Alpha tags H and I

Well it's that time again when the tags for the Chocolate Baroque Guild Alpha Tags swap arrive through our letterboxes. Today I received lovely tags from Paula and Rebecca, Here are the two I made, I know I has ended up with Joyce, but I don't know yet where H has landed! It is always nice to know where our painstaking work finds a home.

My H tag is for home. This was a bit of a cheat really as it repeats the design I did for a card a while back. However, the size was perfect and I enjoyed making it as much second time round as the first time!  I used Eclipse tape cut into segments to ink and shade the sunburst in dye inks. I stamped cottages, trees and bushes from the Chocolate Baroque Home Sweet Home set and shaded them with Promarkers. I cut all these out and decoupaged onto the background.

My I tag used the main iris image from the Elegant Iris set fromChocolate Baroque.

I coloured the iris image with Promarkers and added shading with Coloursoft pencils. I used a Versamark pen to add clear embossing over the coloured image and then added ink shading using Parchment ecogreen dye ink over the whole background and shaded the edges with Victorian Velvet and Purple Concord Distress Inks. I think I added the tiniest hint of Eggplant Adirondack around the very edges. It is one of my favourite colours for adding depth to shading.

These two came together quite well. I suspect the next two will be a rush though as I have stacks of crafting projects in the pipeline at the moment and lots of deadlines.

Thanks for looking in

Elaine

Lace Fragments Heart Frame

As soon as I saw these lovely new lace stamps from Chocolate Baroque I knew I wanted to try embossing with them.

I picked out two elements that included a heart, the strip and a heart cut out of one of the other stamps and heat embossed them in gold onto blue card. I picked out elements of the hearts in red H2O paint, before cutting all the elements out and assembling the frame using the larger hearts as corners and backing it onto maroon card. I die cut a heart in blue and embossed some appropriate words from the Artistic Expressions plate. 

To finish the panel, I die cut loads of the fine Memory Box scroll die and stuck them carefully around the panel using a pin to apply the pva to the flourishes. I finished the panel with small brass butterflies which were dismantled ear-rings from Primark again!

Do pop over to the Design Team blog for the next couple of weeks where there are loads of lovely designs coming through to inspire you with these stamps.

Elaine

New stamps from Chocolate Baroque

Hope you have had a great weekend.

Just a quick post to say there are lovely new stamps just released by Chocolate Baroque. This is an A5 set Haberdashery - you can find it here.

This is the gorgeous Lace Fragments that you can find here.

There are also some lovely new digital downloads to complement these designs, see them here.

Pop over to the design team blog to see some great samples made with these new stamps. While you are there leave a comment on this post  before 27th April and you will be in with a chance of winning a set of these lovely stamps. EDIT - your comments need to be made on the DT blog on the post link I have given above not here, so I have disabled comments on this post.

I will be back later in the week with one of my projects with the new stamps.

Elaine x

Birch trees

It is a gloomy old day again today. Real April showers at the moment. Here is a megaquick card I made this week, using a mask I bought at the weekend when I went to my favourite show at Ally Pally. I had a wonderful time doing some serious shopping of stamps, inks, card, gorgeous 12 x 12 papers, tape, glue, etc, etc. Most importantly, it gave me the chance to catch up with some special crafting friends.

For this card, I sponged Stone Paris Trunk ink through the mask and added the highlights on the trees with black brilliance inks. The sentiment (which is actually silver) is from Craftwork Cards.

To finish on a brighter note, here are a couple of pics I took at the weekend when the sun was shining through rose leaves near my front door. They looked so lovely I had to grab the camera.

Have a lovely day whatever you are doing.

Elaine x

An engagement card

I seem to struggle to keep up with blogging these days. Here is a simple engagement card I made recently for our niece.

It's another 8 x 8 card. I used the Indigo Blu Love Is stamp for the main image, embossed in silver detail powder and matted onto silver and grey, with a nice swirly backing paper, some ribbon and a couple of tiny heart charms. Seems pretty basic, but like many simple designs it took a while to get it the way I wanted it!

Spring is springing nicely here, although today has been wet and grey. It's nice to see some lovely spring blooms along the way, like the first flowers on a camelia that was a gift last year when we tortoise sat for a friend. 

These flowers are my favourite delicate white daffodils. I think this variety is called Thalia.

Hope you have all had a good Easter break and lots of chocolately treats!

Elaine x