Bright and Cheerful Flower (by Christine)

Hello everyone, today sees the first of three posts this month by our Guest Design Team member Christine Patch. She has created a colourful card to inspire you.

Christine writes:

May I start off by wishing you a very Happy New Year - let's keep our fingers crossed that it will be a considerable improvement on the year just finished, even if it might take a bit of time!

I decided to kick off my turn on the Blog with a very bright and cheerful design to be added to my journal.

I chose one of the designer papers and added some additional stamping to give it more detail. I used a Versafine Clair in a toning purple to add some butterflies and hatching.

Having picked one of the lovely postcards for a mat, the lovely large flower stamp allowed me to choose strong bright colours as decoration. I decided on Memento Tuxedo Black ink as I wanted to use Alcohol Pens for the colouring. I stamped two of the butterflies on white card and one on the same postcard for a point of difference. Glossy Accents added dimension to the bodies.

I found a wooden button in my stash that was the perfect colour and added that as an embellishment to the flower centre. I used the same flower stamp to edge the postcard and then the designer paper to bring it all together. Finally, I added a sentiment that I think is so pertinent to us all: Live life to your own design. 

Chocolate Baroque products used:

Designer Papers 8" x 8" - Chic Script                

Seriously Gorgeous A6 Postcards

Flower stamp taken from Tangled Garden stamp set

Open Weave cling mounted stamp

Just Butterflies stamp set

Sentiment taken from Freesia Blueprint stamp set 

Happy Crafting!

Christine

xx

Feathers and Flowers (by Miranda)

Hi there,

Today my last post for July....but I will be doing more posts in August, yeah!

I have used the next stamp sets:

I shall be your wings rubber stamp sheet A5

Artist Baubles rubber stamp sheet A4

Floral Notes rubber stamp sheet A5

Make your mark rubber stamp sheet DL

Artistic Expressions rubber stamp sheet A4

Tangled Garden rubber stamp sheet A4 (only for the small circle between the feathers)

And here the full card......lots of layers......I used many stamp sets but that was not my intention when I started......The idea was only to use the center bauble and the feathers......but along the way I could not stop LOL. Do you recognize that?

It can also turn out to be too much and overdone......but okay it became an abundant party of colour and shapes....

The background was done using distress inks on an acrylic bloc. Then I stamped the bauble using black Versafine. On the left side I stamped the similar flowers from the Floral Notes using Memento Tangelo. On the edges I used a fragment of the 'make your mark' sheet. I embossed all the feathers using Wow gold embossing. Colored them and decoupaged them. Yes, that is a lot of work but worth the effort I think.

I masked the bauble and stamped some feathers onto the background too.

And of course I did some pencil coloring too on the bauble.....

To 'hold' the feathers together I have used the flower center of the tangled flower from the Tangled Garden sheet. But of course you can use other small stamps for that too.

And finally I embossed the dots and circles from the ' make your mark' set.

The word 'Love' is from the Artistic Expressions sheet.

Hope you like my abundant mood today,

have a crafty and lovely day,

Give me Wings by Brenda

Morning Peeps, Brenda here with more Sewing Room shares as well as one using the most beautiful Folk Art Garden stamp which Lesley launched on Hochands last month.

My card at the top surprised even me as Steampunk is right outside my comfort zone so when I found myself adding wings to the dressmakers form I was a tad surprised but somehow it seemed to work. I built up the background with Distress Inks and created the circles with lids from embossing powder pots dipping them into inkpads and using them to 'stamp' the circles. I also stamped the lacy edge randomly in blue over the background using third generation stamping to obtain a faded look. The stamping the dressmakers form from The Sewing Room and cutting out and placing over two wings stamped, coloured and cut from Tangled Garden. I added a little chain and buckle and linked to a flower from Floral Mannequins and added a pair of scissors from Haberdashery. Finally some lace ruched up across the top

A little inky indulgence here starting with a Brusho background onto which I stamped Folk Art Garden using Versafine black and heat embossed with detail clear powder and then bleached out some of the colour to add highlights. I tore the edges of the card to give a white edge and added some micro beads along the bottom although they do not show up too well on the photo and then mounted onto a piece of corrugated.

