Nature's Beauty - an ATC swap

One of the blogs that I really enjoy following is that of Diana over at The Velvet Moth. Diana makes the most exquisite pieces of art, often incorporating textiles and beads and of course often velvet!!! A while back Diana put out a call for anyone interested in doing an ATC swap. I was rather behind everyone else by the time I replied, but Diana and I did make contact and agreed we would do a one to one swap.

I have had a very busy time over the last few months with family commitments taking up a lot of time and although I have been doing various knitting and crochet projects, plus had a much needed and special holiday, apart from some essential card making, I have not been keeping up with my papercrafting and mixed media projects. So making contact with Diana and agreeing to do this swap, gave me a much needed incentive to get myself organised and plan something a bit more creative and demanding on my creativity.

Diana was ahead of me and her beautiful Moonlit Garden ATC, decorated box and tag arrived while my project was still pretty much in the planning stages!  Diana's project incorporates die cuts, lace, velvet, beads, gold embossing and script. For more information about Diana's design pop over to her blog where she has also posted about our swap.

Not surprisingly, I had also planned a nature themed project as the natural world provides a great deal of inspiration to both of us. The title for my project - Nature's Beauty only came when I was nearing completion of the project.

My first step was to take a sheet of A4 white card and cover it with my leafy background technique (see my labels on the right for other posts about how I do this), using Distress Inks. I cut out the ATC panel and I then added stamping with the little ferns with first and second generation stamping and a little stencilling, before adding the heat embossed tree die cuts and the little ferny butterfly which must be one of my most used stamps. I shaded the edge of the panel to give a glowing light to the centre, as I wanted it to look like a woodland glade. The final touch was the word "Beauty".

Diana had made a lovely little box to hold her ATC so I thought about what I could do as an alternative.

I used the beautiful Crealie labels dies that I had a feeling Diana would like and cut two out of the leafy backgrounds and two out of toning green card for the insides. I stuck them together back to back and joined them at the bottom.

These are decorated again with die cuts decorated with Treasure Gold gilding wax, some tiny micro beads on the hollyhock flowers and butterflies stamped with the script stamp in the beautiful Delicata Gold ink which I had never heard of until another of my special crafty friends gifted it to me. The insides are stamped with dye inks. I made a matching small tag and finished that off with some leafy ribbon that has been in my stash almost since I started crafting, so it was nice to find a use for it.

To hold the ATC, I wanted something to hold it in place vertically so had a play with some scrap card and managed a little paper engineering to invent what I needed!

I absolutely loved doing this swap with someone so talented who likes the same sorts of motifs and themes as I do. I have been struggling to get inspired and motivated and working on this little miniature gift has got me kickstarted again I think, so thank you Diana and for the beautiful Moonlit Garden ATC, box and tag you sent to me!

My project used the following supplies:
Dies - Impression Obsession - Hollyhock; Craft Emotions Hogweed; Tim Holtz - Wildflowers; Memory Box - Darla Butterfly; Sizzix Framelits Tags Rounded; Taylored Expressions - Birch Trees; Crealies Extreme Labels; Stampin Up butterfly punches; Tim Holtz Bigz tag die

Stamps - Inkadinkado - Meadow; Darkroom Door - Artist; Crafty Individuals - CI207/231/021; Woodware script; Chocolate Baroque - Poppy Meadow

Inks and sundries - Distress Inks - Vintage Photo, Peeled Paint, Squeezed Lemonade & Twisted Citron; Stampin Up dye inks - Crumb Cake & Chocolate Chip; Ranger Archival Olive; Delicata Gold & Versamark. Treasure Gold in Florentine Gold, Oxynite and Green Amber. Embossing Powder in Copper and Gold. Dark Green micro beads.

Happy Easter

I hope you are all enjoying a pleasant long weekend. We haven't seen a lot of the sun yet, but I think the weekend is set to improve!

I made a couple of quick Easter cards this week for our Mums. I took the easy route and went for pretty much identical designs.

I started with a Bo Bunny 6 x 6 paper which naturally split into an upper and lower area, just right for a landscape design I thought. I wanted to give these little rabbit dies an outing. They are a set of Signature dies from Joanna Sheen and have a quirky charm. This is the first time I used them. I added some grass cut with a Poppy Stamps die and some butterflies punched with a Martha Stewart punch.

