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,