For this one I stamped onto four equal sizes pieces of patterned papers using two dress forms from Floral Mannequins and one  from Haberdashery along with the fancy scissors, mounted them onto a darker piece of paper from the same family and a landscape card and embellished with a die cut leaf and flower.

My appreciation as always for your visit to the Design Team blog today and your kind words of appreciation.

Let the Adventure Begin by Brenda

Morning all, Brenda here with my last post for November featuring lots of lovely Butterfly stamps.

For the card above I used one of the images from Butterfly Daisy Collage, stamping with Versafine black onto a Distress Ink background, quickly created by randomly brushing three different colours. The harlequins on the background layer are from Decorative Edges and the sentiment from Artistic Affirmations.

A little wall hanging using Briar Rose Butterfly stamped onto a piece of  stamp board which I first coloured with Distress Inks and added some stencilling using Useful Leaves. The image is coloured with Distress Pens and mounted onto a piece of hessian and some beads added to decorate.

I used a rattan heart shape to create this piece stamping images from Butterfly Daisy Collage onto different coloured vellum's using Versafine and detail white embossing powder.  After cutting out I layered the flowers, added a few ready made flowers and leaves from Tangled Garden which are also stamped onto coloured vellum and heat embossed.

This one features Harebell Butterfly stamped onto a background of Distress Ink which then had some of the coloured removed by sponging diluted bleach through a stencil. The image is coloured in with Distress Pens.

Many thanks as always for taking a peek at today's post.

Kissed bubbles by Brenda

Brenda here with my last post for this month using some of the stamps from last months Hochanda shows. 

The top card was really fun to make, I used an acrylic block and Distress Oxides and created the background by using the acrylic block to kiss stamp Square Bubbles which I inked with three different colours, cleaning the stamp between each colour. I then stamped the Fern from Rose Duo using Versafine black and used one of the small sentiments from "I shall be your Wings" to ground the images.

For my next share the background was created with Mica powders, followed by stamping Rose Duo which I then bleached out and coloured in with pencils, then added some texture paste through a stencil and also some Butterflies using Kaleidoscope of Butterflies Mask and DI's.

Finally one from an earlier show using the smaller stamps from Honey Bee and Fragrant Honeysuckle, stamping them onto hexagons cut out with a die and inked with DI's and fixed to a black base card and a few glass beads added.

I hope I have offered some inspiration today and my thanks for your visits.

Spring Garden (by Corine)

Not really sure where the time goes at the moment, I can't believe that it was last year when our guest designer for this month contributed to this blog.  Anyway it is my great pleasure to once again welcome back Corine van Kuilenburgh with the first of her three designs.

 Hello!

Here I am again. In March I will post three times a card as guest designer. I am very pleased to do this. My first project is a card made with a Gelli Plate Background.

I used stamps from the sheets:

Tangled Garden

Briar Rose Butterfly

Harebell Butterfly

• Create a background with the Gelli Plate using acrylic paints. 
• Emboss the big flower from Tangled Garden with embossing powder on the Gelli Plate background. Next stamp the flowers and leaves with Memento Luxe ink and colour the flowers with pencils. Emboss three butterflies on watercolorpaper, colour with markers and then cut out. 
• Mat and layer to a folded card.
• Attach the butterflies to the background as shown.

I hope you like this first project, next week I will bring you another design.

Kind regards,

Corine van Kuilenburg

Really love how the white embossing 'pops' on the vivid green background. Thank you for this beautiful project Corine, we look forward to seeing what you have in store for us next week.

And thank you for reading this post, please come back again to see what else our regular DT girls have lined up for you. 

 

New Year's Eve Butterfly (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I hope that you all had a lovely Christmas and are enjoying a bit of quiet time over the festive break. This year seems to have gone so fast, and has brought many changes, I even made my first tentative steps onto live TV! Whatever you have done and are looking forward to in the months ahead, I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year, and a healthy, creative 2018, from all of us on the Design Team. We are looking forward to sharing lots more inspiration with you next year.

I have some cards to share today using stamps featured in last month's TV shows on Hochanda. To create my first card, I made a background using Brushos, spritzed with water. I wanted to create the effect of a Wintery sky, and so I chose shades of blue, purple and grey for the background. I stamped a large butterfly from the Tangled Garden stamp set onto a piece of sparkly acetate, and stuck this to a piece of coloured background that I had in my scrap box. By chance, this was a very similar colour to my Brusho background. I fussy cut the butterfly out, omitting the antennae.

