Serenity and Tranquility by Miranda

Hello there,

Today I have made something using two gorgeous sheets; Serenity and Tranquility.

In time when these sheets were launched I was so happy.....finally some beautiful female Buddha stamps! Still find them so beautiful.......

I've made an inky background using Distress inks and stamped (using same colors) fragments of the background stamp; Studded Lattice.

And then some plain black stamping for the focal image......and some cherry blossom branches....

I did colour her using color pencils.

I made a separate border stamping the beautiful Indian designs from the Indian Elephant sheet which matches perfect with the Buddha designs. I am sure you all understand that I have a lot of favorites at CB!

I have blended with Distress inks and colored on the pattern using gorgeous sparkle pens....you can see the effect on the close-ups......isn't it gorgeous? 

I also gave some sparkles to the Buddha........using a transparant sparkle pen.

and the stunning effect of the Signo Ball glitter pens.........

Well, for now this is my last blogpost but I hope to see you again here on the DT blog......

Thanks for all your kind comments and stay creative, 

let's make the world more beautiful with our ART!

Floral Fragrances by Zoe

Good Morning Lovelies and welcome to my first post for this month featuring these absolutely gorgeous Floral stamps.

I hope you managed to catch the Hochanda shows with these lovely stamps on.

So here’s a selection of some of my samples from the show, I hope you like them?

I used a Greyboard tag, I just went straight on with Distress Oxides using a blending tool and a few drips of water to create some texture, I then used one of sentiments and the single rose stamp using grey Oxide inkpad on the background, the rose I stamped using Versafine Black inkpad and heat embossed using a clear EP, I coloured in using sparkle brush pens, a few dots and faux stitching using a white marker, I always edge my Greyboard or MDF using Gilding wax to just finish off nicely.

Very simple this card, I stamped onto my card and coloured in using pencils and stamped the image again onto the backing papers that were on the previous show and fussy cut and decoupaged, I also used the paper to mat and layer.

A set of “not quite” AT Coins, I say “not quite” because I’ve actually used Greyboard circles from the website that come with hearts too.

Thank you so much for visiting today, I love to read what you think of my creations.

Have a wonderful day xx Zoe xx 

Lavender cushion by Brenda

Good morning to you all, Brenda here and I am excited to be sharing my Lavender Cushion which I made using one of the beautiful new fabric panels for the show on Hochanda when Lesley launched them last month, there are six different designs available, you will find the one I used here and the others here.

The fabric has a lovely soft finish but is very sturdy and will take inks, acrylics and various colouring mediums, I used watered down acrylic paint and coffee on mine, the latter because I wanted to give a slightly vintage feel. Firstly I added a watery wash to the areas around the Rose, left it to dry for a few minutes and then coloured in the flower and flourish with the same colours but of a slightly thicker consistency. I added a few highlights to the leaves with a cream acrylic pain, again watering it down a little.

When I was happy with the colouring I stitched it to a piece of cream cotton (inside out) leaving one end open so I could reverse it, filled with Lavender which I had bought in France in the Summer, sewed up the end and then stitched the string pearls all around the front edge to decorate.

These fabric panels offer something really different to expand your crafting and I do hope you will give them a go as they are such fun to work with and make super gifts.

Memory ( By Marga)

Hello hope you have a great day today, it's my birthday today so family time and a new card from me  to show you.

What do you think to the new stamps, aren't they great?

I made the background with Distress Ink and I used the same colours to colour the image. I used Tumbled Glass, Wild Honey and Peeled Paint Distress ink.

I stamped the image after I made the background with Versafine Onyx Black.

By the leaves I used a waterbrush with water to pick up the colour.

The stamp I used is : Floral Perfumery

Hugs 

Marga

January's Blog Comment Winner

Hello everyone, 

We truly appreciate the time you take to let us know your thoughts about our designs, so each and every comment is very important to us.

Each comment in January was assigned a number and we used Random Org to draw a winner.

Congratulations to Tracy Welham, you have won this months £15.00 voucher to spend on Chocolate Baroque stamps. To claim your prize, please email here to confirm your email address and Lesley will send your gift certificate.

Lesley will be giving another £15 gift voucher to another lucky winner drawn from February's comments. The more comments you leave the better your chances of being the winner.

Did you manage to catch Lesley and Judith on Hochanda TV earlier today? Both Lesley and Judith will be back on our screens tomorrow morning at 8:00 am so reserve your seat or set your recorders. If you don't manage to catch their fabulous demonstrations then you can watch back on Catch Up over on the Hochanda website.

