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

Finnibair Workshop

At the end of August I was lucky enough to be one of a group of people taking workshops with Anna Dabrowska aka Finnibair at Snazzy's in Swindon. The big bonus of the weekend was that I got to spend some precious time with my special crafty friend Lesley. It had been a year since we had been together, so we had loads of catching up to do.

This is a couple of pictures of my 12 x 12 layout made in the Tea for  Two workshop. This is based on scrapbook paper, but thanks to all the layers and embellishments it ended up quite dimensional and much more rigid that I expected. Being so large it was quite tricky to get a decent pic to be honest and I have now put it in a frame so I have a little reflection too.

I used a copy of a vintage photo of my Nanna, that I have always loved. The sepia picture fitted well with the warm tones of the backing papers, brass metal embellishments, gold and terracotta flowers and the tea colouring that was a major feature in the finishing process. I found a great 12 x 12 glass fronted deep frame in Wilkinsons that seemed made for my project.

The workshops were absolutely brilliant and Anna is such a great teacher. The workshops were fast and furious, but we all finished some quite complicated projects thanks to her guidance and encouragement. Everyone's projects reflected their own styles as well as Anna's ways of working. One of the key messages I took away from her teaching is not to overthink things. I always plan things to the nth degree, but I think I may have been slightly cured of the habit and I am starting to trust myself to just dive in a little more!

Since then we have been away for a holiday in this interesting conversion of a water tower in rural Sussex.

 

We didn't have brilliant weather with rain, by most afternoons, but we found some lovely places to visit each morning like Scotney Castle

 

Wakehurst Place which is an outpost of Kew Gardens and has some amazing trees

 

 

Nymans has charming gardens with wonderful plants and the main house ruined by fire was thought to be the inspiration for E.H. Shepherd's illlustrations of Toad Hall in Wind in the Willow, one of my favourite children's books.

 

 

 



 

 

Standen is a lovely Arts and Crafts house in wonderful grounds, and well worth a visit, even though the day we chose was not the best! 



There were some beautiful crisp early autumny mornings though which are so lovely this time of year.

 
We were also in the right area for visits to the Craft Barn and the Glitter Pot, so I took advantage of some great crafty shopping opportunities and on some of the wet afternoons I did a little crafting and made some collaged postcards of the places we had visited. I used watercolour card as the background, added pictures from the leaflets I had collected, together with leaves mod podged onto the layouts and a few nice images I found in a Waitrose newspaper!
 

 

We have been at home for the second week of our holiday so there has been plenty of opportunity to use some of the new crafty treats I purchased while we were away and from the Ally Pally show that I dashed up to the day after we got home.

 

If you made it to the end of this post, thanks for your indulgence of my holiday memories! Back with more crafty stuff very soon!

 

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

Dusky sunset

Some time back I bought the Flying Goose die from Memory Box. I felt it was about time I used it.

I made a background using my leafy background technique, although I must confess I made it rather too dark to appreciate the pattern. Never mind! I added a sun with the sentiment from Inkylicious and a couple of bird stamps, one Tim Holtz and the other I think may be Lavinia. Finally I added the goose and mounted the whole thing on a black card blank.

Just a quick post today!

Thanks for popping in!

Elaine x

Variations on a theme

I have had to make a couple of cards for relatives recently where Get Well cards didn't seem quite right and I felt the sentiment on the following cards fitted the bill.

In both I started with papers from an 8 x 8 pad which has quite a retro kitchen feel. I had always planned to make some cookery themed cards with these, but have not quite got there. I like their cheery feel.
 

The sentiment is from a second hand set of Stampin' Up stamps I bought at the craft show in Portsmouth I went to recently. In both cases I added die cut flowers, leaves and hearts, some mulberry paper daisies that I always find uplifting to look at, some buttons and a little ink shading.

These were really quick to make and I was pleased they felt quite perky and I hope upbeat.

I don't seem to have made much to share lately craftwise, life is pretty hectic one way and another right now. I am certainly enjoying being able to spend more time outside thanks to the better than avergae summer we are having.

Hope you are enjoying your summer too!

Elaine