Enjoy the season of Mellow Fruitfulness with our latest Autumnal stamps

With November just around the corner it is good to see that we are hanging on to the last vestiges of Autumn. Some trees are already completely bare, whilst others are still sporting leaves in a myriad shades of rusts, browns, yellows and oranges. Seeing such rich colours always inspires me to get out my pencils and paints to try and capture the true essence of nature. And this month we have two new A5 stamp sets that I hope will give your mojo a seasonal flavour.

The first set, which is also our Stamp of the Month, is Mellow Fruitfulness

and the second new set is Autumn Edges, a welcome addition to the Edges series

Both these sets of stamps will work for so many styles of projects and a variety of occasions and are at in introductory price until the end of November.

Here are a couple of ideas from the Design Team Girls to set your creativity in motion. If you are giving handmade presents for Christmas how about something like this beautifully decorated box by Florence

 or why not cheer up a friend with these colourful apples from Asha

This is just a small taster of the treats we have in store for you during the coming weeks. And if you purchase these, or any of our other stamps, why not let your glorious artwork inspire others by sharing it on our Chocolate Baroque Facebook group. We would love to see what you do.

Guest Post - Decorated pen holder by Angela Drummond

This is the last week for our Guest blogger Angela and she is going out in style with a wonderful project using the Autumn Poppy stamp set.

• I made the sketch pen holder using a cutting file I found on the Silhouette site but felt it was a little too plain, so I set about decorating it with the stamp set. 
• I stamped the 2 toadstools first and then made a mask for them with a post it note and stamped the other 2 sets of toadstools either side with the mask in place.
• Next I coloured all the images using coloured pencils, then cut them out and stuck them on the side of the box using a wet adhesive.
• I cut the fairy using my new toy (Silhouette Cameo) and finally added some die cut leaves to give extra dimension to the project.

If you don't own a Silhouette, then you could adapt this project to use with an MDF pencil box.

Crafty Hugs

Angela

Well done with all that cutting out Angela and a big thank you from us for your gorgeous contributions to the Design Team blog. I hope you have enjoyed Angela's unusual projects and don't forget to visit her blog A Crafty Blether, to see what else she has been getting up to.

Autumn colours; my favourites (by Maria)

Hey everyone, do you feel Autumn too? Yes we can't deny Winter is coming closer, but first we can enjoy those wonderful Autumn colours.
As you can see I made two cards with the fantastic Autumn colours for you, I hope you like them!

These cards I made with my favourite dylusions inks (yes again!) To create the background I took some smooth white paper and sprayed some water on it. I took some yellow ink and sprayed it in the middle, then some orange which I tried to spray just under my yellow then I took some red and sprayed around the corners with it. I stamped the flower in the middle of the card. I took a very small brush and some bleach to remove the colour from the leaves. I dried the paper with my heat tool. On another piece of white paper, I sprayed some dark orange and some red, and let it dry. Here I've stamped the flower a second time, cut it out and placed it on the original image, so that I get a beautiful red poppy, the butterflies I did in the same way but instead of red I used some blue ink. The lighter blue I created by using a white gelly pen.

This one was very fun to create! My background was created with one of the leaves of the Autumn Poppy stamp set. I used some watercolour pens in Autumn colours and used them as ink for my background.  I inked my stamps with the watercolour pens, and stamped a lot of images.  I then sprayed a tiny bit of water all over the card so that the colours of the leaves ran into each other.  I stamped the fantastic  pumpkin plant three times by using the masking technique. On another page I sprayed some dylusions inks (oranges, yellows, and red ), sprayed some water on it and let the colours run into each other.  I stamped the Pumpkins three times again on this coloured paper, then of course I had to cut out all of the pumpkins and stick them on onto the card. It was a big job, but I think the result looks fantastic, doesn't it?

I hope I have inspired you and have a lot of fun with this fantastic Autumn Poppy stamp set!

Have  a great Autumn time!
Maria

Stamping on acrylic blocks (posted by Claire)

Good morning, Claire here with some samples made by stamping on some acrylic blocks. Its always fun to find a new surface to stamp on and acrylic blocks are cheap and make lovely paper weights and home decor projects. There's a great range of sizes at Chocolate Baroque, you can find them here.

I had so much fun experimenting with different products and some worked better than others so I thought I'd share some of my projects which were made using the beautiful new stamps Poppy Edges

The first acrylic block was  made using the lovely seed heads stamp. I gave my acrylic block a good dusting with an antistatic bag and stamped the image with gilding glue. I left the glue to set for a few minutes before applying the gilding flakes and then painted with Twinklin H20 paints mixed with a little gloss gel medium. The gel medium helps the water based paints adhere to the acrylic . Here's a pic of the painted image. I then tried using gilding wax around the edge of the block, I wasn't sure if this would work but after leaving it to dry for a few hours it polished off beautifully and gives the acrylic block a lovely edge.

