Dandelion Clocks (posted by Judith)

Hi folks, here's another project that I created from the Punky Romance stamp plate from Chocolate Baroque. I wanted to make a bright and cheery card, using the dandelion clock stamps on the stamp plate. I really like the style of these stamps, and the stems of the dandelion flowers feel a bit Art Nouveau to me. I chose to team them with the  Shapeabilities: Ornate Artisan Tags & Accents die set, as the corners were an almost perfect match.

I created a watercolour background, using various orange and red Ecoline inks. I then placed a large cog mask over the top, and sponged Distress Inks through the mask. I also stamped the two single dandelion clocks randomly over the background. I used a spare piece of the background to stamp the main image, before die cutting it with the die. I chose to use black card as a striking contrast to the orange tones on my card, and added Glossy Accents to the centres of the dandelion clocks. 

The Shapeabilities are available from Chocolate Baroque, they are a great set teamed with these fabulous stamps. This was a very bright card for me, but these stamps really pushed my boundaries, and I have loved using them.

Keep checking back for more samples from the other Design Team members using these new stamps, and a Happy New Year to you all, Judith xx

Harlequin Gift book and Necklace (posted by Judith)

Hi Folks, well as the big day draws near, and we start to think of the New Year ahead, I'd like to wish you health, happiness and lots of great crafting in 2012!

I'd like to show you a project that I made with the fabulous Punky Romance stamp set from Chocolate Baroque. I wanted to create a card and gift in one with these fabulous stamps, using a softer colour palette than I did for my last project. I created a book card, using sections of card folded and glued, to make the insert, and then created a cover, using kraft card. I stamped the harlequin butterfly image onto white card with a creamy white embossing powder, which acted as a resist, over which I applied some ink in different shades of plum and lilac.

I overstamped the cog stamp with a deep burgundy, added some cream lace, and a velum butterfly, again embossed with the creamy white embossing powder. A sentiment from the Butterfly Dreams stamp set completes the cover.

I added some lace to the inside of the book card, matching he lace on the front, and made a necklace to pop inside the niche. I chose some lovely deep purple pearls as the base of the necklace. I used a domino sized piece of Stampbord, which I stamped with Stazon, to pick out part of the harlequin butterfly image. I coloured the Stampbord with the lilac and plum inks again, and then etched details of the butterfly wings using a Stampbord tool, to add highlights.

So that completes my gift set, I hope that you like it! Keep checking back to see what my other team mates have made with this fabulous stamp set, and I'll be back with something else that I have made later. Judith xx

Dandelion Clock pendant

I love to make jewellery and I thought this gorgeous dandelion clock stamp  from Punky Romance would be perfect for a pendant. These stamps are so clever with the clock face in the centre.

These pendants are so easy to make, stamp the image on some white card, colour with markers or pencils and attach a flat backed glass with glossy accents. Once its dry trim off the excess card and seal (I just use satin varnish but I'm sure you'll have something in your stash). To finish off add a glue on bale with some glossy accents and once dry add a chain or as I've done string some tiny seed beads on beading thread and attach a clasp.

The tag is made with memento inks (London Fog and Angel Pink) and the same stamps. The sentiment is from Art Nouveau Birthday , stamped on vellum and wrapped around the tag.

These new stamps are perfect for jewelley and I'll be back later in the week with a Punky Romance necklace made with stampbord inchies

Claire xx

Shabby Steampunk

Hi, I hope you've had a lovely Christmas and the big chap in the red suit has been kind to you. If you're anything like me you'll be ready for a change after all those Christmas cards. The new Punky Romance stamps were a real breath of fresh air when postie popped them through the letterbox. I've used a tissue paper background stamped with the harlequin stamp for this card.

The large focal image is a really stunning stamp and I've triple embossed it adding some holographic EP to the final layer for some sparkle. I've also made a backing paper by clear embossing the rose stamp from Punky Romance and inking with Dusty Concorde distress ink. Die cut cogs and vellum flowers made with Crealies 18 finish the card off.

Keep checking back as my teamies have some truly beautiful projects with all the new stamps

Claire xx

punky Romance butterflies.....

 
Hello there,

 And today my last creation with the punky Romance sheet......for me a very unusual colour combination.....Pumice stone, Crushed Olive and some Tumbled glass. Again with the acrylic bloc technique. I did decoupage some of the elements and used the flowers from the Bold blooms sheet.As you can see I have used the embossing folder 'bricks' on the background behind the image. Added some water drops and gemstones. Also gave some accents with a white pencil.......

And again hope to have inspired you, it's a great sheet to work with!

