Lonely Tree (by Corine)

Hello!

Here I am again. This is my second post this month. Today I share a fairytale with you. I had so much fun making this card with the masking technique.

I used stamps from the sheets:

Fantasy Woodland

Poppy Meadow

I made the base of a background with Brusho. Brusho always gives surprising effects. I first make a background and only think then how to proceed.

I do not apply too much Brusho on the watercolour paper. I started with Yellow at the bottom and the Turquoise at the top. Spray with the water and do this step by step. Not too much water in the beginning. Let the wet Brusho dry thoroughly.

Stamp the tree with Stazon Jet Black. Mask the tree with masking tape. Use a stencil to apply 'sun rays' in the top left corner. I sponged it with Distress Ink Fossilized Amber. I made the leaves in the background using a stencil and Distress Ink Peeled Paint.

Under the tree I made soil with torn paper and sponged with Distress Ink Brushed Corduroy.

I stamped the flowers with Archival Vintage Photo.

 The tree has been coloured with watercolour markers and for the shadows around the tree I used a charcoal pencil.

I hope I have inspired you. If you want to try this technique, I wish you a lot of fun.

Until next week!

Kind regards,

Corine van Kuilenberg

Old and New Together (by Gerrina)

Hello everyone, our Guest Design Team member Gerrina is here today with the first of three posts this month. She has created a collage style card with several of our stamp sets.

Gerrina writes: 

Hello again! I am so glad that I can show you what I made for my first Guest Design Team post of this month! Not only were the stamps from Chocolate Baroque some of the first flower stamps that I bought, but they keep releasing such beautiful new stamps... I had a lot of fun mixing older and newer stamps making the three Guest Designer posts for Chocolate Baroque this month.

This is the first of them. I stamped the flowers (Poppy Meadow) and the butterfly (Thistle Butterfly), masked them off and mixed the background stamps from the Rustic Fragments set on the same half of my page. I coloured the flowers, the butterfly and the pieces of the background stamps with coloured pencils.

I love mixing the many stamps of the beautiful background stamps sets that Chocolate Baroque has released over the years with other stamps, which you can see regularly on my blog.

Used Materials:

Stamps: Poppy Meadow, Thistle Butterfly and Rustic Fragments

Ink: Versafine Onyx Black

Other: Stamp paper, masking paper, coloured pencils

 

See you again next week,

Creatieve  groetjes,

Gerrina

 

Poppy Congratulations (by Carole)

Today sees the first post this month from our regular Guest team Design member Carole Cann. Carole has created a lovely card to inspire you incorporating soft colours, and a wooden heart. 

Carole writes:

Good morning everyone.
I am delighted to be back again as a Guest Design Team member, during February.
I have used the beautiful poppy stamp from Poppy Meadow and the centre of Song Thrush. It is relatively quick to make too.
The poppy has been stamped with Versafine Onyx Black ink and clear embossed, to fit onto a DL card base.
I have used a 7cm heart shape as the central element.
As my shape was wood and I wanted the blue to be crisp and clear, I painted it with slightly watered down, white acrylic paint.
When dry, the centre of the Song Thrush stamp was inked with Blue Versafine ink, and the heart was placed over the section I wanted to stamp.
All the colouring has been done with watercolour pencils.
For the top and bottom edges, I drew a line using the same blue as the rest of the card. I then pulled a damp baby wipe along the edge to smudge and soften it slightly.
The joy of poppy stamps is that you can colour them almost any colour that you like. This shape reminded me of blue Icelandic poppies.

I hope that you have enjoyed my post and I will see you next week with my second project.
Thanks, and happy crafting,

Carole.

Butterfly Frame (by Carole)

Hello everyone, we are joined today by our regular Guest Design Team member Carole Cann. Carole will be creating three projects for us this month to inspire you, and her first project is a fabulous piece of home decor; a pretty picture to give to a friend, but that you may want to keep for yourself!

Carole writes:

Good morning  everyone. I am delighted to be showing you my first project as Guest Designer for September.

I have used the small butterfly from Butterfly Poppy Collage, a stamp from Poppy Meadow and the words from Pretty Poppies. The ivy at the top is from the Tall Trees set.
Permanent inkpad
Watercolour pencils
Glossy Accents
Chalk finish inkpads
15cm wooden frame
25cm square frame I had in my stash

I have started with a 15cm wooden frame which has an 8.5 cm heart aperture in the centre.
When I make a project like this, I always try it out on paper first. This enables me to make mistakes in the positioning and layout, which I can correct before stamping onto the real frame.
I did work out beforehand that the butterflies would stamp evenly around this size aperture.
Of course, it does not need to be an aperture, you could make a 15cm card with a heart die cut in the centre, and the butterflies surrounding it.
When I stamped the butterflies, I started with the top three and then stamped one side, trying to space them as evenly as possible. I then 'mirrored' the butterflies on the other side.
Make sure they are completely dry before colouring them in.
I covered each butterfly with Glossy Accents and left them to dry thoroughly.
Then I wiped over the background with the chalk green inkpad.
The background in the larger frame is stamped with another of the Poppy Meadow stamps and the ivy.
For the centre, I used the frame as the template and drew lightly around the aperture with a pencil onto a square of green card.This helped me to position the words and flowers correctly. Rub out the pencil line, stick to the back of the frame and attach to the background.
Further details can be found on my blog.

Thank you for visiting and I look forward to showing you my second project next week.

Happy crafting,

Carole.

Thank you for a delightful project Carole, and for the advice about practising on paper first. We often recommend that you try your ideas out on a cheap piece of paper first, as it takes away the pressure of wasting your more expensive card and other materials. Top Tip Carole!

A trio of cards (by Annelies Karduks)

As you may be aware I am very privileged to represent Crealies from the Netherlands on Hochanda and this month Annelie Karduks (the owner of Crealies) has kindly done some step by step cards using Chocolate Barqoue stamps and Crealies dies.  I hope you like the combination, so please sit back and enjoy this guest post.

Materials need for all three cards:

Crealies dies for all cards

Crea-Nest-Lies XXL no. 56

Crea-Nest-Lies XXL no. 72

Crea-Nest-Lies XXL no. 24

Crea-Nest-Lies XXL no. 36

Set of 3 no. 48 Flowers 20

Other supplies needed:

Red sticky tape 3 mm

Crealies white velvet cardstock

Crealies black linen cardstock

Magic anti static bag

Versamark ink

Black embossing powder

Heatgun

Chocolate Baroque Masking Tissue

Distress Oxide ink Wilted Violet and Picked Raspberry or

Ditress Oxide ink Candied Apple and Spiced Marmelade

Round blending tool and foam

Crealies Make a sticker out of your die cutted shape

Foam squares

Nuvo drops black

Gefeliciteerd (red and orange):

Chocolate Baroque stamp set UA5SP0423 Poppy Meadow

Set of 3 no. 35 Flowers 17

Dutch text die no. 01

Gefeliciteerd (purple and pink):

Chocolate Baroque stamp set UA5SP0532 Floral Notes

Set of 3 no. 26 Flowers 16

Dutch text die no. 01

Proficiat:

Chocolate Baroque stamp set UA5SP0395 Pretty Poppies

Set of 3 no. 47 Flowers 19

Dutch text die no. 32

Instructions:

• Die cut a shape with the largest die of Crea-Nest-Lies XXL no 56 and no. 72 out of white and black cardstock. Make a hinge card by scoring the white shape 1,5 cm from the left side. Put sticky tape on the small part and tape it to the frontcard.
• Die cut the second largest die of Crea-Nest-Lies XXL 24. Use the magic anti static bag and stamp the image with versamark ink onto the die cutted shape. Use black embossing powder to cover the image. Remove the excess of the powder and use the heatgun. Cover the die cutted shape with two bands of masking tissue. Use 2 colors of Distress Oxide ink with the blending tool and foam. Remove the masking tissue. Tape the rectangle to the front of the card.
•  Download the drawing for the XXL Frames in cm from the website www.crealies.nl click on Downloads 2, find Downloads for Crea-Nest-Lies XXL Frames. Print this drawing on 100%. Optional: Cover the drawing with self adhesive transparent book cover foil for reuse (it needs to be a completely smooth surface. Cut the drawing on the dotted line.
• Take the 12 cm die and the 14 cm die out of the Crea-Nest-Lies XXL no. 36 and put them up side down. Put 1 cm of red sticky tape on two side of the dies. Tape the dies on the right spot on the drawing. Die cut the frame. Use foam squares and tape the frame on top of the card.
• Die cut the flowers. Use the same colors of ink for the flowers. Use very thin foam squares to make the flowers and tape them on the card.
• Cut a piece of sticker sheet you need for the text. Remove the white protective paper of the sticker sheet. Put the cardstock on top of it. Die cut with the text die. Color the text with ink. Remove the other protective paper and you have made yourself a sticker. Tape it on the card.

I think these are just fantastic cards for so many occasions and once you have the concet you can adapt them to suit many stamps from our range.  Thank you Annelies for making these lovely projects and for writing up all the instructions, we hope you will design for us again in the future.

Don't forget you can see much more from our regular design ladies, so please drop in again tomorrow for a completely new project.

 

Pretty Poppies Card (by Carole)

Hello everyone, this month, we have three inspirational posts from our Guest Design Team member Carole Cann. Carole has created a beautiful card for her first post using a mixture of poppy stamps, (my favourite flower), and here is what she has to say:

Hello everyone,

I am delighted to be doing another series of projects for the Guest Design Team post this month.
My Pretty Poppies card was inspired by one I received many years ago with this colour combination.
Red and gold with brown are not colours I would normally use. Not the brown, anyway! But it works.
When I used these lovely poppy stamps I realized they would be perfect for a design I had in mind. So here it is.

I stamped the corners with Versamark and embossed them onto a piece of card 12.5 cms x 14.5 cms, (5 inches x 5 3/4 inches), leaving a gap between, to put the central poppy panel over.
This has been given an edging with a gold gel pen and mounted onto red card.
The poppy is embossed with the same gold, then coloured with red and green pearlescent paint, which gives it a lovely shimmer.
I used tiny sequin waste and a gold inkpad to make a slight pattern around the poppies. I trimmed the panel to size and mounted it onto gold card.
I then added glazing with Glossy Accents.
The photo does not do the embossing powder justice, as it has a lovely delicate glint to it.
The Best Wishes has been stamped with Versafine Onyx Black ink and clear embossed.
I am going to try and make more cards with similar colours as I think they would be great for Golden or Ruby Wedding Anniversary cards.

Stamps used: Pretty Poppies
Poppy Meadow- corners
Loving Sentiments- words
Versamark inkpad
Versafine Onyx Black inkpad
Jeweled gold embossing powder
Clear embossing powder
Brown, red and gold card
Pearlescent paints
Glossy Accents
Tiny sequin waste strip
Gold inkpad

Thank you for looking and see you next week with another project.

Happy crafting, Carole.