This acrylic block wasn't so successful. I stamped the image with Black stazon and very carefully coloured with Graph'It markers. It looks quite pretty against the white card but I decided I wanted to make the image stand out a bit more so I painted the back with gesso and got in a dreaful mess lol. Lesson learned, next time i'll leave it much longer to dry 

If you have a go at stamping on your acrylic blocks instead of with them, we'd love to see your projects. Thanks for visiting today

Claire xx

Book of Spells - By Florence

Hi everyone

 

I hope you are all enjoying the weekend.

I am back again today to share two more cards made with the fabulous Book of Spells Rubber Stamp Set.  The new stamps have been an absolute delight to work with and I have had a lot of fun with them as I am sure you are all going to.

Both of these cards are really quick and easy to make. 

 

I took a piece of orange card, embossed it and then rubbed over it with some Black Distress Ink using a piece of Cut'n'Dry to give it a bit of a gothic touch.

I used one of my own backing cards for this project because it reminded me of damp mold, slime and things lurking in the night and thought it would go great with the Cob Webs and Spider images.

Using Black Archival Ink, I stamped the Cob Webs around the outside edge of the card and then stamped the Spiders.  To get the longer threads, I turned the stamp upside down and repeat stamped the image, placing a piece of scrap paper as a mask so that the body didn't stamp onto my backing paper.

I made up the card as seen just adding a little Book of Spells tag embellishment.

 

I made my second card in exactly the same way as the one above.

 

 

 

For this card I was thinking blood stains, dragon fang soup and green fluffy monsters!!

I stamped the Cob Webs and the Witches Pot onto my background paper to make the main focal piece.

I then stamped the pot again onto white copier paper, cut out just the bubbles and the steam/smoke and attached it to the main piece with glue.

I made up the card as seen using some green fluffy mulberry paper.

Hubble Bubble!

Thank you for looking.

Florence x

Moonlit Fairies by (Debbie)

 

I hope it's a good weekend for all and the thought of an extra hours crafting can only be good,

( the clocks go back tonight).

 

 

I usually start with white card but for this one I wanted to create a feeling of a magical night scene.

I cut the black card to A5 size and stamped the branches around the edges

with Versamark ink and white embossing powder.

The leaves were coloured with H20s of various Autumnal colours and then the centre was cut out.

I stamped the mushrooms from Autumn Poppy stamps and again coloured with H2Os.

The moon was made by cutting a circle out of a piece of paper and I pressed Versamark ink through the template. Next, white mica powder was rubber over with a soft brush.

The Fairies were stamped onto a separate piece of white card and embossed

with WOW powders then cut out.

When the fairies were added to the back I attached the leaf frame to the front.

 

 

 

A Halloween card that combines a stamp from Autumn Poppy and the falling down building from Things that go Bump.

 

Thanks for stopping by

Debbie

 

Thank You by Doreen

Hello to you all, I am sharing a sample made from the new stamps that have just been released for October

 This is one of the stamps from the Poppy Edges stamp sheet.

I started by inking up a piece of white card with Broken China Distress ink,then stamped and clear embossed the moths and Thank You sentiment. 

On another piece of card I stamped and clear embossed the image and coloured in with again with Broken China Distress inks. A very quick and simple card.xxx

Spooky Nights (by Asha)

Good morning, everyone. Halloween is just a week away and what better time to share with you a couple of spooky makes featuring stamps from the new Things That Go Bump A5 sheet. Both cards are quick and easy projects with heat embossing and Distress Inks.


I heat embossed the spooky tree from Things That Go Bump with black EP and created the background by blending Distress Inks. Next I stamped a greeting from the Spookylicious A5 sheet and added a few purple rhinestones. The mushrooms in the foreground are from Things That Go Bump. To finish, I added a little colour to the caps to make them pop.  That's it!

My second project is an easel card showcasing the haunted castle from Things That Go Bump and the pumpkin from Halloween Edges. Both have been heat embossed with black EP. As before, I inked up the background with Distress Inks. To finish, I stitched the sentiment which was stamped onto a strip of vellum. Another super simple card done.

I hope these cards ideas will help you with your last minute Halloween cards. I'll post details of the products used on my blog. In the meantime, make sure you drop by the Design Team blog regularly for more wonderful creations by my team-mates... and yes, they are spine-chillingly good!

Beijinhos,
Asha

Guest Post - Zentangle Autumn by Angela Drummond

Today sees Angela's second guest post using the Autumn Poppy stamp set and this week she has treated us to something very special. For all of you who love Zentangling I just know you will adore this beautiful card.

I stamped the image with Archival black ink and then sat and tangled the open spaces.TIP: It's up to you how complicated you want your tangles to be, but it is best to keep it simpler in the smaller areas otherwise you will lose both the Zentangle pattern and the stamped image.

I cut the image out and matted on black card. I then cut a piece of white card to fit my card base, stamped the edge with black ink and then embossed it with clear embossing powder (this helps if you get extra spots as you don't see them).

To finish I matted and layered the pieces and used mounting foam to give more dimension to the main image.

Hope you like it
Crafty Hugs
Angela

We more than like it Angela, this is a really creative way to use the stamp, thank you so much for the inspiration. And if you have been inspired by Angela's art please leave a comment and also why not pay a visit to her blog A Crafty Blether