Rose and Thistle

There are new stamps over at Chocolate Baroque, including a lovely Rose and Thistle stamp with some very pretty images. There are also some really gorgeous new heart stamps the range of clear stamps. These are available as singles or a multibuy.

I have posted some of the results of my playing with these stamps already over at the DT blog here and here. Here are a couple more of my cards.

I couldn't resist a Scottish themed card, using some tartan paper that had been in my stash for ages. I was inspired by the tradional brooches that have a silver and amethyst mount. I used a metallic green EP and glazed the thistle heads. The sentiment is from the Pretty Poppies set.

I wanted to make a simple, but elegant card using the Baroque Heart that could be used for a wedding congratutions card or even an invitation design.

I embossed in Brass WOW powder and then cut out the image and puffed it out with a paper stump. The sentiment is from the Journal Today plate.

More lovely stamps to come from Chocolate Baroque very soon!

Hope you are keeping safe and sound in this chilly weather. We were snowed in on Friday, but all is thawing nicely at the moment here.


Elaine

Y and Z tags - the challenge had finished!

Well, each month over the last year I have posted my tags for the A - Z tag swap we have been doing over at the Chocolate Baroque forum. It has been quite a struggle to get them done, but I am finally there, along with about 28 others in the group.

Here is my Y tag:

My theme was a Year of Tags. Now I love these weeny little tags, so what I did was colour 26 of the little things with different colour DIs. Then I overstamped with a flourish stamp using DIs again. I cheated rather with the letters and actually used peel offs. These are a rather nice art deco style, so I hope they don't look too tacky, well only in the adhesive sense! I then fixed them all on using metallic brads.

This is my Z tag.

 

My theme is Zentangle and I used the Tangled Garden set of Chocolate Baroque stamps.

I stamped the flowers in black archival ink and then infilled masking leaves from the set, adding that stamping in grey. I added highlights to the design using a red Promarker and then added various gems and some glazing and little blobs of black pva to add some texture to the flower centres.

Well, I am glad I took part, but I am opting out of challenges for a while to give me time to play as I mentioned in my last post. If I get myself organised I will try and work out how to do a mosaic of all my tags as I would like to see them side by side.

Hope wherever you are the wintery weather isn't disrupting your life too much. I am hoping to get up to the craft show at Sandown Park on Thursday, so I am really hoping that the weather doesn't put a stop to those plans.

Keep warm and cosy!

Elaine

Happy New Year - better late than never?!

Goodness me, the new year is already whizzing ahead. Happy new year to you all.

I had a really long and much needed Christmas break from work and one of the things I gave myself permission to do was to not feel any pressure to do things to a deadline! I also put away my crafty things while I had my Mum visiting for Christmas itself, so I am just getting back into the groove really. As a result today's cards are actually older examples that I don't think I have posted before!

Now like many of us, I am a real fan of Graphic 45 products. I love the busy vintage feel of many of their product lines with rich colours and loads of detail. This is a birthday card I made for my special crafty friend Judith last year. The only inking is a little shading at the edges and the sentiment which is an art deco stamp from Do Crafts.

I am always a bit sceptical about the idea of identifying a word to help guide you for the year as it seems a bit of an artificial exercise in some ways, but actually a word did come to me that I think will help guide me this year and that is SPACE. Space is important to me, both in terms of the outside and inside spaces where I live (where I need to create more space by better organisation), my crafting space, in terms of my physical crafting spaces, time to give me space to be creative without always working for deadlines and mental space to play and mental space to generally enjoy life at a slightly more sensible pace. So this year is about tackling and creating spaces in all sorts of different ways!

Right, time to dash for work, have a good day!

Elaine