Thank you so much for all the kind comments you leave.

Good luck from the Design Team

Cup of Tea Anyone? (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I hope that you are keeping warm, and looking forward to longer, lighter days to come. As you read this post, I will be at Hochanda with Lesley for two days of TV shows, I hope that you will be able to catch the shows, as we have some lovely demos and great products to share with you. The Design Team have made some beautiful samples again this month.

For my post today, I am sharing some projects that I demonstrated on last month's Anniversary show on Hochanda, using the fabric panels. If you caught the shows, you will have seen these samples during the afternoon show. My first project was unfinished at the time, and I have now made it into a useful book cover, and I thought I would share a few photographs with you. Katya is from the set of 3 Ladies fabric panels.

I coloured the fabric panel with tea first of all, dipping the whole thing into a bowl of the warm liquid, and gently squeezing out the liquid, and letting the panel dry. You can decide how dark you want the panel to be, by dipping the panel more than once, or leaving it to soak a bit more.

Once the panel was dry, I coloured the image with Inktense pencils, and blended them with a waterbrush, to give a watercolour effect. The whole effect looks very vintage, which is exactly what I wanted. I like the blotched effect that the tea has given, as if the fabric is old, and has been in storage for a long time.

I created a book cover by adding some felt wadding, and two pieces of contrast fabric to make a 'sandwich', using a journal as my template. I turned the ends in to make the inside flaps, and hand stitched those in place.

I will be able to reuse the cover once I have finished with the journal. The wadding makes the cover feel very luxurious.

My second project is a canvas bag, from the Timeless set of fabric panels, that I showed as a finished example on the show. I had already coloured the Steampunk image with Inktense pencils as before. The panel had been dipped in tea, but I had created a lighter finish, which teamed up with the canvas bag perfectly. I used a blend of pencil colours to create a stone and metallic finish, so easy when you are colouring. I used green, orange and brown for the metal, to give a rust-like appearance.

On the bag itself, I used a couple of stencils, Tando Mini Cogs, and Chocolate Baroque Mask- Kaleidoscope of Butterflies to create a background. I used Inktense pencils, colouring through the stencils, and then used a waterbrush to spread the colour.

I decided to outline the butterflies with a permanent marker for a bit more definition.

I simply hand stitched the panel to the bag, but could just as easily have machine stitched it to the bag. I hope that you have enjoyed my projects, and reading about how I put them together. I will be back later in the month with more projects to share with you, thanks for stopping by.

Judith xx

Timeless Fabric Panel (by Rachel)

Hello there! Rachel here today with a bag I decorated using one on the fabric panels from the January shows. Sadly my samples were still in the post so weren't seen on the show itself....

The fabric panel was a dream to work with - I loved the design and used paints that work on paper and fabric to do my painting. I chose lovely bright colours for the main part of the panel but edged it with grey to tone it down slightly. Next I worked on the main bag fabric and added some of the main colour through a stencil that matched (in my mind at least) the leaves on the fabric panel. Once dry I sewed on the fabric panel and ironed the whole thing to make the paint washable. 

I hope you like this as an idea of how to use one of your fabric panels if you ordered them!

Have a great day!

Hugs

Rachel x

Perfume (by Magda)

Hello
Can you smell the fragrance that comes out of the new Perfume bottles from Chocolate Baroque?

Here are 3 cards I made with these new stamps, that most of you have had the opportunity to see on Hochanda in January.

Eau de Imagination

1. On a white cardstock blend with a blending tool Distress Ink Pad Brushed Corduroy
2. Stamp with Archival Jet Black  the open tailed peacock from Tangled Peacock stamp set as a
    background
3. Stamp on a white cardstock the perfume bottle from Floral Perfumery stamp set and colour it with water
    colour pencil Faber-Castell Art Grip
4. Cut the outline of the image and glue it on the centre of the peacock and Eau de Imagination as
    sentiment.