I added the sentiment using a Chocolate Baroque stamps and then decided the upper right corner looked a bit bare, so after some thought, I incorporated a Memory Box leaf die cut and some mulberry paper daisies.

These were rather quick cards, but I am fairly pleased with the results.

I hope you have some self indulgent treats for Easter. I am trying to be good having had an enforced low fat diet for some time. I can afford to be a little more flexible now, but I know if I am too naughty I will put all the weight back on that I needed to lose, so a few treats in moderation is my plan!

Enjoy yourselves

Elaine x

Steampunk beetle birthday

You may remember I was lucky enough to win a smashing prize from the Darkroom Door and Art Journey shared blog hop recently. I finally managed to get some ink onto one of the stamps for a birthday card for a 21 year old great nephew (phew does that make me feel old - in numbers if not in my head!). Anyway this is the result of my playing.

I started off ink shading with Mown Lawn, Salty Ocean and Tumbled Glass DIs. I then overstamped with the DD numbers background stamp in black archival ink. I used a sentiment from the very useful DD String Sentiments set on a panel shaded with the same inks which I mounted onto black. I also added some shading around the edge of the numbers panel with Chipped Sapphire DI. I was than a bit stumped as to what to do next.  Cards for men and boys always have me flummoxed! So I decided to go steampunk and used one of my favourite images from the Chocolate Baroque Steampunkery set. This also provided the small words I added. I fussy cut the image and then ink shaded with more DIs before adding some further shading with Prisma pencils in blue and white.  The final touch was a metal clock face from DoCrafts which fitted the design perfectly.

Even my OH liked this one which is very rare and said "oh its steampunk" - you could have knocked me down with one of the beetle's feathers because I didn't even think he knew what steampunk was!!!!

Hope you are all having a super weekend. Yesterday I made the trek up to the Big Stamping and Scrapbooking Show at Ally Pally and spent the day doing some fabulous shopping and catching up with some special friends Judith and Sue in our much needed refreshment breaks! These days always go far too quickly (despite leaving home before 8am and getting home after 8pm) and make me spend too much money, but they are always so enjoyable. I had another crafty friend to travel up with which always help the long journey go more quickly too.

I have to earn my keep today and get on with some housework! My lovely shopping will get unpacked at some point too though!

Whatever you are doing, I hope you enjoy a lovely autumn day.  I leave you with some amazing diamond raindrops on my macleaya plant in the garden that had me rushing into the garden with the camera one morning still in my pjs!

Elaine x

90th birthday card

It is my dear friend Mary's 90th birthday tomorrow and this is the card I made for her.

I was inspired by the sentiment which is one of the fairly new Chocolate Baroque Mackintosh Sentiments which you can find here. I embossed it onto cream using my Wow Brass EP which gives lovely detail.

The background paper is from the Graphic 45 Lady's Diary collection and I added a die cut bow and border using the lovely Sue Wilson Filigree Bows die sets from Creative Expressions. The main decoration is lots of paper flowers and leaves in different shades of peach, beige and cream.

This is quite a different style from most of the cards I make, but I do enjoy keeping my hand in with this kind of composition from time to time.

We delivered the card this afternoon and she opened it straight away, so I know she was very pleased with it.

Hope you are all enjoying the gorgeous spring sunshine, it is certainly lifting my spirits as is the dawn chorus that greets my waking moments each morning at present. Things really feel like they are coming back to life after a pretty rotten winter.

Lets hope the better weather is here to stay now.

Elaine

The end of an era

After a lot of soul searching I have decided the time has come to resign from the Chocolate Baroque Design Team. I have been producing samples to show case the lovely stamps produced by Glenda and Adrian Waterworth for three and a half years. I am allowing myself a little self indulgence with a little retrospective review here of some of my favourites among the samples I have produced during this time.

I recently decided that I want to allow myself more time to experiment with my crafting and learn some new techniques and this has led me to decide it is time to move on from the DT work. My last samples have now been posted for the team.
 

I want to thank Glenda for giving me the chance to be part of a fantastic team of crafters, artisitic spirits who have been a real pleasure to work with and who have taught me so much. Being part of the team has been such a positive reinforcement of my crafting abilities and I can feel the positive impact this has had on my output over this time.

Without wishing to make this sound like an Oscars speech, I want to thank Glenda and Adrian, Lesley, Sue Page - stamp designer extraordinaire and Val who works behind the scenes to make stamps for making this journey possible for me. To the other girls in the team Judith, Miranda, Debbie, Shirley, Claire and Clare - it has been such a pleasure to work with you all and to share life in all its infinite shades within our special little group. You are amazing, generous spirited women and it has been a privilege to share the experience with you all. Also not forgetting past members of the team Lesley, Eileen and Phree,  I really enjoyed working with you all too.

Thanks for all your comments here and on the DT blog on my samples , they have meant so much.

Elaine x

Leafy Butterflies

I love foliage stamps and there are some super images as part of the new Autumn fairy plates. I love any nature themed images and have really enjoyed playing with these.

 

I started by cutting a strip of white card to fit on the left hand side of the card. I chose Two shades of lilac and mauve inks stamping randomly to cover the panel with the umbel image from the September Fairies, firstly in the lighter ink and then overstamping with the darker ink. I then shaded the whole panel with more lilac and pinky inks to build up a depth of colour. The panel was then stuck to the base card and trimmed to size. I added a thin sparkly strip either side of the stamped strip.

I finished by stamping the image directly on to the base card on the right hand side and a sentiment from the Pretty Poppies plate. I love these sentiments and find myself using them often. The finishing touch was to die cut two butterflies from two shades of mauve card with a Memory Box die and position them on the stamped strip.

Thank you for taking the time to leave comments, they are always appreciated.

Elaine x

 

Autumn Leaves

I love working with silhouettes and the new autumn fairies offer plenty of scope for that.

For this card I started ink shading with yellow ink across white card. I then used the Solace stencil and shaded with Spiced Marmalade Distress Distress Ink. At this point it is essential to make sure your background ink is really dry before embossing the fairy image in a plum metallic EP. I then added some darker ink shading at the very edge and to ground the mushrooms! I used pencils to add a little more shading on the fairy wings and stamped the sentiment in Plum Archival ink. To finish I punched little leaves from copper metallic self adhesive paper and mounted the panel on to black card to add a little contrast.

Hope you are enjoying the inspiration the DT have worked on for these lovely new stamps.

Elaine

Autumn Fairy Collection

Today sees the release of the Autumn Fairy Collection from Chocolate Baroque, a real feast of designs on three DL plates.

There is a special offer on these lovely stamps here.

As well as the gorgeous fairies that I will feature later in the month, there are some great foliage stamps in these sets too. I used the rather ferny leaf from the September Fairy plate for this quick card.

 

I stamped the leafy image randomly on a strip of card in three colours of Versafine, Toffee, Spanish Moss and Olympia Green, starting with the lightest colour and finishing with the darkest. When the ink was completely dry, I added some shading in Crushed Olive Distress Ink along the edges. I matted the strip onto yellow and brown card before mounting the panel onto a cream card blank. The final touch was to add some Tim Holtz chit chat word stickers.

I'll be back next week with another design.

Elaine x

For a friend

I used the corners from the Chocolate Baroque Poppy Meadow stamps to inspire this card.

I embossed the corners in silver on the black card and added the sentiment from Pretty Poppies. The heart is from the Rose and Thistle CB set, embossed in a dark red metallic EP on pink pearlescent card and then added colour with H2O paints. I gave the heart some dimension by mounting it on the left over grid from foam dots.

Whatever you are doing I hope you have a good weekend. We have a blessed breeze here on the south coast and what a delight it is! A beach picnic today might be lovely, but everyone else has the same idea on a day like today which may make it less of a tempting idea!

Elaine x

A butterfly card

This is a card I made for a friend recently to let her know I was thinking of her.

 

I actually started off with one of my leafy backgrounds. Then I overstamped with the script stamp from Chocolate Baroque Edwardian Gentleman and the stained glass fragment stamps from CB Steampunk Butterfly.

