Challenge 13, Week Three

Hello everyone, and welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We hope that you are enoying the current challenge and the inspiration provided by our Design Team.

For those of you visiting our blog for the first time, here is the inspirational photo and colour swatch that we are using for our current challenge:

You can find a link to the current challenge here.

Our challenges are monthly, based on an inspirational photo and a colour swatch. A new challenge is launched on the third Wednesday of every month, and you can use any medium that you like to create your projects; inks, paints, pens, pencils, etc., as long as you stick to the colours from the colour swatch in your project. We offer a monthly prize of £15 and the winner is drawn by Random.org from those entries that have used Chocolate Baroque stamps currently for sale on the website. We welcome entries from anyone however, and all entries will be considered by the DT members for a slot in the Top Three each month. You can find the rules on the 'How it Works' tab at the top of the page.

This week, we have more inspiration from the Design Team. The first project is from me:

Asha:

Asha has very kindly written a step by step tutorial for her card:

Materials:

6" x 4 1/2" Top folding kraft card base
5 3/4" x 4 1/4" Pale purple card
5" x 2 1/2" Yellow card
4 7/8" x 2 3/8" White card for stamping
Harebell A5 Rubber stamp sheet
Briar Rose A5 rubber stamp sheet
Wild Meadow A4 rubber stamp sheet
Faber-Castell Polychromos Coloured Pencils
Versafine Inkpad- Vintage Sepia
Distress Inkpads: Dusty Concord, Seedless Preserves, Fossilized Amber
Ink blending tool/ sponge
3 Yellow brads
Washi tape
Adhesive




Instructions:

1. Prepare background design by first inking up the pale card with Dusty Concord and Seedless Preserves Distress inkpads, keeping the edges darker. Randomly stamp the small butterfly from Briar Rose A5 rubber stamp sheet with Dusty Concord and the tiny straw from Wild Meadow A4 rubber stamp sheet with Fossilized Amber.

2. Stamp the stalk of flowers from Harebell A5 rubber stamp sheet onto white card using Versafine Vintage Sepia. Colour with Polychromos pencils.

3. Layer the stamped image onto the yellow card. Centre and adhere this piece onto the prepared background with brads.

4. Adhere the entire piece onto the kraft card.

5. Apply washi tape from the bottom right corner, taking it horizontally to the edge of the kraft card base.

Thanks for your tutorial Asha. We hope that we have provided you with some inspiration for the current challenge colours, and that you will join in yourselves to stand a chance of winning that £15 voucher to spend at Chocolate Baroque. We will be back next week with another post and some more inspiration for you. If you have any questions and cannot find the answers on the blog pages, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it after the comments section.

Challenge 13, Week Two- Time to Announce our Winners!

Hello everyone, welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you so much for all of your good wishes for our Anniversary last week. We are celebrating all month, so do keep popping in to see us throughout this challenge to see what we have going on, as there may be more surprises to come!

This week, we are announcing the winner of Challenge Twelve. The winner of our £15 prize to spend at Chocolate Baroque is Kristiina, whose card was drawn by Random.org as the overall winner. Congratulations Kristiina, we hope that you enjoy your prize.

You can also display our Winner's badge on your blog, details of how to obtain the badge can be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page. Please email Lesley on lesley@chocolatebaroque.com so that she can organise your voucher.

The Design Team had a difficult time choosing a Top Three this month, as your entries were of such a high standard, and so we have gone for a Top Four owing to a tie in the votes. In no particular order, here are the Top Four:

Debbie:

Jan:

Sylvia-Anne:

Karen:

Congratulations girls, you can display the Top Three badge on your blog. Details of how to obtain the badge can be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page. Well done to everyone who entered, and we hope that you will enter the current challenge. You can find the details here.

We have some more Design Team inspiration for you this week. Firstly, a zingy lime creation from Debbie:

Secondly, Florence has used a mask to add circles of colour to her background, and then stamped over the top of the circles. A fab design idea.

Thanks so much girls for your inspirational projects. We hope that they will encourage you to have a rummage through your stash and join in with our challenge.

