A little bit of Summer (posted by Judith)

Hi Folks, I have some samples to show you today showcasing the Summer Fairy Collection unmounted stamp set. This set is full of lovely fairy images, and some great floral images as well.

My first card uses one of the large silhouette fairies, which I have placed on an inked background, made using Distress Inks. I chose several colours which I blended across the page, and then placed a leafy stencil over the top, and used the same colours again to stipple colour through the stencil. I added some deeper colour around the edges of the background to create a frame, and then stamped the trailing ivy across the top of the page, using a navy blue ink. I added a border around the bottom half of the card, using a tree stamp taken from the Fantasy Woodland stamp set. The two trees are a stamp from the same stamp set. I added some shading underneath the trees using a paper mask, and a toning green ink. I stamped the silhouette fairy, and the little butterfly, which comes from the Autumn Fairy stamp set, using Versafine ink.

I added some glitter glue to the fairy and butterfly wings for a little bit of sparkle.

My second card uses a couple of the flower stamps from the collection to create a fairly clean and simple card. I cut a rectangle of smooth watercolour paper, and stamped the freesia stamp at the bottom of the card. I covered the image with a mask so that I could stamp the image again on either side of the original image.

I coloured the silhouette freesia stamp with Distress Markers, blending several colours, and stamped the background with the mask in place. I placed the mask on top of each freesia image in turn, so that I did not stamp over them. I then coloured the three freesia images with Distress Markers and a waterbrush.

I matted the picture onto a piece of dark green card, and then placed this onto a larger square of light green card, adding some orange and green ribbon to my main image. I added three Crealie butterflies to the large background.

My last card was created using lots of masking again, and a hand cut stencil. You can buy Stencil Blanks from the website and cut your own stencils very easily.

I used one of the large fairies from the collection, which I stamped and masked off, before stamping poppies from the Poppy Meadow stamp set. I then masked these flowers and stamped the little silhouette flower from the same set. I added the stencil and coloured the sun rays using Distress Inks, before inking the remaining sky with blue. I have added a shimmer spray over the top.

I have coloured the fairy and flowers with Distress Markers. The two tiny butterflies are half of a butterfly stamped twice, taken from the Spring Fairy stamp collection. I simply covered half of the stamp with masking tape before I inked it up, then removed the masking tape before I stamped it onto the page. I have decoupaged them, and added glitter glue to their wings. The sentiment is taken from the Fairyland Words clear stamp set.

 Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx

A real Fairy tale !!! (by Maria)

Bijschrift toevoegen

 

 

Aren't they wonderful? My husband's little twin nieces were really excited when they saw the beautiful stampset "Summer Fairy collection" and very soon, they will have their 6th Birthday!!! Therefore I was so glad that I could make them these fairy tale cards and a nice present for their bedroom as well, with the new stampset. The two cards, I have made with dylusions ink,

The card in the photo frame is made with distress inks and masks, the flowers on this card  are also stamped on a paper that was coloured with Dylusions,  cut out and to create some depth, I raised the flowers. I hope you like the images?
I had a lot of fun making these fairy tales and I think our nieces will love them. Isn't it a good idea for a little girl's present?

Greetings and have a lot of stamping fun!
Maria

Announcing our June Stamps of the Month

It's that time of the month again and I'm delighted to announce our new stamps for June.  We have the Briar Rose Butterfly:

and the Harebell Butterfly:

and it wouldn't be right if we didn't offer the two as a money saving multi-buy:

I thought I'd give you a quick breakdown of how I made this card as it is actually a fairly quick card to put together.

1. Choose two or three Distress Stains in colours that go together (eg Peacock Feathers, Picked Raspberry, Shaded Lilac) and put a few dabs of each onto a non stick craft mat or acrylic block.
2. Mist with water, then place a piece of card onto the resulting puddle to transfer the ink.
3. Dry the card with a heat tool and repeat if you want more colour.
4. Stamp some of the foliage from Briar Rose Butterfly around the edges  of your card in soft, coordinating colours (I used Archival Blue Violet and Viridian).
5. Stamp the harebell  and some of the grasses in black and colour with pencils or markers.  
6. Sponge a little dark ink around the edge of the card (in my case I used Deep Purple Archival ink) and stick onto a toning cardstock mat.
7. Stamp the briar rose butterfly onto a scrap of pink and cut out the butterfly.  Stick your stamped panel onto your card, attach the butterfly (just glue the body to let the wings stand proud) and finish with a stamped sentiment (check out our Amazing Birthday clear stamp set).

If you make a few backgrounds in advance, you can put this together in ten minutes.

