S, T, U and V alpha tags

I am rather behind with posting my latest tags for the Chocolate Baroque alpha tag swap, what with our holiday and one thing and another.

My first is S for seahorse, using the Underwater stamp set. The seahorse is embossed in Moonglow Teal Obsidian embossing powder, with highlights added with a contrasting royal blue EP and bindi type gems. The background weed is stamped in green archival ink, with shading added in Distress and Adirondack inks.

Apologies for the appalling pic of this one, T is for tree! The light for photos has been so bad for weeks when I have been at home it seems! I was not entirely happy with this tag, but the deadline was upon me and I had to get it posted! I used the arboretum set of stamps for this one. I used a mixture of inks, including some Brilliance and embossing in pearl powder to add highlights.

The next is U for Unicorn. He was stamped and embossed in silver onto pearl card as I wanted him to be a little luminous as you might expect a unicorn to be if you happened upon one! The arch is from the Christmas creatures plate and the foliage from the Mini meadow set.

My last one for now is V for Velocipede!

The image is from the Edwardian Gentlemen set, embossed in Copper Obsidian powder and coloured with Vintage Photo Distress ink. I backed the tag with a piece of a facsimile antique OS map of Hampshire, again edged with Vintage Photo DI. I added some tissue tape, a piece of copper coloured German Scrap and a little clock charm.

Only four more tags to go now, but the letters are getting much more challenging to think of themes for!

Hope you are keeping warm in this chilly weather!

Elaine

Away on my hols!

Things crafty are a little thin on the ground around here at the moment because I am away on my hols. We are having a week in France in a rather nice holiday house in Normandy that my OH found trawling the old internet! Despite a pleasantly peaceful location well off the beaten track, we are enjoying the benefits of speedy wi fi!

So far, we have sampled the delights of Rouen...

Honfleur....

and today we went to Monet's garden at Giverny.

 

 

On the way back I had to stop to take a picture of the local abbey as the evening light was perfect.

This is the view of the river Siene just literally at the end of the garden.

The best thing is, we still have three more days to enjoy!

Elaine x

Christmas in the air?

I had the pleasure of working with the Pears and Baubles A4 stamp plate from Chocolate Baroque as part of the Design Team. This is stamp of the month for September over on the website, so grab a bargain asap! These stamps have such a gorgeous luxurious feel and are fantastic teamed with some decadent designer papers, if you can bear to cut into your stash! I made a couple of cards that were quite quick to make, but still feel special enough for those people you want to spoil!

I used an 8 x 8 kraft card as my base, added a foiled K and Co paper and embossed three baubles in gold on burgundy pearl card. Added some ribbons, a blousy bow and an embossed sentiment. Simple!

The next card took a supreme act of self sacrifice to cut into the gorgeous paper.

Once again I added baubles embossed in teal metallic EP on teal pearl card. I added organza ribbons for a softer look on this card and an embossed sentiment.

Lastly, I embossed lots of the mistletoe leaves and decoupaged them to make a bunch of mistletoe.

I coloured the leaves with Distress Markers and added pearls for berries. I mounted the mistletoe on an oval panel, backed it all onto a dry embossed snowflake panel and added a sentiment, and gingham ribbon to finish.

That's three cards into the Christmas pile!

Thanks for popping by!

Elaine x

Q and R tags

The letters in our alphabet tags are getting so much harder! Here is my latest batch. I was going to do Queen for a A Day for Q, but didn't have a suitable person stamp from Chocolate Baroque to use, so my OH and I sat pondering other themes. We came up with Quattro Stagioni as the Four Seasons by Vivaldi is one of my favourite pieces of classical music, especially if played by Nigel Kennedy! I think my resulting tag is a little weird!

I used some Tim Holtz music paper as my background and added a an embossed violin image. I then stamped a tree image across four tiles of stampbord. I added a little vintage photo ink to make them match the background a little better and then added flowers and leaves from the Arboretum tree stamp set. I used Brilliance and Versamagic chalk inks to make the images quite dense Lastly I added some matching stickles which virtually obliterated the tree, so it may not be obvious what I was trying to do. They may have become abstract pictures! The final touch was some music ribbon.

My R tag has a Rabbit theme. Everyone who knows me, knows how much I love bunnies. This is from the spring themed stamps. I added grasses from the Eastern Grasses set and then embossed the images in a black gold metallic EP. I added ink shading in die inks and some red mica powder around the edges. I embossed the moth in a rusty EP with more ink shading and added that on foam tape. This tag was finished with some black lace.

Only 8 tags to go now, this has been a real marathon, but no one in the group of 28 in the swap has given up, although many people have had all sorts of pressures and distractions Well done ladies!

Elaine x

Exciting news from Chocolate Baroque

There is some very exciting news over at Chocolate Baroque. Glenda and Adrian have just launched a totally new range of their lovely stamps, this time for people who enjoy using clear stamps. There are 10 new sets of stamps to tempt you - you can see them all here. There are a range of oriental, Christmas and sentiment options.

Along with the other girls in the Design Team, I have been lucky enough to play with these stamps while they were under wraps. Using some of the oriental lantern and branch images I came up with this card.

When I saw these lanterns, I wanted to play to get a real glow in the lanterns against a dark moonlit sky. After masking the moon and inking the sky with Distress Inks in Stormy Sky, Squeezed Lemonade and Chipped Sapphire, using a scallop mask for the effect, I stamped the branches, highlighting with coloured pencils. I embossed the lanterns in a dark coppery metallic EP. Then I shaded the lanterns with DIs again, this time using Cut 'n' Dry foam and used more Squeezed Lemonade, Wild Honey and Spiced Marmalade. I added the tiniest touch of Raspberry Adirondack dye ink at the outer edges. I added colour with Inktense pencils into the patterns on the different lanterns and then cut them out.  I stamped the smaller lanterns onto the base card and then decoupaged the different lanterns on the background, positioning the lanterns so they looked like they are hanging in the tree. I finished off with a sentiment from an old favourite set Paisley Elephant.

Talking about keeping the stamps under wraps, the packaging on the new stamps is brilliant. They come in a neat little A5 wallet that keeps the stamps safe and sound and can be clipped into a ring binder with integral tabs, very ingenious.

There are loads of ideas for using the new clear stamps over on the Design Team blog. Just click on the link in my side bar and be sure to pop over to the CB on line shop to see all the lovely new designs.

Elaine

A journal page

A couple of weeks ago, I had a tough day at work and came home in a rather grumpy mood! I decided to retire to my craft shed for a little therapeutic play time while my lovely OH cooked the evening meal. This was the result.

I was very inspired by this layout by Anneke because of the vibrant colours. She used acrylic artists ink, so I toddled off to the art shop and bought precisely one bottle to have a try with in this amazing sunny colour.

I must confess I started with the plan to use the words "what a day" (made from Tim Holtz Chit Chat stickers) as it could be positive or negative. Then I remembered a Paper Artsy stamp I like and added the word "marvellous" - at that point, I still felt there could be a touch of irony involved in my message!!!

I added the flowers which are clear stamps off a magazine and coloured them with Inktense pencils. I added the various words which are Hero Arts stamps - I love this sort of script - and joined them together with freehand lines.I think I also added some additional colour on the page with a brush. I also added some stencilled butterflies and dragonflies and my finishing touch was to stick on lots of Papermania butterflies die cuts.

Needless to say by the time I had finished this page, I felt so much better and it didn't feel like such a bad day after all. This is only the second journal page I have ever finished!!!

I am entering this into the Craft Barn's art journal challenge.

Elaine

Beetle Box Workshop

I have recently started teaching a few workshops at a local craft shop. I made this beetle box a while back from a recycled wooden chocolate box and decided it would make a good project for a workshop. This was my original as posted a while back made with the amazing beetle stamp from the Chocolate Baroque Steampunkery stamp plate.

The boxes we bought for the workshop were deeper and this was my prototype for the workshop.

This is a darker version using some different techniques including a rust paint technique on the clock face, the main ingredients being a rusty texture paint from Decoart, some walnut ink with emerald mica and some Frayed Burlap stickles.

Finished off with some card candy rivets.

The group of 6 included some quite experienced crafters, some complete beginners and a couple in between. These boxes are the results of the three hour workshop. Top row Jack and Amanda's, middle row Brenda and Julie's and bottom row Neil and Victoria's.

I was so pleased with their results and so were they. Everyone made their own mark and each one had it's own character! They wanted more workshops on similar themes, so I have my work cut out now to come up with some interesting project ideas!

Elaine