I stamped the sentiment from the Words of Inspiration stamp set, and an image from the Seasonal Fragments stamp set onto the background using Versamark and silver embossing powder. I added a few sparkly gems randomly throughout the fragment images. Just before I stuck the butterfly to the background, I stamped the antennae onto the background, using black ink.

Here are a couple more of my show projects, a pretty gelli plate card using another image from the Tangled garden stamp set:

A necklace and tag using images from the Bold Blooms and Words of Inspiration stamp sets. I have used shrink plastic to create the necklace:

Finally, a card made using Soft Form Relief Paste to create the focal point, adding gilding wax over the top, to pick out the fabulous detail of the stamp:

Thanks for stopping by,

Dreamcatcher (by Magda)

Some days ago, I was reading about the history and the origin of the dreamcatcher and looking later at the Tangled Garden stamps, I have been inspired to make this card.

As you can probably notice, I always used the opposite Aquarelle colour from the colour wheel both for the flower and the leaves. I like the result of this painting so full of popping up contrasts. Remember to use Archival  or Versafine when you colour images with watercolour.

Thank you for passing by.
Magda

Bold Blooms Wall Art (by Anne)

Good morning. I used the Bold Blooms and Tangled Garden stamp sets to create this 3D wall art piece.

Materials:

• Bold Blooms and Tangled Garden stamp sets
• White Board Shapes – Hearts and Circles sheet, 8 X 8 inch construction acetate (recycled packaging), black card (for decorative die cut frame), mount board (backing and outer frame)
• StazOn Inkpad (Jet Black) and Versamark
• Alcohol ink pens (blues and pinks)
• Gesso (White)
• Acrylic paint (light blue satin and metallic pearl)
• Coloured art pens, glitter and metallic pens (blue & pinks)
• Double sided sticky sheet
• Embossing powder (clear with sparse fine blue glitter), Ultra thick embossing powder (UTEE - plain clear and clear with mica sheen)
• Glitter (extra fine clear and chunky black) and glitter glue (silver)
• Large decorative frame die and texture stencil

How it was made:

1. The flowers were stamped onto the acetate sheet using StazOn Ink. Alcohol ink pens were used to add colouring to the back of the images (StazOn would bleed with alcohol markers). Some areas were left uncoloured. White gesso was then painted onto some areas to make them opaque (alcohol inks are transparent).
2. Double sided sticky sheet was then attached to the back and extra fine clear glitter applied with some chunky black glitter around the edges. A decorative die cut frame was then glued to the front.
3. The shapes were pushed out of the laser cut sheet and the waste was painted with light blue acrylic paint and trimmed around to make an overlay. Images were stamped with StazOn, aligning them carefully with the images on the base acetate sheet. They were coloured with various art pens. Versamark was then applied and a layer of clear embossing powder with fine glitter applied.
4. Some of the circles were stamped and coloured with art pens. Versamark was applied and they were double heat embossed with UTEE (one layer with mica sheen, one plain clear).
5. The embellishments were all glued down with 3D glue gel. Silver glitter glue was added around the border and onto elements of the stamped images.
6. The mount board frame was decorated using pearl blue paint using a texture stencil. The piece was then mounted onto backing board and the outer frame glued in place.

Floral Wreath (by Rachel)

Hello everyone, today we have the final post this month from our Guest Team Design member Rachel Fisher. Rachel has created a floral wreath, using stamps from the Tangled Garden stamp set:

To create her wreath, Rachel used an MDF base, which she coloured with Distress Inks. She then stamped the flower and butterfly images, also colouring those with Distress Inks and adding accents with sparkle pens. She fussy cut the images before attaching them to the wreath. This pretty wreath would make a great piece of home decor all year round.

Thank you Rachel for your beautiful projects this month. Rachel will be back with more designs next year.

Flight of the Butterfly by Brenda

Hello Peeps, are you all ready for Christmas, I do hope so as suddenly it is almost upon us ? 

It's my turn to share some more inspiration from Lesley's November shows on Hochada which was all about beautiful Blooms and Butterflies. For my card at the top I used Distress Inks to create a really intense background as a backdrop to the Butteflies from Tangled Garden. Onto the background I stenciled some leaves from Useful Leaves and a corner flourish using texture paste. After stamping with Versafine Black I cut out the three Butterflies and coloured them with sparkle pens, added wire antenna, fixed onto the base and stamped a sentiment from Words of Inspiration.

