Guest Post - In an Oriental Garden by Brenda Weatherill

I can't believe it is the middle of October and I am welcoming another member of the Guest Design Team on her first post.  I am pleased to introduce you to our third Guest member, Brenda Weatherill.  This week she has a created a beautiful oriental scene, so without further ado I shall hand you over to Brenda.

Good morning everyone, Brenda here and I'm  thrilled to be sharing my first card on the Chocolate Baroque DT blog.

I have been a fan of CB stamps for many years going right back to the days when Glenda used to demonstrate all things inky on TV and as with so many of us, I gained great inspiration from her style of crafting.

The unique designs of CB stamps along with their superb quality makes working with them a pleasure and as I am not a colourist find they work so well with the ink and paint techniques I so enjoy. I am delighted to have been offered the opportunity by Lesley to share my take on working with CB products.

So here is how I created my card using the Oriental Crane clear stamp set.

• I started with a piece of single sided pearl cardstock and used the reverse side to stamp the tree and temple stamp twice using an Adirondack Black inkpad, masking off the bottom ground line before stamping.
• Next I created the hills using a piece of torn paper and PanPastels Phthalo Green, then placed a large circle mask centrally, slightly overlapping the hills and created the sky, again using a piece of torn paper to represent clouds and PanPastels Magenta Shade. After removing the mask I used a little PanPastels Diarylide Yellow to shade the sun and clouds.
• I then masked the crane and upper section of the crane stamp and inked just the bullrushes and stamped across the bottom of the scene. Using the smaller of the cherry blossom stamps I stamped several times across the top of the scene and added a little shading and colour to the trees and temples with pencils.
• Using co-ordinating cardstock I matted and layered the scene onto a white base card and finally added some liquid pearls to the blossoms.

Thank you for popping by today and you can find more of my work on my blog Floral Fantasies.

B x

Just love the soft, almost etheral look of this card Brenda, thank you for this gorgeous contribution and we look forward to seeing what you bring to us next week.

Oriental Screen (posted by Judith)

Hi Folks, here is a sample showcasing some more of this month's oriental stamps, and mixing in a couple of older stamps as well. I have detailed the construction of the project on My Blog so take a look if you are interested.

I stamped the background stamps taken from the Tranquilty and the Moonlit Waterfall stamp sets onto some backing paper, and coloured them with Inktense pencils. I then used Images from Oriental Crane and Serenity/Tranquility Multibuy to stamp my main images, which I also coloured with pencils.

I punched a leaf image from the top of each screen panel, and added some tiny gems for decoration.

Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx

Blue Skies (posted by Claire)

Good morning, Claire here with my first sample created using this months new stamps Tranquility and Serenity (you can find them here) I really enjoyed making this, it was such a nice change from all those Christmas cards.

I stamped the images with Mememto Tuxedo Black ink and added the Heron from Oriental Crane and coloured them with Graph'It markers. I used PanPastels to create the background and stamped the two little birds. The beauty of panpastels is that you can erase them so you don't need to worry about masking, if you go over on to your images just grab a pencil eraser and the PanPastel disappears. To finish off I've inked lightly around the edges with Broken China distress ink. Thanks for visiting today, keep popping back as my teamies have made some absolutely gorgeous projects with this month's new stamps.

Claire xx

Asian Light (by Clare)

Hello!  Welcome to the Chocolate Baroque Blog!

For this card, I used two of the clear acrylic block-mount stamp sets, called Lily Pad and Chinese Lanterns.  These two sets go along with Moonlit Waterfall and Oriental Crane.  The main focal lantern was stamped in Versamark ink on black cardstock, then heat embossed in black for dimension.  I painted the inside of the lantern with bleach and used a white gel pen on the flowers.  I used a light green marker for the leaves. 

NOTE:  When using bleach, pour a little into a bleach-proof cup (I used a small glass cup), and it needs to be used right away, because it loses its potency quickly.  If you are using synthetic brushes to paint with bleach, you may notice that the bleach will "eat" the bristles, and you'll soon be painting with a stub.

