Challenge 15, 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 from 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 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. 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. Anne has created a dramatic card using the large butterfly from the Patchwork Butterfly stamp set:

She has very kindly written a tutorial for her card:

Materials:

Patchwork Butterfly stamp set
Black card blank, approximately 19cms square
Lemon pearlescent card
Thick white card for background
Smooth white stamping card
Memento Inkpad: Tuxedo Black
Alcohol ink pens (greys and lemons)
Acrylic paints (greys)
Acylic ink (black)
Acrylic light modelling paste
Glossy Accents
Flower Soft (lemon)
PVA pearls (black)
Sea sponge
Palette knife
Adhesive and 3D glue gel

Instructions:
Create the background rock and lichen texture by sponging with grey acrylic paints and black acrylic ink. Tint the texture paste with back acrylic ink and apply with a palette knife for added texture, then drop in some Flower Soft and leave to fully dry.

Mount the background onto the card front with a border of the lemon card.
Stamp the large butterfly with Memento Ink and colour with alcohol inks.
Add shine to the body and some wing areas with Glossy Accents.
Cut out to layer onto the background and finish with PVA pearls.

Anne writes: "I love this extra large butterfly stamp from the Patchwork Butterfly stamp set. I hope that you like my project. I am looking forward to seeing all of your contributions and good luck in the prize draw."

Julie has created a decorative frame for her project this month. She has also provided a tutorial for you:

Materials:

Steampunk Butterfly stamp set
Smooth coated photograph frame
White stamping card
Archival inkpad: Watering Can
Versafine Inkpad: Onyx Black, Grey
Light grey coloured pencil
Alcohol marker pens: black, light, medium and dark grey, yellow
Alcohol blending solution
Felt pads
Scrap paper for masking
3D glue or foam pads


Instructions:

Cut a piece of stamping card to fit the aperture of your frame.
Ink up the tulip stamp with the Archival inkpad and stamp the card that you have just cut. Repeat this step twice, but stamp onto the scrap paper and another piece of spare stamping card.
Cut out the tulip from the scrap paper and use this as a mask to cover your main image.
Ink up the cog stamp with grey Versafine and stamp all over the masked image.
Remove the mask and colour the cog background with a light grey alcohol marker and coloured pencil.
Colour the tulip with the yellow and grey alcohol pens and also include the image that you stamped onto the spare card.
Cut out the leaf and tulip heads from the second image and decoupage them onto the main image using 3D glue or foam pads.
Squiggle the alcohol pens all over the front of the frame and then blend with the alcohol solution that you have applied to the felt pads.
Ink up the three keys stamp with the Onyx Black Versafine and stamp three times onto stamping card. Cut out and add to the name plate on the frame.
Reassemble the frame and display.

Thank you so much girls for your fabulous inspiration and great tutorials this week. We hope that we have inspired you to join in the challenge yourselves and be in with a chance of winning the £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 post; you will see it after the comments section.

Challenge 15, Week Two- Winner's Week

Hello everyone and welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. This week we are announcing the winner of Challenge Fourteen. The winner of our £15 prize to spend at Chocolate Baroque is Caroline Cards, whose card was drawn by Random.org as the overall winner. Congratulations Caroline, 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.

Our Top Three this month have been chosen by the Design Team, who have had a tough time as always, choosing just three winners from your entries. The Top Three in no particular order are:

Alicia O' Bryant:

Craftymamma:

Val Early:

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. Zoe has created a spooky hexagonal card:

Debbie has made two cards using the same layout, but using two different designs. They look so different, just by altering the image:

Thank you so much for your projects girls, we hope that they will inspire you to create something yourselves for the current 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 Fifteen

Hello everyone, welcome to a brand new challenge on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you for your support and lovely comments, we always enjoy reading them.

We will be announcing the winner of Challenge Fourteen next week, so do check 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:

The challenge will close at 12.00 p.m. on Tuesday 20th October 2015, and the winner will be announced on Wednesday 28th October 2015. Here are some inspirational projects from the Design Team for you:

Asha:

Claire:

Miranda:

Florence:

Thank you girls for your inspiration. If you have any questions, 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 this blog post, below the comments section.

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

An InLinkz Link-up

Challenge 14, Week Four

Hello everyone, welcome to our final week of Challenge Fourteen. Thank you for your support and lovely comments, we appreciate the time that you take to stop by and we enjoy reading what you have to say. We hope that you have been enjoying the challenge, even though a lot of you have been busy with your holidays. There is still plenty of time to enter, and you can add your project to the link in this post.

We have a free download from Lesley for you this week, a lovely dreamy background, perfect for lots of different projects, as you will see from the Design Team inspiration. 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 beautiful projects for your inspiration using the free download. Claire has made a lovely moonlit scene:

Miranda has created a gorgeous Christmas card, using some of our latest stamps:

Finally Florence has made another fabulous festive card using one of the new candle images:

Thank you girls, they are all lovely, and we hope that they will inspire you to use Lesley's download paper to make something 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 a brand new challenge, but hope to see lots more entries for the current challenge from you in the meantime. Don't forget if you have any questions, and you can't find the answers on the blog, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this post; you will see it after the comments section.

Challenge 14, 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 from 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 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 a beautiful card from Debbie. She has created a very clever faux wrap design, by stamping a large flourish with Versamark twice across the front of her card, and adding a bow. Such a great idea, and the lovely butterfly is the perfect finishing touch.

Claire has very kindly created a tutorial for her lovely floral card:

Materials:

Poppy Meadow stamp set
Wild Meadow stamp set
20cms x 20cms white card blank
Smooth white card
Distress Inks: Peeled Paint, Picked Raspberry, Seedless Preserves, Shaded Lilac, Crushed Olive, Forest Moss
Ink Blending Tool
Coloured Pencils
White Pen
Embellishments: Lace, Ribbon, Pearls


Instructions:

Cut a square of white card 18cms x 18cms.
Apply Peeled Paint, Seedless Preserves, Shaded Lilac and Picked Raspberry to a non-stick craft sheet and mist with water.
Swoosh the card through the ink several times to create a background.
Stamp the foliage using stamps from the Wild Meadow stamp set using Crushed Olive and Forest Moss Distress Inks.
Create faux stitching using a white pen and add a flat-backed pearl in the corners.
Stamp the image from the Poppy Meadow stamp set and colour with pencils.
Cut out and ink around the edges with Picked Raspberry Distress Ink using an ink blending tool.
Create faux stitching using a white pen and add a faux pearl in the corners.
Distress the edges of the image and background using a craft knife and mat on white card.
Assemble the card as shown layering the image up over some lace and ribbon.


We also have a tutorial from Anne this week for her beautiful card:

Materials:

Design A Tree stamp sets: Glade, Orchard and Spinney
Tall Trees stamp set
19 cms square white stamping card plus 19cms square card base
Moon mask cut from copy paper - approx. 5cms across
General adhesive and temporary adhesive for mask, low tack masking tape
Distress Inks: Forest Moss, Dusty Concord
Dye based inkpads: dark purple and cerise pink
Alcohol markers: dark purple, cerise pink and dark green (to match inkpads)
Fine tipped black marker
White gel pen
Brayer
Sponges
Water brush

Instructions:

Tape edges of stamping card with masking tape to create a border of approximately 1 cm all around the edge, and place moon mask.
Brayer the sky with Dusty Concord Distress Ink, fading towards the centre. Brayer with Forest Moss Distress Ink from the bottom, fading up towards the centre. Remove moon mask.
Using torn copy paper as a mask, create some hills in the distance by lightly sponging with Distress Ink.
Stamp some distance trees, the main tree, foliage and some foreground texture with Forest Moss Distress Ink. Stamp the flowers using dark purple and pink dye inks.
Use a water brush to add some cloud texture in the sky area.
Use Distress Ink and a water brush to further enhance and paint the landscape background, adding shading to hills, foliage and to the distant trees. Draw a few stems/grass  with the green marker, and use the pink marker to dot some extra flowers. Highlight the flower centres with the white pen.
Finally remove the masking tape and draw a wiggly frame with the fine black marker, cut out and mount onto the card base.

Top Tip: Use a purple marker to colour the edge of the card base if you do not have any toning card to use as a mat layer.


Thank you so much girls for your fabulous inspiration and great tutorials this week. We hope that we have inspired you to join in the challenge yourselves and be in with a chance of winning the £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 post; you will see it after the comments section.