main image using distress markers spritzed with water, then overstamping in black versafine using a stamping platform.

Silhouette thistles in black round the edges to give some depth, and a black line drawn round the edges with a marker pen to finish. 

Once you had the background, this was a  fairly quick card as the distress pens added the colours to the image

 

dragon dance

for my last post this month using the retired stamps from Chocolate Baroque I had to use the gorgeous dragons, - I just had to buy  this set when it first came out, and I still love it.

I stamped the largest dragon three times, then sponged distress oxide inks round the dragons to create a fiery look, then coloured the dragons with distress markers in similar  colours. 

Using Lesley's technique of watering down stickles and painting I added glitter heavily to the wings and used the very diluted remnant of a very ancient bottle of stickles on the bodies. The glitter doesn't really show on the scan, but it is very definitely there!

 

feathered friends

Staying with feathers sort of, this time with bird stamps from the retired list. The first sample is very simple. the strip of birds from fly away with me stamped in black on white card, trimmed round and mounted onto black card then onto a white card blank. The sentiment from live out loud also stamped in black and edged with black card.

The owl from wise owl was stamped in black onto white card, clear embossed and coloured with marker pens, cut out and mounted onto a distress oxide background edged with a swirl stamp from dawn chorus and a marker pen along the edges. Sentiment from sing your song.
 

peacock feathers

 June was quite a sad month, several of my favourite stamps from Choolate Baroque were in the retired list, but digging them out made me realise just how old some of them were! On the plus side, retiring a whole load of older stamps means there will be room for new designs to tempt us, though I'm quite sure the bank manager would not agree!

My first samples for the recent shows on Create & Craft used stamps from the Peacock Fan and Peacock Glory sets.

I used the large feather stamp to create  fan cards. The first one has a brusho background, and I stamped the feather once on the right, then masked it with tissue paper and stamped again five times to create the fan shape. Some parts of the images were coloured with marker pens, then a mount of black card before adding to a white card blank.

The second version again had a brusho backgroumnd, and the feather was stamped five times and fussy cut out. The eyes were coloured with marker pens Then the fan was assembled onto black card.

My final card was a trifold on black card -after folding the card, I cut diagonally from the top of the lefthand panel to partway down the right hand panel, giving the shape on the right. The peacocks were stmaped using versamark and gold embossed, then painted with shimmer paints

The other scans show the inner and back of the flat card before folding