The lantern was mounted on white cardstock with dimensionals, and then with dimensionals over the lantern trio.  I took a larger tassel from my stash apart, and used just a few strands to make this small tassel to fit.  A friend gave me a whole "bolt" of chain, which I glued onto the card with Aleene's Tacky Glue.  I had a fall garland with the golden yellow balls and fabric flowers on it, and this one came off, and I found it on the floor.  You never know where you'll find something to use on a project!  I hope you're inspired in some small way!

Oriental kimono card (posted by Elaine)

As soon as I saw the new Oriental Crane clear stamps, I was inspired to make a little kimono. Using a base of copper pearl paper, I cut and folded a little kimono shape and I embossed cherry blossom branches in gold EP. I used this colour scheme because I had some beautiful hand made Japanese paper covered in cherry blossom, and I used this to line the kimono.

 

On the back of the kimono I embossed the Chinese pheasant design.

 

 

Then I made a sash with gold paper embossed with copper EP. I finally mounted the kimono onto an 8 x 8 card using the gorgeous handmade paper and a little pocket I made to tuck the kimono into. I finished off with die cut cherry blossom in blending colours and a fancy edging to my pocket.

 

 

These stamps offer so much scope for varied projects as the other girls in the DT have already show and the usual crisp detail of CB stamps make them a pleasure to work with.

 

Elaine 



Oriental Crane (posted by Claire)

Good morning, Claire here with another sample using the 'Oriental Crane' set of clear stamps. While I love rubber stamps, clear stamps are perfect for creating a little scene as you can see exactly where you are stamping.

The background was created with distress inks (Tumbled Class, Peeled Paint and Tea Dye), blended on to Southfield White card and then splashed with water to give a mottled effect. I over stamped the background with dragonflies and bamboo stamps from 'Moonlit Waterfall'. 

I stamped the image with versafine ink and coloured with distress markers. I used some black card for matting and layering and added an oriental coin charm attached with some shimmery braid.

Thanks for visiting today

Claire xx

Willow Pattern (posted by Claire)

Hello, Claire here with another project using the beautiful new 'Oriental Crane' stamp sheet

I've used memento inks and glossy card for this project, the focal image made me think of all the lovely old 'Willow Pattern' chine that my grandma used to have in her china cabinet so I took inspiration from that to create this card. I've used various shades of blue memento inks to stamp the images, added a doily from my stash, some faux pearls, ribbon in shades of blue and white and finished off with a button and a tiny little bow.

Thanks for visiting today

Claire xx

Enjoying the Sunset

I have been so excited about the new clear stamps for a while now. I'm sure when people start to play with the new designs they will love them as much as the Design Team do.

My card was created by stamping the Crane first onto white card and then make a mask to cover it. I then cut it with a nestability and taped the shape to the cut to frame so that when I used the distress ink it would leave a white border. I used Spiced Marmalade, Mustard Seed for the sunset and Stormy Sky for the water. I cut a larger black frame to mount on. I decided to keep the base card simple so that the main image popped out from the background so I only stamped with black ink. There's lots more inspiration to follow from the team. Enjoy. Debbie

Crane with Kanzashi Flower (posted by Judith)

Hi Folks, here's a sample with the new clear stamps from Chocolate Baroque. I have created a background using Spun Sugar Distress Ink. I then stamped a blossom stamp from the Oriental Crane stamp plate over the background, and coloured in the flowers using a pencil. I stamped the crane image onto a piece of oval shaped card, edging this with Distress Ink as before. I coloured the image in with pencils.

I made a Japanese Kanzashi flower using a tutorial I found on Pinterest. I used crinoline material, and sprayed it with Distress reinker and water when I was finished. I added a jewellery component from my craft stash, and a couple of die cut leaves.

Keep a look out for more creations by my Design Team mates using these great stamps. Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx