Challenge 20, Week Two- It's 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 Nineteen. The winner of our £15 prize to spend at Chocolate Baroque is Penny, whose card was drawn by Random.org as the overall winner. Congratulations Penny, we hope that you enjoy your prize.

Please email Lesley on lesley@chocolatebaroque.com so that she can organise your voucher. 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.

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

Carole:

Daniele:

Janny:

Congratulations ladies, 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. Debbie's clean and simple card uses one of our lovely poppy stamps and clever use of the challenge colours:

Zoe has created a zingy background using a mixture of texture stamps, the white die cuts create a stunning contrast:

Asha's romantic card has a beautiful blended background, with a glowing flower at its heart, excuse the pun!

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 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 Twenty

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new challenge on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you so much for your support and comments throughout the month, we really appreciate your visits to the blog, and we enjoy reading what you have to say.

We will be announcing the winner of Challenge Nineteen next week, so if you entered a project last month, please be sure to 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 launched on the third Wednesday of every month. You can use any medium to create your project; inks, paints, pencils, pens, etc., as long as you stick 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 currently available from the website. We welcome entries incorporating other stamps and images, but they will not be eligible for 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.

The challenge colours this month are very bright and bold, and the Design Team girls have created some fabulous inspiration that we will be sharing with you over the coming weeks. Here is the colour swatch for the new challenge:

 

The challenge will close at 12.00 p.m. on Tuesday 15th March 2016, and the winner will be announced on Wednesday 23rd March 2016. Here are some inspirational projects from the Design Team for you: 

I have created a spicy Valentine's card:

Vronnie has used Steampunk stamps to create a romantic canvas:

 Julie has used  one of the large flowerhead stamps to create a stunning tall card:

Thank you so much girls for your inspiration using these zingy colours. We hope that they will inspire you to create some artwork and join in the challenge. 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 hope that you enjoy the new challenge, and look forward to seeing your projects.

An InLinkz Link-up

Challenge 19, Week Four

Hello everyone, and welcome to our final week of Challenge Nineteen on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you for your support and lovely comments throughout the month, we really enjoy reading what you have to say. We hope that you have been enjoying the challenge, the colour scheme, and the DT inspiration along the way. There is still plenty of time to enter, and you can add your project to the link in this post.

This week, we are taking a look at just a few of the entries that we have received for the current challenge, and showcasing them on the blog.

Carole has created a lovely Rennie Mackintosh inspired card, using paper piecing:

Daniele has created a romantic Valentine's card, using stamps from the Harlequin Rose set:

Annemie has used a gelli plate background and soft pencil colouring to create her card:

Penny's woodland card is full of detail:

Finally, Janny's CAS card brings thoughts of Summer beaches:

We have a free download from Lesley this week, perfect for this time of year when our thoughts are turning to romance. It is also great for those chocoaholics amongst you. Please do not pass the image on to 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 computer 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 really pretty projects for your inspiration using the free download. Claire has used a rose script stamp which ties in perfectly with the background:

Anne has created a beautiful Anniversary card, adding lots of pretty embellishments:

Thank you so much girls for your lovely projects. 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, please share it with us by uploading it to our Facebook page, we would love to see what you create.

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 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 19, Week Three

Hello everyone, and welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We hope that you are enjoying our current challenge, and the inspiration provided by the Design Team. For those of you visiting the blog for the first time, here is the inspirational photo and colour swatch that we are using for the 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 project; 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 fabulous underwater card:

Vronnie has created a romantic garden scene:

She has very kindly written a tutorial, so that you can recreate this card yourself.

Materials:

Stamps: Mackintosh Beauty, Walled Garden
Base card approx 15cms x 15cms dark cream pearlescent
Mat approx 12.75cms x 12.75cms dull gold card
White watercolour card
White address label 100mm x 139mm
Ink pads: brown, Versafine Onyx Black
Watercolour pencils
Water brush
Brusho powders: Lemon, lime, moss, sand
Spray bottle of water

Instructions:

Begin with an A5 piece of watercolour paper, misted with water, sprinkled with Brusho powders and sprayed fairly heavily with water, then lay a piece of white card over while it is still wet to get a second print- this lightens the original considerably, and gives another piece to play with later.

Leave to dry overnight, then stamp the walled garden using a brown inkpad. Try to stamp so that the arch is over an interesting area of colour. Colour the stamped image with watercolour pencils and a water brush, fairly carefully on the stonework, and very roughly on the foliage and bushes. Do not colour the image too heavily or use colours that are too bright- the image will be fairly difficult to see anyway, but you need to get the effect of distance.

Stamp the lady onto the address label with the black Versafine ink, and colour with the watercolour pencils again, using brighter colours this time. Stamp her again using the black Versafine onto the background in front of the walled image where you want her to be placed- you only need to colour the ribbons on the flowers and the small roses coming down from them on this image.

Fussy cut out the lady- no need to cut out the ribbons and rose strings, they are already stamped onto the background. Remove the adhesive backing and place over the stamped image.

Trim down the background to approximately 12.25cms x 12.25cms, mat onto the dull gold card, and then onto the base cream card. 

Thank you so much girls for your inspiration this week. We hope that you will be inspired by these projects and will join in the challenge yourselves. 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.