Probably for now till next year!    Enjoy the last days of 2011 and wish you a inspirational, creative and the most important part, a healthy 2012!

Bee-ing organized

Well the big day has been and gone. I hope everyone had a lovely day and that everything on Santas long wish lists was delivered. Looking to the New Year I'm going to try and be more organized.

I made this box that holds a selection of cards made from the Honey Bee stamps.




The hexagons which are coloured with dried marigold and wild honey. The bees etc are stamped using Versafine Vintage Sepia.

Inside are a selection of quick make cards which I will post photos on here and my own blog.

I tried to write the instructions to make the box and when I read them back they were a little confusing. You could make your own box and fill with cards as a gift or just to help you be more organized.

Enjoy Boxing Day and pop back for more inspiration from the Design Team.

Debbie

another punky Romance creation......

Hi there,

Hope you enjoy these Christmas days and today I want to show you some other creation with the 'punky Romance sheet. I've made this one with Distress inks Victorian Velvet and also the new 'greens' from the Christmas  Distress set. On the background I stamped the two solid roses using silver pearl EP. I decoupaged the heart and wings and used some Glossy accents and Rock candy on the wings as you can see on the detailed photo above. The ribbon was white and coloured with copic markers. Some embellishments were added at last. And... oops.... again used the textured fragments sheets shimmering through on the background.......can't get enough of this one......

Till next time, creative greetz

Blue Butterflies (posted by Judith)

When Glenda sent me the Punky Romance stamp sheet, I was very happy. There are so many different stamps on the sheet, and I could see that there were so many different uses for this set. I love the big corner stamp, and that was what I wanted to use for this project.

I painted a canvas with stone coloured acrylic paint, blending a couple of colours to get the effect that I wanted. I added molding paste through a brick stencil on one side to give the effect of a wall, echoing the bricks on the stamp image. I stamped the image onto tissue paper for the base layer, and added this to the canvas. I then stamped the image three times, colouring it in with Polychromos pencils. I cut the image out, and decoupaged it over the tissue paper layer. I stamped some extra butterflies and flowers from Ruby Tuesday and Patchwork Butterfly, to name just two sets, and coloured those to match. I die cut some black leaves to echo those on the stamp image, and stuck them up the textured brick area of the canvas, and added the extra flowers and butterflies. To finish, I added some metal cogs.

 

The finished piece is quite striking in its colour scheme, very unusual for me! This stamp set really inspired me to push the boundaries with my colour choices, as you will see with some of my other projects! The layers in this one were time consuming, but worth it for the finished effect.

Keep checking back to see what the other Design Team members have been up to over the holidays. Have a great Christmas, and I hope that you get some lovely crafty presents this year! Judith xx

'Punky Romance' creation.........and Christmas wishes

Hello there,

Hope to inspire you this time with some creations made with the new gorgeous sheet:  Punky Romance from Chocolate Baroque. I must say this sheet was very inspiring to work with.......I really love that steam punk style with that elegant touch of CB!
I've made this card using the new Distress winter colours, great cool colours! I've used lots of water, shimmer and maybe you recognize the texture fragments sheet which I've used for the Crealies flowers.( Petal no.4 and flower no.20) Def one of my favourite sheets at the moment. I've embossed the textures with gold EP on the flowers. I have used clear embossing powder on aquarel paper to stamp the clocks and gears and used the acrylic bloc technique. Then again clear embossing and some extra sponging to create more depth.

For this moment I want to wish you all a beautiful and peaceful Christmas time, enjoy being with family and dear ones! Hope to see you soon again with some other punky romance creations! Hope that Santa likes 'Chocolate' and brings you lot of them!

Birdcage and Honey Bee winners plus another chance to win!

Thanks to everyone for your lovely comments on the Pretty Birdcage and Honey Bee stamps.  I have picked two winners completely at random from the comments and come up with:

Honey Bee goes to Shirls's Cards

and

Pretty Birdcage goes to Gini



Congratulations ladies, please can you get in touch and we'll get your stamps sent out.  Gini, I have your details already, so I'll put yours in the post today.

Now, if you're feeling like you never win anything, we have our final stamp set of 2011 just out.  It's called Punky Romance and it looks like this:

Perfect for Valentine's Day, anniversaries and weddings, but of course it has lots of versatility for Steampunk fans and is by no means limited to purely romantic kind of cards. 

So I am giving you all another chance to be a winner, but this time I am going to pick a winner from our followers.  If you are not already a follower of this blog, you have two ways to become one.  If you look on the right hand side of the page you will see lots of tiny photos of people with a blue button above that says 'Join this site'.  Click on that button and follow the instructions to become a follower.  There are various accounts that you may already have that you can use, or simply create a new Google account and use that.