This is another of my backgrounds that I referred to earlier this month, again using acrylic paints and crackle glaze. The focal bloom is from Lily Fuchsia and Hyacinth multibuy stamped with Versafine Black and also leaves from he same set.  I added a little colour to the flower with pencils and matted and layered onto coordinating cardstock. If you have time to make up some backgrounds as I do, then it makes it really quick and easy to assemble a card.

More oxide inks this time using offcuts which I always keep as I am quite keen on triptych style cards. Using Versafine Black I stamped three different flowers from Lily Fuchsia and Hyacinth multibuy, coloured with pencils and added some cord and a sentiment from Birthday Words .

I used regular Distress Inks to create the shaded background onto with I stenciled some flourishes and then stamped the bloom from Breath of Spring, coloured in with pencils, added a sentiment from Birthday Words, some stickles and ribbon.

Using the Versafine Black and the corner stamps from Lily Fuchsia and Hyacinth multibuy I created a frame onto a piece of Design Paper. Into that I stamped the Lily from the same set, coloured in with pencils, added a sentiment from Birthday Words and some ribbon to finish.

As we are only days away from 'the' day I would like to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a crafty 2018.

Imagine by Brenda

A very good morning, Brenda here with today's share of more samples from Lesley's recent Hochanda shows which featured he most beautiful floral and Butterfly stamps that were a joy to work with.

My starting place for the above card was a background of Oxide Distress Inks which like so many of us I am totally addicted to. Onto the background I stenciled an arch window using Distress Ink, stamped what is probably my favourite Chocolate Baroque sentiment from the Words of Inspiration stamp sheet using Versafine Toffe and using the same ink stamped a selection of leaves around the edge from the Tangled Garden stamp sheet. The beautiful Butterfly is from the same set stamped onto Bristol cardstock and coloured with distress inks, the same colours as the background but not Oxides as I find the chalky finish can detract from the detail of the image.

For this card I used the blooms from Bold Blooms and leaves from the same set and Tangled Garden, stamping all onto a piece of card coloured with Distress Inks and Pearl Mica Spray, I like to add that to inky backgrounds sometimes as it helps to bleed the colours and also leaves a nice sheen. I used a piece of torn paper to create a sunray effect when I wanted to place the flower which I layered up after cutting our three different sized blooms . I cut he leaves out and arranged onto a hand drawn stem with a little bit of doodling to ass interest. The lovely Wordsworth quote is also from Bold Blooms.

I had an idea to create a shadow box surrounded by Butterfly, so started out with the base made using a die set. I coloured a large sheet of card with Distress Oxides concentrating on keeping within a tonal colour palette of oranges and yellows. Onto that I stamped several Butterflies from Tangled Garden and cut out ready to assemble around the frame. The fairy within the aperture is from June Fairy set and grasses from Silhouette Grasses stamped with Versafine Toffee and a masked and inked background plus a few small stamped Butterflies. Finally I layered the Butterflies around and within the layers of the shadow box.

This one to coin Charlie of Hochanda's words is "heavy on the grunge", I started with acrylic paints and brushed them randomly over a piece of 600gsm Fabriano cardstock, it's so sturdy that it takes water and wet mediums without warping. Next added some texture paste through a stencil to the top corner and applied some gilding polish to lift the pattern. I also added some gold gilding flakes here and there. The Lily is from the Lily Fuchsia and Hyacinth multibuy stamped with versamark and heat embossed with copper detail powder and then colour added using the same acrylic paint as the background, the sentiment is from Birthday Words and finally some lace tied across the bottom.

On the rare occasion I find myself with time on my hands I make up a batch of inky backgrounds as I find it really handy to have some in reserve when I am up against the clock to get sample made. This is one of those using acrylic paints and crackle glaze onto which I randomly stamped a sentiment from Birthday Words and then the focal bloom from Breath of Spring  using Versafine Black and then colourd in with sparkle pens and stickles. The base has been stamped with several of the foliage stamps from the Lily Fuchsia and Hyacinth multibuy.

As always my thanks for taking the time to visit today.