Butterfly

1. Use a kraft cardstock and stamp on it Butterfly Perfumery stamp with Versafine Vintage Sepia

2. Colour the image with brown pencil and highlight it with white pencil 

3. Stamp and colour in the same way a Butterfly of the same plate Butterfly Perfumery and cut it out

4. Blend with a blending tool Distress Ink Pad Brushed Corduroy on your card

5. Glue with Inkssentials Glue n Seal the craft mat and the butterfly as shown

Folded card

1. On the outside and the inside of the white cardstock card stencil with a pale rose the background

2. Stamp with Archival Jet Black the stamps and the sentiment of Rose Perfumery rubber stamp sheet

3. Colour all the images with Brusho

4. Close your card and wrap it it a nice ribbon.

See you in few days again,  Hugs

Magda

memory......(by Veronica)

A lovely bright morning as I type this - blue skies, sunshine, snow, but minus temperatures outside - just the day for crafting!
Today I have a card to show using the lovely new floral perfumery stamp set , and a technique that I haven't used for a long time, one introduced to me by Doreen Sympson who learned it from Lynnda Worsnop.....
I dusted the stamp with brusho powders, then covered it with pva glue and left it to dry.....I used far too much brusho the first time, so scrapped that
I had used the stamp normally several times before deciding to have another go, and just covered the stamp with the pva this time, intending to colour it later. To my surprise this was the result - there was obviously enough brusho left in the crevices to colour the stamp. I do realise I am admitting here that I hadn't                                                                                               cleaned the stamp at all since my first effort, so                                                                                       apologies to all who religiously clean their                                                                                               stamps after every use!
It does take about 24 hours to dry the pva, but it is easy to peel off the stamp then. I trimmed round the image with scissors then glued it onto a square card blank. Sentiment stamped with versamark and gold embossed.
My teamies will be showing you some stunning samples samples over the next few weeks from the new stamps shown on Hochanda last month, so do keep checking for some inspiration!

Owl in Copper by Penny

Good morning peeps, I hope you are all warm and well.  I'm back with my last post for this month and it features the lovely Wise Owl and Fly Away With Me  stamp sets; Copper Soft Form paste, copper embossing powder, Versamark ink, gold gilding wax and a copper marker pen.

On a piece of black card I stamped and embossed several different sized feathers, in a random pattern all over.  I then edged the panel with copper pen.

To create the embellishments I spread Soft Form paste over the owl and feather stamps, left them to dry then peeled them off the stamps.  I added a little gold gilding wax to accentuate the patterns.  I took a piece of spare black card then stamped and embossed the quote in copper.  I then tore around the quote and added gold gilding wax to the rough edges.   

I matted the background panel onto a white base card and attached the embellishments to it.  This is a lovely card to create, and using copper with the black not only looks good but it makes a nice change from gold and silver.


Thank you for dropping in today, I hope you've enjoyed this last post of this month from me.

Until next month then,



                             xx  Penny  xx

Using Scrap Paper as a Focal Point (by Judith)

Hello everyone, I am back with my final projects using the lovely bird stamps featured in last month's TV shows on Hochanda. I have created two cards using scrap pieces of paper as the main feature, to show that sometimes what might be considered as something to throw away, can be made into a great feature for your cards and other projects.

For my first card, I made a background using Distress Oxides in three different colours, and then stamped some foliage from the Nature Swirls stamp set to create a scene using coordinating dye based inks. I stamped and embossed some of the images from Sing Your Song and Live Out Loud, using Versamark and some two tone embossing powders onto scraps of Lesley's My Floral Soul papers. I cut the images out, and added then to the scene. These papers are so lovely, I want to use up every last inch of them!

For my second project, I decided to use the large owl from the Wise Owl stamp set as my focal image.

I had been making some gelli print backgrounds, and had a scrap piece of paper that I had cleaned the brayer with. The multi coloured greens looked lovely, and the paper was too good to waste. I stamped the owl using Versamark, and added two different shades of embossing powder before heat embossing. I then stamped some of the swirls from Let Your Heart Sing and Dawn Chorus, using black ink, and added some flowers from Orchard Design A Tree. I also added the sentiment from the Live Out Loud stamp set.

For the background, I used a gelli print created with green ink and bubble wrap, and stamped some of the feathers from Wise Owl and Dawn Chorus with Versamark, and swirled some mica powder over the top. I added matting layers of black card to complete the project.

Thanks for stopping by, Judith xx

Coining it in With the Birdies (by Zoe)

Good morning Lovelies, I'm back with my final post for this month featuring these wonderful bird themed stamp sets. I've created something a little different for me this time! AT Coins (Artist Trading Coins), they are becoming very popular and are quick and easy, not to mention "fun" to make.

I have loads of backgrounds in my stash that I've creared with my Gel Press, these ones in particular I created using Alcohol inks and chalk paints, such a vibrant and different effect I think? Anyway I simply heat embossed my birds, added some faux stitching and little stars using gel pens and a little Gilding wax around the edges, and Voila.

Another Gel Press background, heat embossed image and whiteboard circles which I matched up the colours using Distress Oxides.

Watercolour card and inks on the Gel Press for this background, I highlighted the sun with a sparkle brush pen.

Finally my last two are also Gel Press prints using pastel chalk paints and bubble wrap.

Thank you so much for your coments. See ya next month!
Have a wonderful day xx Zoe xx

Lots of white.......by Miranda

Hi there,

Today my 3rd guest designers post and this time I used a lot of white.....or better to say....I did not fill a lot of the white paper........and that is hard for me LOL.......

But I always like the effect and I wonder why I don't make that kind of cards more often. 

I have used several sheets: Pretty Poppies, Fresh Blooms and Bold Blooms, Lace Fragments and the sentiment from the Floral Notes.

I have stamped the poppies using white ink onto smooth black cardstock and colored them with color pencils. I have embossed the elements of the Fresh and Bold blooms with black and colored them with water based markers. 

Some white acrylic marker accents as usual and than decoupaged them. I always colour the edges of the decoupaged elements with a marker so you can't see the white of the paper.

The lovely lace border and text is stamped using black Versaclair.

I had a tiny colored piece left over so I made an xtra small card........using another beautiful lace border( from the Lace fragments) and the words are from the ' Words of Gratitude' sheet. The small flower is from the ' Dusky Damask' sheet. Only adding some pearls and this card was finished.......

Hope you did like my ' white space' cards and thanks for your visit and comments!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask,

I will have another post coming in the first week of February, so

see you then!

Doves of Peace by Brenda

Good morning, Brenda here with my last post of January sharing some more Bird inspired creations.

My first has some reverse stamping using the graceful Dove from Fly away with me. I used an Oxide ink background and my starting point was to stamp the image onto acetate (ensuring the Dove is facing into the centre) using Versafine black and then carefully lay a piece of cardstock over the top and gently rub over the image to ensure the ink all transferred. Next take a careful look at the image to see where you need to stamp the reverse image and I always use grey as the reverse stamping will always be a little lighter. I'm sure many of you are old hands at this but anyone new to this I'm always happy to help, just mail me. Finally a sentiment from Sing your song

I've used Let your heart sing again for this one stamped into a masked oval which I inked with Distress Inks and a masked sun and stamped with the oval mask still in place using Versafine black. After removing the mask I stamped the Happy Birthday sentiment.

The background for this one is part of a master board which I find really useful having pre prepared and which I batch make in quieter moments. I added some background interest using the flourishes Fly away with me and Wise owl and stamped one of the birds from Dawn Chorus and a computer generated sentiment.

Thank you for your visit today.

Let your Heart sing ( By Marga)

Hello everyone, Marga here again with another card

This time I used Distress Oxide Ink and Green Archival Ink to make this card. The image is so lovely that you don't need anything more.

Stamp I used : Sing Your Song

Hugs Marga

Just a Note (by Doreen)

Hello everyone, today sees the last post of this month from our Guest Team Design member Doreen. She has created a Spring time project for your inspiration.

Doreen writes:

At the weekend I noticed quite a few daffodils dotted around and about, which made me think of my Stepfather who loved Spring firstly with the snowdrops.....then the daffodils and of course followed by the beautiful bluebells. It just made me feel as if it is all a bit premature this year, probably something to do with the mild weather we have been experiencing, although the weather man says it's all about to change to a far chillier week ahead.

Products used in this project:

Stamp set: Snowdrop Script 
Luxury Smooth Ivory Paper
Versafine Onyx Black inkpad
Inktense or watercolour pencils.... Koh-I-Noor are another favoured choice of mine.
Pearlised card from stash

With this post I have simply stamped, roughly coloured with Inktense pencils although any watercolour medium would work equally as well.

Activate the pencils with either water or a clear sparkle pen, I have chosen water for a simple effect.

When dry, mount onto a pearlised card then position to suit your preference.

Thank you for looking and leaving your comments,

love Doreen

makes scents....(by Veronica)

For my last post this month I have another card, this time using the main image from rose perfumery and the sentiment from floral perfumery.
The main image was stamped onto white card and coloured with watercolour pencils, mounted onto a white card blank with a matt of dull gold card. The sentiment was stamped in versamark onto a spare piece of card and gold embossed before cutting out using a small heartshaped die and then roughly embossing the edges.