 

I added a foliage stamps from CB Wild Meadow, coloured with a Distress Marker and the Butterfly from CB Butterfly Dreams. I can't believe this is the first time this butterfly had been inked, it certainly won't be the last! I restamped the butterfly and cut out the wing section so I could colour separately which I did with more ink shading and some coloured pencil highlights with my Prismas. I stamped the semtinent on a die cut - this is from a second hand Stampin' Up set I bought at the recent craft show in Portsmouth. I matted onto black as I like the highlight it adds and finished with some toning gems.

 

I hope you are managing to keep cool. I am loving being outside more and enjoying the early mornings with the sun coming through the leaves is one of the things I like to do when I wander around the garden in my dressing gown - fortunately our postman does not arrive early here! This is one of our hop vines taken on one of my early morning meanders this week.

 

 

It is great to spot any new flowers as they come out, like these amazing lilies which are such a deep colour, even bleached out a little in this picture.

 

 

It is great working in my shed when I get the time with the top of the door open for coolness. The fact it is surrounded by trees for shade is a blessing in this weather. It looks like the wrens are back in residence in my craft shed bird house and I did smile the other day when one nearly took a detour into the shed itself while I was playing the Lark Ascending as I worked.

 

Enjoy the rest of the weekend and have a great week!

 

Elaine x

Flowers for midsummer

There are some gorgeous new flower stamps just released at Chocolate Baroque, Fancy Flowers and Poppy Meadow.

 

 

I have been playing with the Poppy Meadow set, this wedding card uses the lovely art nouveau corners and I have used some stamps from the Words of Wisdom and Fragrant Honeysuckle and Rose Tree sets.  

 

 

All the images are stamped in Versamark and embossed in Brass WOW powder onto a cream card base.  I mounted both my corners onto a large acrylic block and stamped them at the same time to make lining up a little less stressful. I cut out the bees and mounted those on foam pads to add a little dimension.

 

If you want to be in with a chance of winning the new stamps, pop over to the DT blog and leave a comment here.

 

Have a great weekend.

 

Elaine x



Peacock Love

It has been two weeks since I blogged (is this sounding like a confession?! Life is so busy at the moment, especially with the garden, more of that in due course.

Here is another card I made using the lovely Chocolate Baroque Peacock Parade stamps.  

I wanted to use the trio of feathers design to make a simple, but elegant card. The card blank is a gold/beige colour and I embossed directly onto that using Ranger Queen's Gold EP, which is one of my all time favourities. I used the word love from the Artistic Expressions set, currently on sale and so worth getting I use this set so often! I added coloured and heart shaped pearls for highlights and some cream guipre butterflies for a little embellishments. These are cut from some ribbon I bought in the haberdashery department of Liberty in London. Unusually I had my OH and a friend with me, while we were waiting to be served we were observing the wrapping process for the person on front which was getting very elaborate. My OH then proceeded to do a good (quiet, thankfully) impersonation of the scene from Love Actually where Rowan Atkinson is wrapping a gift. Needless to say my friend and I were virtually helpless with laughter by the time we were served. Just looking at that ribbon brings that moment back to mind!

I have been busy in the garden, especially the veg patch where everything is growing fast at last including the weeds. 

 

This is some chard and pak choi for salads and cooking. As you can see there are weeds too, including the one in the middle that is an edible orach which has magenta splashed leaves. I planted it once deliberately and now can't get rid of it, but it is so pretty I hate pulling it up, so it often gets a reprieve!

 



My beloved plume poppies are back in leaf which means I am working on my leafy backgrounds again.

The foxgloves are giving a very welcome splash of brightness and already beginning to drop their fairy bonnets and in the evening the honeysuckle is giving the most heady scent that makes an evening visit to the garden quite intoxicating.

Midsummer is a great time to be enjoying our little patch  of heaven and the sun is out again today, so the weeding in the veg patch is calling me once more.

Elaine x

Peacock Lady

A while back I bought one of the new Andy Skinner Tando masks Baroque. I love the gorgeous faces! I decided to use the peacock feather from the new Chocolate Baroque Peacock Parade stamp set to make her hair.
 

After sponging the face through the mask in Cobalt Blue archival ink, I worked in several shades of  Adirondack and Distress Ink blues and turquoises, to build up colour and depth. I stamped the feather repeatedly to create the impression of hair.

I added some more faint masked patterns on the bottom of the panel, before adding a stamped trio of peacock feathers from the same stamp set and the word Beauty from Artistic Expressions set, I added some shading to the feathers with Prismacolour pencils. Before matting and layering on two colours of blending card, I added a skeleton leaf around two corners of the panel and a little die cut butterfly image.

I hope you are enjoying the warmer weather and sunshine. It has certainly made me feel more energetic which is a good job as the weeds in our garden have gone mad! The little vegetable plants are growing too though, which is always lovely to see.  

Have a great weekend.

Elaine

An Indian Pavillion

There are two new wonderful sets of peacock themed stamps from Chocolate Baroque, Peacock Parade and Tangled Peacock.

 

 

I have been working with Peacock Parade and it's been very enjoyable. Here is one of the designs I came up with.

I started with making my fiery sunset background, using my leafy background technique in a range of yellow, orange, pink and red Adirondack and Distress inks. I added hills (or maybe sand dunes) in Seedless Preserves Distress Ink using torn paper as a mask. I die cut my pavillion using a DoCrafts X cut die, adding the trellis with a Memory Box die mounted behind. I added some gold pearlescent paper in the dome, with detailing using the peacock border stamp from the Peacock Parade set embossed in gold detail powder on black. I embossed the peacock in the same way and added red gems onto the pavillion and peacock. I added the palm tree stamp from a Christmas set Peace on Earth, the birds are from the Landscape Edges set and the sentiment from the Butterfly Dreams set.

Do pop over to the DT blog, linked in my side bar, to see the great work of my DT team mates. There are some great creative ideas coming up.

Elaine

Artist's Baubles

Some more lovely stamps have been released over at Chocolate Baroque - Artist's Baubles.

 

This set brings together some old favourites, reflecting the styles and designs of some major nineteenth century artists including some of my own favourities such as Morris, De Morgan Mackintosh and Klimt. Originally, these stamps were issued as separate sets, but they were such old favourites, they have been remade as a sampler set and are sure to be really popular. I have been having a play with these stamps, while my DT colleagues have been working their magic with Punky Flowers.

 

 

These stamps are great, each with a distinct style of their own. I chose the Mackintosh bauble for this card, embossing in a dark metallic EP, before colouring with Distress Markers and a water brush. To frame the image I cut thin strips of black card which I added to reflect the style of Mackintosh furniture. I added a black ready made sentiment high on the card, again to reflect a feature of Rennie Mackintosh chair designs.

 

I rarely get my Distress markers out, but they worked well on this design and I must resolve to make better use of them.

 

Guess what I spent an hour tidying my craft shed today. I am really determined it is not going to get the better of me again - how long will this new me last I wonder?

 

Hope you all have a great weekend!

 

Elaine x



New stamps and tidy crafting space!

There are new stamps launched this week over at Chocolate Baroque a great set of quirky designs called Punky Flowers.

Head over to the Design Team blog to see some great projects that my team mates have been working their magic on.

I have been really busy with my massive craft shed tidy. Spring finally arriving got me motivated for a very overdue massive tidy. Plus I ordered a new drawer unit to help my organisation. This is it.

It is a Really Useful product and I am delighted with it. I already had one 11 drawer unit which I had put through its paces, so I was confident it was going to work really well for me.

This was my desk when I started this blog in August 2009.

 

It has gone through various changes!

 



This didn't last long - much too cluttered and my working space was too restricted!

 

 

This was another try, but still not right!

 
Below is what it looks like now! My collection of wooden cassette racks for my ink pads has grown for one thing! My lovely OH found another one for me yesterday in the charity shop. My collection is growing ever upwards and is now topped off with my kilner jars of ribbons sorted by colours.

I also have what I call my messy bench where I do painting and more mucky jobs. It's quite tidy for a messy area at the moment!!!

While I finished off the inside of the shed, my OH was busy clearing some fallen trees outside in our woodland and making a log pile as a bug hotel, so this is my new view out across the garden. The daffodils in the picture are just going over now. I always feel sad when they go.

My main task now is to make a supreme effort to be much tidier to avoid the need for such a major tidy again, but also to use more of my stash and stop buying so much until I have used some of it up!

Hope you are have had a great bank holiday weekend, we had some amazing sunshone, although it is raining this morning and we have been trying to catch up on gardening as our patch is constantly trying to revert to nature, it is always a bit of a tussle, but only a very gentle one on our part!

Elaine



The Book of Secrets

This is another project I made using the newly launched Indian themed stamps from Chocolate Baroque. I love making books and when I saw the stamps on the Indian Textile set, they made me think of clasps on an old antique book.

I've included two pictures here as I couldn't decide if lamp light or sunlight gave the most accurate impression of the project!

 

I used a technique I have never seen anyone else mention, but I am sure I am not the first! Using a stamp from the Indian Elephant plate I embossed onto the black gessoed chipboard covers with clear embossing powder. I then added different shades of brown and black paint with a baby wipe to give the colour of old leather. I then added some Florentine Gold Treasure Gold gilding wax over the raised area to add highlights. 

 

 

I embossed the clasps in the same way onto thinner card and cut them out, before adding more gilding wax much more thickly to make them more evenly gold in colour. The "studs" are gold pearl card candy highlighted with Aquamarine gilding wax. As you might be able to guess I love Treasure Gold, it is such a good quality product. The lettering cut with a Tim Holtz die and the brass butterfly charm also get the same treatment. I finished by adding a little brass key, gems on the clasps and an embossed keyhole. The back cover is embossed in the same way, but otherwise unadorned!

 



 

The book is an accordian book, held together with a seam binding ribbon in a pale chocolatey colour.

 

I got the brighter pictures today in the sunshine in the garden. I was tidying in the greenhouse when I got in from work at lunchtime, a job that is much overdue and very late this year thanks to the extremely late spring which put me off getting on with my seeds and the fact I have been very occupied with an intensive spring clean of my craft shed which took me about three weeks in the end. What an exhausting job, but so worthwhile, it feels great now, with just labelling of my many drawers to be completed. Some pictures might follow, it's changed quite a bit since I first posted my crafting area.  I had a delightful suprise when I spotted this little hazel dormouse in the greenhouse.

 

 

He or she had made a very neat nest in one of my old pink cotton gardening gloves. I very carefully left everything as it was and decided to stop my tidying so as not to disturb it any further. These little creatures are protected by law and we want them to be as safe as possible with us. We are lucky enough to spot one every couple of years here, but we see the tell tale signs of chewed hazel nut shells each autumn. We have planted lots more hazel nut hedging since we have been here for wildlife food. It would be nice to eat some of the nuts ourselves, but the creatures always get to them and our walnuts first!

 

So the planting of my window boxes will have to wait for another day, but it was a good excuse to retire to the garden seat and read in the sun! A nice way to finish off the afternoon. I hope you are enjoying spring in your neck of the woods!

 

By the way, I was thrilled that I was the lucky winner of the Snazzy's challenge I entered with my last posted project, so I am now the happy owner of a Prima Finnabair art journal and have a nice project planned with that, thanks to the generosity of owners Val and Don. I am thrilled as I have never won a challenge or blog candy prize before.

 

Elaine x

A leafy background

Posts are rather few and far between for me at present. I am in the midst of a major crafty reorganisation in my shed (it is just about warm enough to work in if I keep the heater on) and after well over a week of sorting out, I am getting rather fed up of all work and no pleasure from my enormous crafty stash. If this doesn't teach me a lesson to slow down my craft purchasing, nothing will.

Today I have a card from the last release of background stamps from Chocolate Baroque, this uses the Leafy Trails stamp.

I wanted a simple, but sophisticated colour scheme and went for one of my favourite colours brown with gold. I embossed the design in gold on a medium brown card and matted onto gold mirri and dark brown. I painted the leaves with a couple of layers of brown H2O paint and then added a brown ribbon and die cut bow using the smaller die from the Die-Namics Beautiful Bows set which makes such lovely neat bows in two different sizes. I finished with a Craftwork Cards sentiment mounted onto a small scalloped circle.

I hope you have enjoyed a slightly warmer weekend wherever you are. It has been dry with us and mostly sunny and we even managed lunch sitting in the garden yesterday for the first time this year, although we did have light snow flurries only on Friday. I think I need to give my shed tidying a miss tomorrow and get out into the greenhouse for some tidying in there. The masses of primroses in the garden tell me spring may finally actually be springing and I may finally be able to get going with the vegetable seedlings.

Elaine