The stamps are on offer at the moment and if you haven't already spotted it, you can now choose to buy our stamps as either unmounted sheets or as cling mounted and cut out for you ready to play with straight out of the pack.  Click here to read about the different options.

Happy stamping!

Guest Post - Peony Dreams by Bianca Van Noort

This week's guest post is from Bianca Van Noort, who designed two versions of the same card. We liked them both and knew you would too so I shall hand it over to Bianca.

I'm really honoured to be guest designer with you so I made two separate cards using the same stamp and layout only different colours.

Peony Dreams 1

 

At first I sponged the background with Distress ink Old Paper. Next I used the stencil Damask and sponged it with Old Paper. Then I stamped the Chocolate Baroque Peony with Archival black, masked the flower and stamped again.

I colored the flowers with Distress colors Picked Raspberry, Seedless Preserves and Crushed Olive.Then I took the stencil Harlequin and sponged it with Picked Raspberry. The text came from Key to My Dreams and was stamped with Archival black.

To finish I stuck with some glue on to a slightly larger piece of black paper. The folded base of this card was sponged with Old Paper and the Harlequin stencil was inked on the edge with Picked Raspberry.

Peony Dreams 2

At first I sponged the background with Distress ink Old Paper. Next I used the stencil Damask and sponged it with Old Paper. Then I stamped the Chocolate Baroque Peony several times with Archival black.

I colored the flowers with Distress colors Rusty Hinge, Seedless Preserves and Crushed Olive. Then I took the stencil Cell Theory and sponged it with Rusty Hinge.The text came from Key to My Dreams and was stamped with black Archival.

To finish I stuck with some glue on to a slightly larger piece of yellow paper. The folded base of this card was sponged with Old Paper and the edge was inked with Rusty Hinge using the stencil Cell Theory.

I hope you like them.

We certainly did Bianca and thank you for these very pretty designs. I'm sure Bianca would love to receive your comments and if you would like to see more of her work then why not visit her blog - Bianci's Creaties.

Nouveau Love Birds by Florence

Hi everyone

I hope you are all well and that the weather if being kind to you in your part of the world.

We had a glorious start to the month here in Spain but it seems autumn has come back.  I am chicken watching at the moment.  One of my hens is sitting on some eggs so I am waiting for the little balls of fluff to appear.  I will let you know when there is any news.  So excited!

Today I wanted to share a little card using this months  Nouveau Love Birds Stamps.

Talk about exquisite designs!  There are so many possibilities with these stamps....truly.

 The stylized flowers in this set are just amazing and stamp beautifully.  They are also a great size and work wonderfully not only in card making but in artful journaling.

  

please click on the image to see the detail

For this card I stamped the flower image just onto bulk standard white card stock using black archival ink.

I colored in the image using some water color crayons (direct on to the dry paper over the image) and then softened and blended the colors using a damp paint brush.  To create the high lights, I just moved some of the color around with the damp paint brush and removed some of it with a piece of kitchen paper towel where appropriate. 

I lay my piece of stamped card onto an ordinary plastic document wallet and applied some Evergreen Bough Distressing Ink to the card edges using some Cut-n-Dry foam. 

When the distressing ink was dry I used one of the Abstract Fragments Background Stamps and black Archival ink to create a stamped frame.

To finish off the focal piece, I stamped the small butterfly from the Butterfly Blush stamp set, again using black Archival ink.

I gave everything a quick spray with an artists watercolor fixative to set the distressing ink.  This is not necessary but it does protect the surface of the card.

To complete my card, I mat and layered the card pieces and added some bling.

Before I leave you today

Thank you to everyone for your lovely comments left on the previous posts.  They are very much appreciated.   Please feel free to use the comments box to let us know what style of crafting, card making or stamping you enjoy. 

Happy Crafting.

Florence x

Nouveau Cards (by Debbie)

 

The Fleurs Nouveau Peacocks look so majestic standing with the stylised flower and I thought they deserved the time to be cut out and coloured. 

I love the style of the stamp as it can be used for cards for allsorts of occasions.

I had the background in my stash from a playsession using stencils, inks and sprays.

 

 

 

 The following two cards are A5 size. I used the flowers from Lovebirds Nouveau and Fleurs Nouveau on cards that had been coloured with Alcohol Inks and Blending Solution onto matt coated card.  The sentiments are from Mackintosh Sentiments Clear stamps.

 

 

 

 

 

This card is a clean and simple that I made for a Wedding Event

my daughter was involved in at work.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by

 

Debbie

 

Not-So-Nouveau (by Asha)

Hello there, friends! I'm back with a couple more cards featuring stamps from the Fleurs Nouveau and Nouveau Lovebirds collection. These are simple makes, not requiring many tools, products or complicated techniques.

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For my first project, I inked the background in rich autumnal tones with various hues of reds, orange and mustard. The grassy bits is a stamp from the Wild Meadow A4 sheet and the sentiment is from the Loving Words A5 sheet.

I coloured the flower stamp from the Fleurs Nouveau A5 sheet with alcohol markers. For some texture, I coloured a few extra leaves and flowers and decoupaged these onto the main image.

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When I saw this arty image form the Nouveau Lovebirds A4 sheet, I didn't know what to make of it... but I was determined to used it, somehow. And here it is. This time I inked the background with lighter tones of blue with some dark yellow radiating from the centre and a design from Texture Fragments A4 sheet.

I coloured image with alcohol markers, fussy cut and mounted it with some foam tape on to a piece of die-cut vellum. Black bling and black twine complete the project.

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There you have it - two simple cards with contrasting colour combos. Despite their art nouveau label, stamps from Fleurs Nouveau and Nouveau Lovebirds collections truly are versatile and will work with any style or skill set. Come back soon for a few more samples from the rest of the crew.

Beijinhos,
Asha 

The Blue Lady by Doreen

Hello to you all, I am sharing another Fabulous Flapper  from the May new releases.
 I have made this into a tag..

I first painted  the tag with black acrylic paint left it to dry then clear embossed the stamps from the Eastern Grasses sheet,I then painted over the top of this with the blue acrylic and whilst it was still wet wiped over a damp tissue so removing some of the paint to reveal the images and black paint  underneath.....I saw this technique on a Tim Holtz web page some time back....

The flapper was stamped onto white card and coloured with distress inks then fussy cut. This was stuck to the tag along with the die-cut lamp.Last of all I dry brushed some white acrylic around the edge of the tag followed by Black Soot distress ink.

Deco Flapper (by Shirley)

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well.

I have one more Fabulous Flapper from the new set to show you.   What an amazing stamp set, the ladies are gorgeous.

 

The background was created using Peacock Feathers Distress ink with an acrylic block.   I stamped the blossoms from the set around the parameter with both Peacock Feathers and Salty Ocean Distress Inks.   The lady and urn were stamped with Cobalt Archival ink and coloured with Prisma pencils.   I added rhinestones to the bouquet she is holding and pearls to the die cut flower centers.  The sentiment is from Birthday Words.

Thanks for stopping by and have a fabulous day!

Shirley

Introducing the Summer Fairies (by Glenda)

I'm delighted to present our final set of seasonal fairies - the Summer Fairy Collection.

We began our seasonal fairy stamps last Autumn, and have since released Winter and Spring, so this makes the set complete with all 12 months of the year now available individually or as four seasonal collections.  The months of June, July and August are available individually or as a money saving multi-buy.

The Summer Fairy collection, like the others, comes with an inspiration leaflet (a download, not a printed one) and this one is a bumper issue with contributions from all our design team members.  Both the individual DL sized stamp sets and the multi-buy are at introductory prices at the moment and if you go for the full collection, you get the leaflet free.

I'll be sharing the details of this little canvas next week on my own blog as it ties in nicely with the Monday Mojo email for next week.  (If you haven't already signed up for my Monday Mojo Magic email series, then please visit my blog where you will see the sign up box in the sidebar.)

(In case you're wondering why the image on the canvas is the other way round to the stamps, it's because it is stamped on tissue paper and glued to the canvas ink side down.)

Stand by for a range of glorious artwork coming up from the girls and don't forget about our monthly prize draw for commenters - you could win a £20 Chocolate Baroque stamp voucher for leaving us a comment - the more times you comment, the more chances you have of winning.

Guest Post - Butterfly Dance by Mary Woolley

This week's guest post has been provided by Mary Woolley who has designed a beautiful card featuring two of our A4 butterfly themed stamp sets.

 

I am delighted to share a card I have made using the Butterfly Daisy Collage and Butterfly Poppy Collage stamp sheets.

I started by colouring a piece of white card using chalks.  I then stamped 3 butterflies in black ink and coloured with pencils.  In the background I stamped a smaller butterfly in a co-ordinating coloured ink and using clear embossing ink and clear embossing powder I stamped sections of the harlequin and text stamp. I finally added 2 mats of co-ordinating stock together with 2 black mats and the card is finished.

To find out more please visit my blog: blackflowercreative.wordpress.com/ or pinterest.com/mary4819/ or Twitter@Mezzy1306.

A big thank you to Mary from the Chocolate Baroque team for this lovely design. We'd love to read your comments and don't forget to visit Mary's blog and her pinterest page to see more of her creations.