We will be back next week with more projects from the Design Team, but until then, we look forward to seeing more of your entries. If you have any questions and cannot find the answers on the blog, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it after the comments section.

Challenge Thirteen- Our First Anniversary!

Hello everyone, and welcome to a very special week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog, as we are celebrating our one year Anniversary! The first year has flown by and we are so grateful for all of your support and enthusiasm along the way for the challenges. We really appreciate your lovely comments for the Design Team inspiration.  We are very excited to celebrate this special month with you and will have some prizes along the way. More of that at the end of this blog post.

We will be announcing the winner of Challenge Twelve next week, so be sure to check out the announcement to see if you are the winner of our prize.

As a reminder to those of you who have visited our blog before, and for anyone who is new to the blog, our challenges are monthly, based on an inspirational photo and a colour swatch. A new challenge is posted on the third Wednesday of every month. You can use any medium to create your project; ink, paints, pens, pencils, etc., as long as you keep to the colours from the colour swatch in your project.

We are offering a monthly prize of £15 to spend on Chocolate Baroque stamps to one lucky winner, who will be selected by Random.org from all of the entrants who have used Chocolate Baroque stamps that are currently for sale on the website. We welcome entries incorporating other stamps, but they will not be eligible to win the prize. All entrants will have the chance to be selected as one of our Top Three and can then display our 'I made the Top Three at Chocolate Baroque' badge on their blog.

Now onto this month's challenge, which has been inspired by a piece of original artwork made by Glenda:

The challenge will close at 12.00 p.m. on Tuesday 18th August 2015, and the winner will be announced on Wednesday 26th August 2015. Here are some inspirational projects from the Design Team for you:

Miranda:

 Julie:

 Asha:

Thank you Girls for your inspiration. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to contact our challenge blog team. You can get in touch by sending us a private message. Details are at the end of the blog post, below the comments section.

Now, for the first of our Anniversary prizes; the Design Team have very kindly donated some of the cards that they have made across the first year of the challenge blog, and we have a collection of their artwork to give away to one lucky winner.

We have drawn a name from all of the comments that we have received across this first year by Random.org, and the lucky recipient of this lovely prize is Veronica. Congratulations Veronica, please get in touch with Lesley on lesley@chocolatebaroque.com and we will send your prize out to you.

We look forward to seeing your creations using these new challenge colours, and hope that you enjoy taking part in the challenge.

Judith xx

An InLinkz Link-up

Challenge 12, Week Four

Hello everyone, and welcome to the final week of Challenge Twelve on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you so much for your entries, we really appreciate your support. Next week will be the start of our Anniversary Challenge Thirteen; unlucky for some, but not for some of you out there, as we have two sets of prizes to give away in our Anniversary Challenge month! We do not want to reveal anything at this stage, as we do not want to spoil the surprise, but keep popping back for more information, and leave a comment if you get a chance.

This week we are taking a look at some of the entries that we have received for Challenge Twelve, and showcasing them on the blog. We have had some fabulous entries again this month, and it has been difficult to choose just a few to highlight, but here are some projects that we would like to mention:

Janice has created a little garden scene using a brick wall stencil and stamping around the edge. Her soft colours are really pretty:

Karen has used dry brushing to create her fabulous background, and glittery black embossing for her Punky Flowers, a great combination:

 Debbie's card uses a lovely sentiment, and evokes a feeling of Nature:

Lorna has created a vibrant scene behind her window and used a lace fragment stamp to make a blind:

Val's card is reminiscent of a bygone era, and her use of the die cuts to make a framed panel is great. The vintage take on the colours really adds to the period feel of the retro ladies:

Thank you ladies for your beautiful cards, and thank you everyone for your entries so far this month.


We have a free download for you from Lesley this week, she has designed a stunning design for you to use in your projects. Please do not pass the image onto others, but send them back here to collect the freebie for themselves.

To obtain your free download, please click on the image below. Once you have enlarged the image on your screen, right click the image, choose the option, 'Save As', and save the image to your computer. You can now print the image onto a variety of surfaces for your crafting projects.

The Design Team have been making some projects for your inspiration using the free download. First of all, Florence has made a Christmas card for your inspiration: 

I have made a card using a stamp from the Flora and Fauna stamp set:

We hope that you will feel inspired to use this lovely download yourself. If you do make something using one of Lesley's downloads, why not upload a picture to our Facebook page? We would love to see what you have made.

We will be back next week with another post and our Anniversary challenge. Look out for our very first prize winner of the month! We look forward to seeing lots more entries for our current challenge in the meantime. There is still plenty of time to enter, and you can find the link in this post. If you have any questions and you cannot find the answers on the blog, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it after the comments section.

Challenge 12, Week Three

Hello everyone, and welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We hope that you are enjoying the current challenge, and the inspiration provided by the Design Team.

For those of you visiting our blog for the first time, here is the inspirational photo and colour swatch that we are using for our current challenge:

You can find a link to our current challenge here.

Our challenges are monthly, based on an inspirational photo and a colour swatch. A new challenge is launched on the third Wednesday of every month, and you can use any medium that you like to create your projects; inks, paints, pens, pencils, etc., as long as you stick to the colours from the colour swatch in your project. We offer a monthly prize of £15 and the winner is drawn by Random.org from those entries that have used Chocolate Baroque stamps currently available on the website. We welcome entries from anyone however, and all entries will be considered by the DT members for a slot in the Top Three each month. You can find the rules on the 'How it Works' tab at the top of the page.

This week, we have more inspiration from the Design Team. The first project is from Debbie:

Miranda:

Miranda has very kindly written a step by step tutorial for her card:

You will need:

Canvas card stock 15cms x 30 cms
Canvas card 15cms x 15cms
Smooth watercolour paper
Acrylic block (about 15cms x 15cms)
Water spray bottle
Distress Inks: Fired Brick, Spiced Marmalade, Crushed Olive, Weathered Wood, Iced Spruce, Peeled Paint
Blending Tool
Embossing Powder: clear, white
Chocolate Baroque stamps: Rustic Fragments, Seasonal Fragments, Fragrant Honeysuckle, Fancy Flourishes, Artistic Affirmations, Eccentric Edwardian
Versamark inkpad
Versafine inkpad
Heat tool
White acrylic mrker
Decorative die cut
Flat-backed pearls

Instructions:

Background:

Ink your acrylic block using all of the Distress Ink colours and spritz with water. Spritz the piece of canvas card. Place the paper onto the acrylic block and press down on the back, (but do not use your fingertips).

Heat set the paper.

Stamp the Rustic Fragment dots, and the text stamp from the Eccentric Edwardian stamp set over the backgound using the same Distress Ink colours. Allow the ink to dry completely, as the next stage will be to do your embossing.

Stamp some of the fancy flourishes with Versamark in two of the corners and add clear embossing powder. Blend one of the Distress Ink colours over the embossed images and they will show up more clearly.

Add some white accents with a white marker in the dots.

Main Image:

Blend all of the Distress Ink colours on the smooth watercolour paper. Spritz a bit of water and add some water drops. Dry the paper with your heat tool.

Stamp the dandelion from the Fragrant Honeysuckle stamp set and the seeds from the Seasonal Fragments stamp set using Versamark, and add the white embossing powder.


Stamp the dandelion using Iced Spruce Distress Ink next to the embossed white one to create a shadow. Repeat this process also with the dandelion seeds. Stamp the dandelions several times using different colours of Distress Inks.

Stamp some small dots at the bottom of the main image using Peeled Paint Distress Ink. Die cut the image and blend Distress Ink around the edges.

Trim the canvas background to  14.5cms x 14.5cms and use a small left over piece for a decorative strip. Add two flat-backed pearls as an embellishment.

Thanks so much Miranda and Debbie for your inspiration this week. We hope that the projects will encourage you to join in with the challenge yourselves. We will be back next week with another post and some more inspiration for you. It will be the final post before our big anniversary challenge so we are starting to get very excited! Do visit us for news of what is happening for our next challenge, and don't forget to keep popping back and leaving a comment if you get the time.

As always, we look forward to seeing your entries into our challenge. Don't forget, if you have any questions, and you cannot find the answers on the blog pages, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it after the comments section.