Fifteen Minute Cards

Hello everyone, it is time for our second offering of the month from the Design Team, sharing a few tips and techniques for cards made in fifteen minutes or less. We hope to show you how easy it is to use some of your favourite Chocolate Baroque stamps to make speedy cards that look every bit as good as something that took hours to make. So whether you are a new stamper, or someone who needs a batch card for an occasion like a craft sale or wedding invitation, we hope to give you lots of inspiration in our bi-monthly blog posts.

You can check out our other posts by clicking on the label at the bottom of the post 'Fifteen Minute Cards', and it will bring up the other posts for you. You can also click on all of our names, as you scroll through the posts, and you can get to our blogs for further details on the cards that we have made. We hope that you enjoy our selection this time, grab a cuppa, and enjoy!

For a speedy background, stencils are a great way of creating a pattern, and adding colour. Our first two projects demonstrate this technique. Rachel has used a stencil for her fabulous Halloween card, adding a Halloween image and colouring it with water based markers.

Magda's ATC starts off in the same way, and she has added a pretty flower, some ribbon and gems for texture. Her sentiment makes me smile, as it always reminds me of love letters I wrote to my Hubby as a teenager!

Anne has created two very pretty cards for us this time around stamping onto patterned papers, another great technique for creating a quick card, as your background is already completed.

She stamped the Spinney Design a Tree image and embossed the design using sparkly embossing powder. She completed her design by adding a ribbon, bow and flat-backed pearls. A quick, but beautiful card.

For her second card, she stamped elements from the Seashell Collage and the flying gulls from the Landscape Edges using Coffee Archival Ink onto her background paper (Travels in Italy from Crafty Individuals). The sentiment is from the Steampunk Travel set and was heat embossed with white powder. She added a few details with a fine liner pen and coloured a few areas with a brown pencil. Finally, she added some pink dye around the edges and over the sentiment to make it stand out- the white embossing resists the ink colour.

Gelli print backgrounds are another quick and easy background to use for quick cards. You can have a session making your backgrounds one day, and then on another occasion, spend time creating lots of cards. You do not need to use an entire piece of background either, which makes the backgrounds work very hard for you, as they go a long way.

In the following examples, Dominike has cut smaller pieces of background to stamp her images onto, leaving lots of white space visible on her cards. This creates a very clean and simple looking card. She has used some of our steampunk images and sentiments for her projects.

These would make great cards for the man in your life, as those cards are so difficult sometimes.

I have used some small pieces of fabric, left over from a much bigger project to create my quick cards. I coloured the fabric with water based ink, drying the fabric completely, then stamped the images with Archival Ink. I used iron on interfacing to attach the fabric to some kraft card blanks, and added a button as a simple embellishment. Finally I stamped a greeting directly onto the card blank. More details can be found on my blog.

Brenda always brings us a great range of techniques and ideas, and this time is no exception. For her first card, she stamped the freesias from the June Fairy stamp set twice, and added the quote from the Words of Inspiration stamp set.  She then coloured the flowers with pencils. She stamped and coloured one of the butterflies from the Butterfly Flourish Swirls stamp set, coloured it and attached it to the card.

For her second card, she masked the top and bottom of a piece of card and stamped one of the images from the Pretty Poppies stamp set using Versamark and clear detail embossing powder. With the masking strips still in place, she used Distress Inks to colour over the stamping to achieve a resist finish. The sentiment is a die cut.

This third card was created by repeat stamping leaves from the Autumn Poppy stamp set around the top of the background, and colouring them in with pencils. She added a quote from the Words of Inspiration stamp set, and lightly inked around the border using Distress Ink. She matted and layered the background using toning card.

Her final card this time was created by stamping toadstools from the Autumn Poppy stamp set, the rabbit from Glorious Spring, and willow from Spring Foliage with Black Archival Ink. She masked a sun and using brushes and Distress Ink, she built up background colour. She used a fan brush and watered down Distress Ink to flick some grass along the bottom.

We always like to bear the current season in mind for you as we prepare these blog posts, and have included some quick Christmas cards for you, to help you with those batch cards which you might need to make. Zoe has made this set of four clean and simple cards using one of our Christmas images with an added sentiment. She has used different colour sparkly embossing powders for a bit of shimmer.

Her second project uses one of our very newest stamps, simple, yet effective:

We hope that you have enjoyed the projects that we have shared with you, and that you will try out some of our ideas yourselves. We will be back next month with more time saving tips. Do keep visiting the Design Team Blog for a daily dose of inspiration from our regular posts in the meantime.

Thanks for stopping by,

Put a spell on you (posted by Claire)

Good morning. Claire here with a Halloween card made using some of my favourite spooky Chocolate Baroque stamps.  

I began by stamping the images (from Put a Spell on You and Nevermore) using Memento Tuxedo Black in and then masked the images using making fluid. and created the background using distress inks and acrylic paints. Once the background was dry I removed the masking fluid and coloured the images with Graph'It markers. I've added some spooky embellishments to finish the card off.

Thanks for visiting today, 

Claire xx

Fabric Journal Pages (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I have a final Autumn project to share with you this month, and decided to mix up some of my old favourite stamps to create a couple of pages in my journal. I created these pages using lightweight cotton fabric and used iron on interfacing to attach the pieces to my journal pages.

I coloured the fabric with water-based inks, and then stamped all of the images with Archival Ink. I frayed the edges of the fabric, before adding the interfacing, as it is much harder to do this afterwards.

I  have chosen lots of Autumnal stamps from my favourite sets: Autumn Poppy, Essence of Nature, Nature's Peace, Autumn Fairy Collection, Words of Wisdom, Woodland Design a Tree, and used rich, warm colours that remind me of the season. I hope that I have given you some ideas that you could carry into cardmaking if you do not want to try a bit of journalling yourself, as you could easily use these colours and images to make some beautiful cards.

Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx

Autumn Poppy by Zoe

Good morning Lovelies me again hahaha!

My third post this month and I've made an oval plaque using Stampbord and Pan Pastels.

I've used the gorgeous Poppy from the Autumn Poppy set. I coloured my background first with Pan Pastels then stamped my image using Archival inkpad, I coloured the image using Pan Pastels and a fine point soft tool, I scratched some details into the design using Stampbord tools and finished by adding copper gilding wax around the edge.

Thank you for visiting today, I hope you like my project, please leave a comment, have a wonderful day xx Zoe xx

 

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Oval Aperture Poppy Card (by Brenda)

Hello everyone, today sees the final visit of the month from our Guest Design Team contributor Brenda, I am sure that you have been enjoying her lovely projects this month, and this last design will be no exception. 

Brenda writes:

I started by stamping the poppy image from the Pretty Poppies stamp set onto a piece of card, slightly smaller than an A5 card, and then cut around the flower element only.

Next, I used an oval die cut to cut an aperture, fixing it behind the cut poppy flowers to keep them intact, so that they overlapped the bottom section of the aperture. Using the same die and one slightly larger, I cut a green frame and fixed it in place.

I then stamped one of the images from the Glorious Spring stamp set onto a piece of card and stamped the grass element again onto the opposite side, making sure that it would all fit within the aperture. Masking a sun, I used Pan Pastels to create the background.

The poppies were then coloured in with pencils, foam pads added to the back of them and they were fixed over the stamped scene before matting and layering with co-ordinating card.

A wonderful finale to your month with us Brenda, thank you. Brenda will be back with us next year for another spell on the Design Team Blog. You can see her projects featured regularly in our bi-monthly Fifteen Minute Blog posts, here on the Design Team Blog, and you can visit her own blog here, for more samples of her work.

Autumnal Woodland (by Julie)

Hello, lovely people. Like a lot of crafters, Autumn is my favourite season as it is full of gorgeous rich tones of reds, yellows and browns. This card created with the fantastic Fantasy Woodland set hopefully captures some of these wonderful colours....

The main design has been created onto water-colour card and die cut using a circle with a 13 cm diameter. The tree design was coloured with brush markers directly onto the rubber stamp before being stamped onto the card-stock, then a damp brush was used to go over the leaves so they have a  hand painted look. The background has also been water-coloured with brush-markers and Distress inks and the outside edge has been inked with Walnut Stain.

Next I cut another circle with a diameter of approximately 15 cm. This can be from any card-stock as I just used the waste left behind as a stencil to add a circle of Distress ink around the edge of the main design. It also acts as a guide to help place the stamped leaves/trees around the edge. The mini tree was inked up with dye ink and stamped at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock. Once these four points are stamped it is easier to judge filling in each quarter so there is no special measurements or gadgets needed.

Another decorative tree was stamped in each corner and along the edges of the base card and Old Paper Distress ink was blended across the base card. 

Crystal Stickles was dabbed over the design for a finishing touch.

Thanks for taking a peek. Please call again soon, for more Design Team inspiration.