The second way of following is for Facebook users.  You can use Networked Blogs which you will find right at the bottom of the side bar on the right.

I will add together the followers from both widgets and pick a winner at random.  You have until January 4th 2012 as we are taking a break over the holidays.

Over the holidays, the girls will be blogging some artwork with this set and there's more to come with Honey Bee and Pretty Birdcage too.

So all that remains is for me to thank you all for your support this year and wish you all the very best for Christmas and a Happy New Year.  Hope Santa brings you lots of crafting goodies!

Bee Happy! (Posted by Elaine)

When I saw these lovely Honey Bee stamps I was buzzing with ideas! (Sorry couldn't resist!). I have quite a few samples to share with you, because I love bees so really enjoyed a good play when we had our DT delivery of these stamps.

Here is my first - a fairly simple card.

I started with a 6 x 6 black card blank as I wanted good contrast as a border. I cut a slightly smaller square of white card and used the honeycomb stamp to cover the card using black achival ink. I needed to use the stamp positioner and some masking to add little parts of the stamp to the gaps. I added shading with Sunshine Yellow Adirondack and Wild Honey Distress Inks. I used a white pen and a white glittery gel pen to add highlighting to the small bee wings. I then cut a strip of card for the sentiment and used the Words of Wisdom happy word stamp and positioned the larger bee instead of the word. I coloured the bee's body with a honey coloured marker, added white glittery pen to the wings and glossy accents to finish the body.

I have posted another of my projects - a bee canvas - on my blog today here please pop over and have a look.

Elaine

Springtime Stamps

I know, I know, Christmas isn't even here and we're already releasing stamps with a definite springtime theme.

Well I wanted to get these on the website before our Christmas break, so here they are, two new A5 stamp sets:

Pretty Birdcage

Honey Bee

Main image coloured with prismacolour pencils

The team have come up with some really lovely ideas for these stamps and over the Christmas break we'll be scheduling some posts featuring their gorgeous artwork.

In the meantime I have one of each set to give away so leave a comment to be in with a chance of winning.  I'll pick winners in a week (Wednesday 21st December) so I can get the prizes sent out before Christmas.

PS - if you think these stamps would make an ideal addition to your Christmas stocking, check out this article on my blog about the Amazon Universal Wish List button - it's such a neat idea!

Green and Copper Squares

This is one of my samples from the fascinating Texture Fragments plate. This stamp set really encourages play. I started by using my stamp positioner to help me get an overall background pattern by piecing the small stamp together. Working on green pearlescent card, I used black perfect medium to help me see where I had stamped before I embossed. I find this a really useful ink to have. I embossed in copper powder.

I used small and one larger square of Stampbord, inked with green ink. I edged the tiles with a black marker pen. When fully dry I then embossed in more copper powder. I positioned all the tiles onto the background, added large square brads to the layout and matted the whole thing on a black 6 x 6 card.

Hope you are enjoying the amazing artwork from the team.

Elaine 

Faux kraft resist tag

Hi there, I really enjoyed making this tag with the Texture Fragment stamps. I love creating backgrounds and these stamps are perfect for so many styles. I decided to have a go at making a kraft resist effect by layering up some of the stamps from this themeplate but it doesn't show up too well in the pic

I stamped the filigree panel stamp in pumice stone and then overstamped with the same stamp in tea dye distress ink, using a brick effect to overlap the stamps. The gorgeous border was stamped with black versafine and embossed with clear EP. Next I stamped the texture stamp  around the edges with versamark and embossed with clear EP before adding lots of vintage photo and a little black soot distress ink.

I stamped the sentiment from 'Home Sweet Home' and again embossed with clear EP. The main image is also from 'Home Sweet Home', painted with distress inks and framed with a diecut frame that I embossed with black soot distress embossing powder. To finish off I've added some ribbon from my stash, coloured with vintage photo distress ink and a little brass effect brad.

I hope you are enjoying all the inspiration from the DT this week

hugs

Claire xx

Woodland forest with texture fragments.......

Hi there,

Today I want to show you these two cards using the woodland forest and texture fragments stamps. These textures are really fun playing with. They are very versatile! I wanted to do 'winter' cards so I used a lot of cool blues and greys.

I also cut the Crealies petals(Petal no.5) and flowers(flower no.18) on waterbased paper and coloured them with Distress inks.(on both cards) This Petal and flower matches together perfect.
On the first card I've used the trees from the Woodland forest sheet and a stamp of the Texture fragments. I've also used a mask as you can see on the left side and used some self made glimmer mist.(a teaspoon of perfect pearls and some water in a spray bottle). I gave some accents in the textures with white pencil as also in the trees.
On the second card I've used also the leaf from the Woodland forest sheet and the window and textures from the Texture fragments sheet. This time I've embossed the textures with silver EP.  On the right side you see the branches of a tree which I've made using a mask.(Crafters workshop template)

Hope you get inspired and wishing you a nice day,

ATCs on a Canvas

When the Textured Fragment stamps arrived I immediately thought playtime. These stamps are so useful and fun to use not only with paper and card. I've decorated beads, buttons and used with air drying clay.
I started my project by cutting my ATCs and chose a selection of Distress Inks. I coloured the cards and then stamped the main images from my selection of stamps that are firm favourites.
Dawn Chorus Wise Owl Teeny Weeny Trees

Our Design Team Buddy Judith regularily posts on her blog to encourage using stamps from your stash.



I used Jet Black Archival Ink as I wanted the image to stand out. I had fun stamping the fragments around the edge of the card. I mounted each of the ATCs onto black card as the backs were rather messy when I'd finished colouring. I took advice from Lesley W as I wanted to show them off to there best and she suggested putting them together, big thanks Lesley.
I had a canvas that had been painted at least 6 times. I covered the center with paper from Echoes of Italy paper pack. The longest part of this project was arranging the ATCs as I kept changing my mind where each one should be.
I have a selection of ATCs that are dotted around my room and I'm planning on creating a couple more canvas's to display them.

I certainly can see the benefit of having these stamps in my stash and hope you can take some inspiration from the DTs ideas.

Debbie

Crocodile Shoes

I was a little unsure where to start when I received the Texture Fragments stamps but  once you start playing with these stamps you just can't stop. They are really versatile stamps and lend themselves to so many different techniques.

 I thought that one of the stamps looked a little bit like a crocodile print and set to with alcohol inks on glossy card and them over stamped with the texture stamp using Rich Cocoa memento dye ink.  The gorgeous swirly corners are from Christmas Angel of Light stamp sheet, stamped in versamark and embossed with brown EP.

To create the shoe I used the free Paper Shoe Template and more of the glossy card coloured with alcohol inks. This time I stamped the texture in versamark and  again embossed with brown EP. I trimmed the shoe with ribbon and lace and added a Vintage Trinkets metal flower.

To finish off I've added some paper flowers and die cut leaves (Crealies shapes 11) and a die cut happy birthday sentiment.

Thanks for popping by

Claire xx

Alcohol ink resist church window (posted by Judith)

Hi folks, I'd like to show you another project that I made using the 'Background Texture' stamp plate.

As soon as I saw the stamp plate, the window stamp caught my eye, and I wanted to create a stained glass effect with this stamp. I decided to create a canvas, and use the stamp as the central image. I painted the canvas with a stone coloured acrylic paint, adding some of the other background stamps for interest. I used a mixture of acrylic paint, and archival inks to achieve this.

I then created the acetate panel using alcohol inks and archival ink. I used toning card to cut some Crealie flowers, which I layered around the edge of the canvas, and added some black leaves in keeping with the general colour scheme. I wanted to give the feel of ivy creeping up a church wall.

This stamp plate has made me experiment with colour schemes that I might not normally think of using, and I am really enjoying the opportunity to try new ideas. Keep checking back for more samples from my Design Team members using these really versatile stamps. Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx

Peacock Texture Card (posted by Judith)

When I received the 'Background Texture' stamps from Glenda, I was quite excited, because I could see lots of possibilities with these stamps. It is a really useful stamp plate, giving lots of options for texture and layers in backgrounds, and a chance to experiment with things like clay and UTEE, that we perhaps don't use very much.

For my first project, I started off fairly safely using one of the background stamps to recreate the look of the salt backgrounds that I like to make so much. I coloured a piece of watercolour paper with Ecoline ink, and then embossed the stamp using a copper embossing powder.

I then took three domino sized pieces of Stampbord, which I taped together with masking tape, and coloured with inks, before stamping with another one of the texture stamps. This one reminded me of the markings on a peacock's feather, and so I used a toning backing paper from the Artylicious Peacock Summer Party CD to finish off my card.

As I put my card together, I added a sentiment from the Artistic Affirmations set, and used some copper card and teal ribbon to bring the whole thing together. I edged the Stampbord pieces with a Krylon pen, and split them up slightly.

Keep checking back to see what else my team mates have made using this fabulous stamp plate over the next few days. Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx