Fifteen Minute Cards

Hello everyone, welcome to our second Fifteen Minute Blog post of the month. In these posts, we aim to bring you lots of ideas that are simple and quick to make, but still have lots of style and creativity that will please and impress the recipient. We will give you lots of tips alongside our projects and links to our own blogs where you can see the projects in full. We are joined by members of the Guest Design Team each month, who also share lots of their beautiful designs with us.

Anne has created three pretty floral cards for us this time, using delicate blues and lilacs to enhance the images, creating a soft water-coloured effect:

Dominike has used vibrant yellow tones to create gelli print backgrounds, adding stamped images, and leaving lots of white space for a classic CAS feel to her cards:

Rachel has made two beautiful cards for us using some of our bird stamps. She has used water based markers, stencils and Distress Inks to complete her cards:

I have made a card using stamps from the Butterfly Blush stamp set to create a background, and then added a co-ordinating image from the Just Butterflies stamp set, you can find further details here:

Vronnie has created a fun steampunk card using images from the Steampunk Birds stamp set. The muted background draws the eye to the vibrantly coloured birds:

We have two delightful tags from Magda to share with you. The first is a pretty floral tag, using Dylusions to create the background:

The second is a textured Christmas tag:

Brenda has created some beautiful cards again for us this month. The first was made by creating a background using Brushos. She then stamped a sentiment from the Words of Inspiration stamp set and a focal image from the Butterfly Flourish Swirls stamp set, using gold embossing powder:

She created another Brusho background for her second card, onto which she repeat stamped leaves from the Autumn Poppy stamp set, and heat embossed with copper embossing powder. Using the same ink and powder, she embossed a sentiment from the Words of Inspiration stamp set onto a strip of vellum, and embellished the card with some twine and two leaves die cut from offcuts of the background.

For her third card, she created a background using an acrylic block which had gridlines, inking with different colour Distress Inks, and spritzing with water before stamping and overlapping the colours. She then stamped an image from the Glorious Spring stamp set and added a sentiment from the Words of Inspiration stamp set with Black Archival Ink.

She stamped the Flora Musica image with Versafine Onyx Black Ink, and embossed with clear embossing powder. She coloured the image with sparkly pens and inked the edges with Distress Inks. She matted and layered the image with co-ordinating card and tied some organza ribbon.

Creating a background with Distress Crayons, she then randomly stamped sections of the harlequin stamp from the Decorative Edges stamp set and added a sentiment from the Words of Inspiration stamp set. She stamped and cut out an image from the Tangled Butterfly stamp set and coloured it with the same Distress Crayons.

With the remembrance season drawing near, Breanda has created a lovely Poppy card for us, and we have so many poppy images on the website that could be used for this idea. She masked a circle and a sun, and brushed Distress Inks to create a background. She stamped a poppy image and coloured with sparkly pens and stamped a sentiment from the Words of Inspiration stamp set. After matting onto co-ordinating cardstock, she added black seed beads to the centres of the poppies.

Zoe has created a series of floral cards for us, all using gelli plate backgrounds:

Thank you so much girls for your beautiful projects.

We hope that you have enjoyed our selection of designs, and please do visit the individual Design Team members' blogs for more detailed explanations of their cards and tags. We will be back next month with more short cuts and time saving tips for you.

Thanks for stopping by,

Birthday Calendar Part Three (by Gerrina)

Hello everyone, it is time for Gerrina's final visit to the Design Team Blog this month. She has created some more beautiful pages for her Birthday Calendar project. 

Gerrina writes:

It is already the last of my Guest Design Team posts at Chocolate Baroque this month, and of couse I made some more months for the Birthday Calendar. You can find the frame and first two months here, the other four months that I made here. Today four new months:

How to:
On the card I had already cleaned this stencil, and then I sponged it again with a round blending tool in just a few places. The lines are made with the same tool and the edge of the stencil. The edges are sponged lightly with the same colour. Then I stamped the flowers with black ink and coloured them with Distress Ink and water based markers. I sponged the two floral sections with blue Distress Ink.

Used Materials:
Stamps: Spring is in the Air
Stencil: Colourbox
Inkspads: Versafine Onyx Black, Distress Inks: Twisted Citron, Tumbled Glass, Seedless Preserves, Brushed Corduroy, Cracled Pistachio
Other: Postcard with some cleaning from the stencil, blending tool, water brush, water based markers.

How to:
Stamp the tulips until you feel there are enough with help from two masks. Colour the flowers. Draw stripes with a black aquarel pencil and a liner and go over the lines with a water brush. Do the same on the month card.

Used materials:
Stamps: Spring is in the Air
Inkpads: Versafine Onyx Black
Other: Postcards, coloured pencils, liner, black aquarel pencil, water brush

How to:
Stamp the rose lady with black ink on a postcard. Go over the lines with a black aquarel pencil and go over the lines with a waterbrush to spread the grey into the image. Stamp the roses in four colours onto another postcard. Sponge the card, and glue the lady on top of it.

Used materials:
Stamps: Mackintosh Beauty
Inkpads: Versafine Onyx Black, Memento: Rhubard Stalk, Lady Bug, Rose Bud, and Grape Jelly, Distress Ink Spun Sugar
Other 2X Postcards, black aquarel pencil, water brush, blending tool

How to:

Draw three lines with a pencil on a postcard, and add some water. Sprinkle each line with a different colour Brusho. Splatter some water on the top of the card and sprinkle some yellow Brusho there. Let the card dry completely before stamping the trees with black ink. Draw a line with a fine black pencil and put some leaves and triangles on the line.

Used materials:

Stamps: Autumn Edges

Inkpads: Versafine Onyx Black

Others: Postcard, pencil, Brushos: Turquoise, Burnt Sienna, Lime Green, Yellow Ochre, black finetip writer

Now my Birthday Calendar is almost finished! Here is a photo of my project up to now:

Only two calendar month pages to go and my birthday calendar can be hung and used. Those two will follow soon on my blog: Gerrina's Creatieve Wereld!

Creatieve groetjes,

Gerrina 

Thanks so much for your inspirationl project this month Gerrina, it has been a real treat to see this buld each week to become a lovely gift or delightful design to create for ourselves. Thanks so much for sharing. Gerrina will be back with us in the New Year, but you can check out her blog in the link shown above.

Mini Indian Elephant Canvas (by Anne)

Good morning. Today I am sharing a mini canvas for this month’s texture theme.

Materials:

• Gothics Fragments, Texture Fragments, Indian Elephant, Words of Inspiration stamp sets
• Mandala Stencil (Martha Stewart) and fossil stencil (Andy Skinner)
• Mini stretched canvas (21 X 14.5cm), watercolour card (20 X 14cm), scrap stamping card
• Mod Podge (Matte)
• WOW embossing powder (Gold detail)
• Ink sprays with mica – archival type, waterproof when dry (teal, pale pink)
• Inkpads: archival dye (teal), Versamark
• Sakura Starlite pens – archival glitter (green, blue, pink, purple)
• Coloured pencils (greys)
• Viva Décor Glitter Paste (603 teal)
• Microbeads (pink multi)
• Alcohol marker (teal) and fine tipped marker (cerise)
• Acrylic paint (cerise pearl)
• Decorative corner punch
• 3D glue gel

How it was done:

1. Spritzed the watercolour card with water, teal and pale pink inks. Laid down the fossil stencil while wet and left to dry overnight. The ink gets pulled under the stencil by capillary action giving a negative image.
2. Randomly stamped the background with the texture stamp and teal archival ink.
3. Stamped the gothic arch and sentiment with Versamark and heat embossed with the gold powder. Coloured with the glitter pens and fine tipped pink marker.
4. Applied glitter paste with a palette knife through the mandala stencil. Whilst wet dropped on some microbeads – pressed lightly into surface. Dried overnight.
5. Stamped elephant with Versamark onto scrap stamping card and heat embossed with gold powder. Coloured with glitter pens and grey pencils, Cut out and shaped slightly. Glued to card with 3D glue gel.
6. Punched corners and outlined with teal marker.
7. Coloured outer edges of canvas with acrylic paint.
8. Glued the card to the canvas with Mod Podge. Also applied over the top to seal the image. Note: I thought that my pink fine liner was archival but it was water soluble! Hence it bled and smeared across the canvas when I applied the Mod Podge – eeeek! However it did add to the texture effect – tee hee.

Wild Roses (by Asha)

Good morning, fellow Chocolate lovers! We are continuing our adventures with textures here on the DT Blog. Today I want to show you that you can have plenty of textural interest on a simple and delicate project.

My card features the beautiful sprig of wild roses from the Pretty Birdcage A5 sheet.

Here's how I put together this card:

1. With a stamp from the Texture Fragments A5 sheet stamp along the outer edge of a piece of square card stock with VersaMark ink. 
2. Apply white embossing powder and heat set.
3. Ink the card with Distress Inks. I used: Mowed Lawn, Cracked Pistachio and Mermaid Lagoon. 
4. Stamp the wild rose image from the Pretty Birdcage A5 sheet with Memento Tuxedo Black.
5. With a stencil apply Texture Paste around the stamped imaged and let it dry. I used Tim Holtz Layering Stencil Flourish.
6. Colour the image with alcohol markers.
7. Apply VersaMark on the raised texture paste design, sprinkle with WOW Clear Sparkle embossing powder and heat set.
8. Back with foam tape and adhere the design panel to the prepared background piece. 

Thank you so much for stopping by today. Please visit the DT blog often for more design inspiration by the rest of the team. I've got more pictures on my blog.

Have a beautiful day!

Beijinhos,
Asha

steampunk butterfly

 For my last DT post this month I did another canvas as we are still playing with textures.
I used a brick wall stencil and texture paste on two corners, then acrylic paint over all the canvas. I wanted a sort of peeling paint effect, so added some Decoart antiquing cream in patina green and rubbed it off over the bricks. It wasn't quite right, so I scrubbed it with a baby wipe and then added distress rock candy crackle paint , which was a bit better.
I stamped the steampunk roses onto tissue paper with archival ink, then coloured on the reverse with alcohol marker pens. I tore them out, then added to the base with a matt multimedia medium.
They didn't quite blend in with the background, but I didn't dare trying to get them off and trim them some more!





For the butterfly I brushed some metallic mica powders over the stamp before I added the black soft form relief paste over the whole stamp and left it to dry.
Once it was dry - about 30 hours this time - I peeled the paste off the stamp, trimmed the edges and glued onto the canvas.
I was very pleased with the butterfly, though I had forgotten just how little powder you needed......and how it gets everywhere!

Spring Awakening (posted by Claire)

Good morning folks, Claire here with  an 8x8 canvas for our texture theme. I love this gorgeous lady,  and although it's Autumn here I couldn't resist colouring  'Spriing Awakening' for this project. You can find her here.

I added texture to the background using texture paste, I scored some 'rays' for a little spring sunshine with an old credit card and stamped into the texture paste with some of the stamps from Nature Fragments. Once it was dry I added a little stencilling, once it was dry I set to with acrylic paints to add some colour. I distressed the edges with walnut stain distress ink.

I coloured the image with Graph'It markers and cut her out before glueing her to the canvas.

I used my glue gun and acrylic paint to create the word Spring and then added a little gilding wax here and there and lots of embellishments for some more texture.

Thanks for visiting today

Claire xx

Brusho Journal pages (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I have a project that is a departure from my usual projects today. We are exploring texture on the Design Team Blog this month, and I decided to create a two page journal spread, using layers to give a feeling of texture to the pages.

I started by sprinkling Brushos onto the pages, (which I had placed newspaper underneath, so that I could keep the rest of the journal dry), and then spritzed the pages with water. I used two large spare pieces of watercolour paper to blot the pages, so that the excess water did not run everywhere, and I now have two extra pieces of background for later.

I added some stencilling with both Distress Ink and white paint. I chose to use in particular Three Quarter Face, and added a stamped image from the Texture Fragments stamp set below to give the suggestion of a lacy dress. I also added an image from the Tangled Fragments stamp set to build up the background layers.

Finally, I added sentiments from the Positive Pants and Rockstar Diva stamp sets.

Keep checking back for more colourful inspiration from my Team mates. Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx

2 canvases by Zoe

Good morning Lovelies and welcome back to my second post for September - Texture, I've created 2 canvases this time, one more masculine and one more feminine.

I've used stamp sets Mini Scripts, Mail Art, Curiosities and Eccentric Edwardian

I started by using Brusho's on my canvas and laying bubble wrap over part of it to dry which created a fab bobbly effect, once dry I stamped elements from the Eccentric Edwardian set directly onto the canvas, I then layered up with a die cut tag, torn paper and die cuts all stamped with elements from the sets listed, I've used collage mediums by Ranger including Crazing which I applied with my fingers to small areas to get a very subtle crackle effect and then used distress crayon over the top once dry to highlight the Crazing effect.

 

My second Canvas I used die cuts and a tag to create layers of texture then I sprayed with spray inks, a couple of flat inks and one with mica, just to create some interest, I stamped randomly without a block the script from Eccentric Edwardian, and the beautiful flourish from Butterfly Dreams, I made an embellishment using Gothic Fragments stamp set which I'd mixed texture paste and mica powder to create a lovely bronze colour, I inked the stamp using Versamark and spread the paste over, leaving to dry for 24 hours then gently peeling off, I made two when I did my tag in my post earlier this month! Used a stencil and mica coloured texture paste in a couple of areas and left overnight to dry. I stamped loads of butterflies from the Butterfly Blush set using different colours in Memento inkpads and fussy cut each and everyone, phew! Once it was all dry I flicked wet black ink over the whole canvas and adhered my butterflies and finished off with different colour dots of Ranger enamels and gilding wax around the edges.

 

Thank you for visiting and leaving a comment, I love hearing what you think, I do hope I give you some inspiration, have a wonderful day xx Zoe xx

 

Posted with Blogsy

Birthday Calendar Part Two (By Gerrina)

It is time for Gerrina's second visit to the Gesign Team Blog this month, and she is continuing with her lovely Birthday Calendar project that she introduced to us last week:

Gerrina writes:

Of course I made some more months for my Birthday Calendar for my second week as Guest Designer here. You can find the frame and first two months here on my blog and here on the Chocolate Baroque Design Team blog.

Used Materials:

Stamps: Nature Table, Lace Fragments, Artistic Affirmations
Inkpads: Versafine Onyx Black, Memento Tangelo and Lady Bug, Distress Ink Brushed Corduroy and Gathered Twigs
Other: Postcards and waterbrush

Used Materials:
Stamps: Sparkling Trees
Stencil
Inkpads: Versafine Onyx Black and Vintage Sepia, Memento Danube Blue and Summer Sky
Other: Postcard, masking paper, gelli plate, brayer

Used Materials:
Stamps Sparkling Trees, Artistic Affirnmations
Handmade stencil
Inkpads: Versafine Onyx Black,and Crimson Red, Memento Dandelion and Lady Bug, Distress Ink Lucky Clover, Silver pigment ink
Other: Postcard, gelli plate, brayer, blending tool, silver paintbrush

 

Used Materials:

Stamps: Punky Hearts
Inkpads: Versafine Crimson Red, Memento Lady Bug, Tangelo and Cottage Ivy
Other: Postcard, masking paper, colouring pencils

Next week I will be back with more months for you!

Creatieve groetjes,

Gerrina.

Thanks so much Gerrina for more fabulous pages for your calendar. We will look forward to the final instalment next week,

Textured Flower (by Julie)

Hello lovely people. This month's theme is all about texture and what better stamps to use than some of the fantastic Fragment sets that Chocolate Baroque have to offer. I have made this card with the Harlequin Fragments and the sentiment is from Words of Wisdom.

The edges of the base card have been coloured with Festive Berries Distress ink and then sponged with Bottle Green acrylic paint and gold gilding wax. 

The centre of the card was coloured with various Distress inks before being over-stamped with a couple of the fragment designs. There is a subtle circular design in the background and then the red and black harlequin stamp around the edges, which has been highlighted with white pen.

The flower has been created by die-cutting a flower and leaf design and using the "waste" as a stencil.

The stencil was placed over the Harlequin Fragment stamps and then moulding paste was spread over the top. I used plain white paste and coloured it with Brushos. The paste needs to be left for 24 hours before peeling away from the stamp and applying gilding wax to enhance the texture, then the flower can be glued into place with 3D glue gel.

Thank you for popping in. Please call back very soon to see more Design Team inspiration.

Julie x

Sunflower Trio (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I am back for my second post of the month, sharing some of my texture themed projects with you again.

I have created a card, using stamps from the Sunny Sunflowers stamp set, stamping the flowers and leaves, masking them as I went along, to create a cluster of flowers in the corner of the card. Once I had masked all of the images, I created a Brusho background, using reds, yellows and browns.
I embossed an image from the Texture Fragments stamp set around the edge of the background, using gold embossing powder. I then coloured the images in using water based markers, and added some shading with pencils.

Finally, I added a sentiment from the Mackintosh Sentiments stamp set, and matted the background onto a black card blank.

Once I had created my card, I had quite a bit of left over colour on my craft mat. I used a large watercolour tag to mop up some of the colour, and dried it completely. I repeated the process a couple of times, until I was happy with the overall colour on the tag. I stuck the tag to a thick piece of burgundy card, and added some shading, using Seedless Preserves Distress Ink.

I stamped some more sunflowers and leaves onto some spare watercolour paper, and coloured them in using water based markers. I arranged the flowers and leaves onto the tag, adhering them with a dries clear glue. I added some micro beads to the centre of the main flower for some added texture. Some toning ribbon completes the tag.

Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx

Japanese book (by Dominike)

Hello
I am back with my second post for this month. I made a lot of little japanese books.

The idea is to make a book of words, sentences, etc.

All the pages are made with my gelli plate and  words are embossed with clear powder. First of all I applie white gesso and magic mesh to give texture.
Stamps are from this Chocolate Baroque sheet.

Bonjour
Me voici de retour avec ma deuxième publication du mois. J'ai fait plusieurs petits livres japonais. L'idée pour celui-ci est de réaliser un livre de pensées, de mots, etc.
Les fonds ont été réalisés avec la gelli plate et les mots embossés à la poudre transparente. Auparavant, j'ai appliqué du gesso blanc et du magic mesh pour donner de la structure.

Les tampons sont bien sûr des Chocolate Baroque.

It is always a pleasure to play with these stamps. I hope is the same for you.
C'est toujours un plaisir de jouer avec ces tampons. J'espère qu'il en est de même pour vous.

Kind regard.
A bientôt.