Julie xx

You said sardine can ?

Yes we can.
Hello, Today we are playing with sardine can and other spiders.
It's a game with Mireille, a French friend. We keep all cans we use and they are the objects of our projects.

1-Take a piece of fabric colored with brushos

2- Stamp the owl

3- Glue breads and fibers 

4- Glue the fabric at the bottom of the can

5- Stamp the ghosts on a green tea bag and cut around

6- Stamp the mushrooms on a piece of paper and color them

7- Stamp the beautiful lady on a page of an old book

8- Glue scraps of tea bag all around the can and glue the ghosts, the mushrooms and the lady.

9- That's all. Your theater is ready.

Bonjour

Avec mon amie Mireille, nous jouons à récupérer des boites de sardines et les utilisons dans nos projets. Cela nous donne des scènes amusantes, délirantes parfois et le résultat est toujours différents. Aujourd'hui je vous propose de jouer avec moi.

1- Tamponner le hibou sur du tissu mis en couleur avec des brushos.

2- Tamponner les fantômes sur un sachet de thé vert

3- Tamponner les champignons sur une cartonette

4- Tamponner la dame sur une page de vieux livre

5- Coller le tissu au fond de la boite, des morceaux de sachet de thé autour de la boite et coller vos pièces découpées.

Le résultat n'est-il pas sympathique ?

Merci de votre visite. A bientôt.

I hope you'll enjoy playing with me. Thank you for having had a look.

Kind regards.

Card for Halloween Party by Magda - Put a Spell on You and Twillight Zone

For my last project of this month I suggest an invitation card:

1. Colour the mat using the blending sponge with Distress Inkpad Carved Pumpkin and darken the edges with Distress Inkpad Black Soot
2. Stamp the house from the Twilight Zone stamp set and the spider from the Put a Spell on You rubber stamp set with Versafine Onyx Black
3. Connect all spiders with a black trembling line
4. Stamp the ghost from the Put a Spell on You stamp set first on a sheet of paper with Versafine Onyx Black, in order to have less colour on the rubber stamp
5. Put a coat of Soft Form Relief Paste Copper on the stamp and let it dry completely for about 24 hours
6. Remove the shape from the rubber stamp and trim the excess 
7. Glue the shape as decoration on the card
8. Stamp the sentiment from the Put a Spell on You rubber stamp set with Versafine Onyx Black
9. Lighten the eyes of the spiders with a white pen and the windows of the house with Stickles Star Dust. 
10. Glue the mat on a black cardstock card cutting from A4 cardstock 200 gsm 

Thanks for passing by and enjoy your Halloween party night

Magda

Christmas Birches card (by Anne)

Good morning. I have had some little Xmas bauble stickers in my stash for years and thought that they would be perfect hanging from the Tangled Birch for a Christmas card. Think that I will make a few more of these and get my stickers used up.

Unfortunately I had a little trouble photographing this one. It is mounted on shiny mirror card and has lots of sparkly glitter texture which is very difficult to see in the photo. It looks lovely in real life. It would still work without the baubles, or perhaps with some gems of die cut snowflakes. I hope that you like it.

Materials:

• Tangled Birch stamp and sentiment from Christmas Candlelight
• 12 X 17cm black card blank, silver mirror card and white stamping card
• Ink sprays (blue, yellow, orange, opaque white and clear mica)
• Inkpads: Versamark and Memento (Tuxedo Black)
• Heat embossing powder (silver with glitter)
• Alcohol markers (black, mid and light grey)
• Watercolour pen (yellow)
• Glitter pens (red and green)
• Christmas bauble peel off stickers
• Fine crystal glitter

How to make it:

1. Stamp the tree and heat emboss with sparkly powder.
2. Cut a small circle to act as a mask and spritz the background with sprays. Remove the mask and colour the moon with yellow watercolour pen.
3. Add touches of colour to the stamped image with glitter pens. Add some shading around the outside of the trees and at the base of the scene with grey alcohol marker.
4. Trim the card, outline with black marker, mount onto mirror card and glue to the card front. Stick down the baubles.
5. Stamp the Christmas banner with Memento ink. Colour with alcohol and glitter pens. Cut out and glue to the card front.
6. Finish with fine crystal glitter on the foreground and tree branches.

'Tis Near Halloween (by Asha)

Hello again, friends! I'm back with another project for you. Today I want to share with you an easy Halloween card featuring stamps from the Witching Time stamp sheet.

I stamped the image with Archival Ink and used Distress Inks to create the background. Next, I coloured the image with alcohol markers. And to finish the card, I added a few black bling.

I have more pictures and details of tools and products over at my blog. Thank you for stopping by today and come back soon for more amazing creations by the rest of the Design Team.

Beijinhos,

Asha

brusho halloween

 I watched Lesley demoing a new way of using brusho powders on the Craft Channel last week, and just had to try it out! To a certain extent it is more controllable, but you still get the colour variations.
I used tags, and they were small enough for a trial run but large enough to work on - and Halloween images as it is that time (and I'd managed to find a set!)
Stamp set was nevermore, and I stamped the images first, then added the brusho.
Basically, you sprinkle the powder on very meanly, then use a brush and clean water to activate the brusho, working on a small area at a time and keep wiping the brush clean as you go. I used black brusho, hoping for a varied sky effect, and was quite pleased with the effect I got, even if it was a bit blotchy in places.
I used a window stamp from gothic fragments as a base for the window shape on the top part of the tag, and a much heavier sprinkle of black brusho.

Similar method for the second tag, apart from using the window stamp as a more defined arch, and yellow ochre brusho to colour the stonework.

Thanks Lesley for the idea, will be using this again!
Hope you enjoyed seeing these, more details on my blog
vroncards.blogspot.co.uk
Have a great weekend
Veronica

Pink Butterflies (by Brenda)

Hello everyone, today we have the second of three posts this month from our Guest Design Team contributor Brenda. She has created a very pretty card to share with us, which I am sure you will all enjoy.

Brenda writes:

I started by painting a piece of 600gsm watercolour card with gesso. I find Distress Crayons are far more workable over a gesso base.

Using a pink and grey Distress Crayon, I rubbed them randomly, adding water here and there, to allow the colour to move and run in places. I also flicked a little watered down black Distress Ink.

Next, I randomly stamped one of the images from the Decorative Edges stamp sets and a quote from the Words of Inspiration stamp set, using second generation stamping, to achive a softer look.

The butterflies were stamped from the Butterfly Flourish Swirls stamp set, and the two butterflies were stamped a second time and cut out before colouring with the same Distress Crayons, and decoupaged, with wire antennae and pearls added to the thorax.

Thank you for another lovely project Brenda. We will see Brenda back again next week for her final visit of the month.

Witching Time (posted by Claire )

Good morning, Claire here with a quick and easy Halloween card made using stamps from 'Witching Time'. I decided to dust off my angelina fibres and fantasy film to make this project as I thought they would be perfect for a spooky card. 

I began by making a sandwich of the film with assorted colours of the fibres in the middle and then popped the film onto the the stamps which were inked with black stazon ink .I used a layer of greaseproof paper and ironed over the top for a few seconds. I love this technique it's such fun to do!

I cut the images out and layered them up,m adding ribbon, a button and some of the left over angelina fibres for a border.

I hope you're enjoying all the inspiration from my teamies this month.

Thanks for visiting today,

Claire

'Shrooms and Leaves (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I am back with another Autumnal project for you, and I it seems that I can't leave these zingy Brusho colours alone at the moment. I created a background using a combination of Autumn tones, which I spritzed, and blotted with a spare piece of card. I then stamped an image from the Autumn Poppy stamp set randomly around the edge of the background, using Archival Ink.

I cut a smaller piece of card, and stamped and embossed the central image, using copper embossing powder. I coloured the image using Brushos and a water brush. I edged the card using Fossilized Amber Distress Ink, and chose another leafy image from the stamp plate and the same Distress Ink, to stamp around the edges.

I edged both pieces of card with green Distress Ink, before adhering them to a card blank, onto which I had added a piece of pale green card.

I will be back later in the month with another project to share with you. Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx

Spooky tag by Zoe

Good morning Lovelies, I'm back today with my second post this month.

The theme is Autumn or Halloween, here's my Halloween tag.

I've used stamps from the Halloween Haunting set, I've used Distress inks for my background, using a circle mask for the moon and ripped paper to create some misty hills in the background, a little faux bleaching on the mushrooms and Bobs ya uncle! A very simple tag!

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit, please leave a comment and pop back tomorrow to see another fab project from one of my talented teamies.

Have a wonderful day xx Zoe xx

 

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Fifteen Minute Cards- Some Quick Inspiration for You

Hello everyone, it is time for the first of our bi-monthly Fifteen Minute card posts for October. We hope to show you some quick and inspirational projects, sharing some of our tips and ideas, to help you make cards and projects that take no longer than fifteen minutes to complete. So, whether you are a beginner stamper, looking for an easy card to make, or someone in need of a speedy batch card, hopefully we will have an idea here for you. We have used lots of different lovely Chocolate Baroque stamps, showing how diverse they can be. So, enjoy what we have to share with you today, and give some of our ideas a go. You can visit each of our blogs for more information, by clicking on our names, as you scroll through the blog post.

Magda's pretty floral card has been created using a stencil for the background. She has used Distress Inks to colour her card:

I have created an overall background using one of the Baroque Ornament stamps, and white embossing powder. I added Distress Inks over the background, and splattered some water over the top. I blotted some of the water away, leaving a mottled background. I embossed a greeting onto some vellum, and added a few gems. You can see more details on my blog:

Rachel has used a stencil to create her background, and then used water based markers to colour her images. She has created a fabulous Halloween card, but you could use this layout using lots of other images:

Anne's beautiful cards have been created by stamping onto pretty papers from the Crafty Individuals Travels In Italy paper pack.  She stamped and heat embossed the butterflies with pink sparkly embossing powder, then coloured them with watercolour and glitter pens. She added a drop shadow around them using a pencil. To finish, she added a few highlights with white gel pen and glitter glue for added sparkle.

Lesley has provided us with two fabulous quick cards this month, and a brief description of how she has made them. Her first card was made by applying a selection of water soluble oil pastels to a piece of card and blending with her fingers. She stamped the image from the Butterfly Dreams stamp set over the coloured panel. She used Black Archival Ink then used a heat tool to ensure that it was completely dry. (This also fuses the ink into the pastels). She trimmed the panel and mounted onto co-ordinating card followed by a piece of black card. She stamped the sentiment centre left on the base card clear embossed it, and masked it off with a rectangle cut from a Post-it Note. She stamped the leaf again from the Butterfly Dreams stamp set, randomly and twice from each inking, over the left half of the base card. She removed the mask and hand drew a squiggly line around the sentiment. Finally, she affixed the stamped panel to the right-hand side.

For her second card, she inked the fern image from the Wild Meadow stamp set with two colours of Distress Ink and stamped twice without re-inking. She changed colours and repeated. She dusted a little colour over the whole piece using brushes, (she used the green and rust she had stamped with) and this also edges the piece. She put a couple of drops of Distress Ink onto a craft mat and spritzed them with water. Picking the ink up with a toothbrush, she scraped the bristles lightly to spray over the card, (mainly the top half). She stamped the sentiment, adhered the ribbon, and then adhered the background to the base card. She added a little gilding paste to the metal leaf and adhered it to the card.

Dominike has created a series of cards using the Tangled Birch stamp. She has used gelli plate backgrounds for the first four, and stamped onto tissue paper in a journal for her final project. The addition of postage stamps is a lovely idea, and adds great texture to these cards:

Zoe has created a range of lovely Christmas cards for us, and we hope that these will give you some timely ideas for some of your seasonal cards. She has used sparkly embossing powders for the first two cards, and Versamark and mica powders for her snowflake card.

Finally, we have a wonderful selection from Brenda, featuring a range of techniques again this month.  For her first card, Brenda placed a pice of ripped paper onto the base card, and fixed it in place with masking tape. She dragged three colours of  green Distress Ink across the length of the card. Using the same Distress Ink, she stamped one of the leaves from the Autumn Poppy stamp set and added a die cut sentiment.

For her second card, using Black Archival Ink, she stamped the chinese lanterns from the Autumn Poppy stamp set onto the right-hand side of the card. She then drew a pencil line down the card, and followed it to cut out elements of the image so that it overlapped the edge of the pencil line. She coloured the image with pencils and placed a piece of co-ordinating card inside the card.

To create her third card, Breanda stamped the Flora Musica image with Black Archival Ink, and then stamped the central element a second time. She coloured this in with sparkly pens and cut it out with a circle die. She lined it up with the base image, and used foam pads to raise the spotlight image up. She added a sentiment from the Pretty Poppies stamp set.

Her final card was created by using several different colours of Distress Crayons, she smeared strips down the card using her fingers. She then stamped one of the borders from the Decorative Edges stamp set across the coloured strip.

We hope that you have enjoyed our speedy projects and will be inspired by something that you have seen. We will be back later in the month with another batch of projects from the Design Team, but do keep visiting the blog for a daily dose of our regular creativity. Thanks for stopping by,