Wednesday 30 March 2016

Challenge 21, 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 our 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.

This week, we have more inspiration from the Design Team. Zoe's vibrant card features some of the smaller Patchwork Butterflies, and fabulous background stamping:
Debbie's card incorporates a modern flower and a soft watery background:
I have made a simple CAS card using another butterfly design, this time from the Tangled Garden stamp set:
I have written a tutorial for you.

Materials:

White card
Green card
Tangled Garden stamp set
Amazing Birthday stamp set
Distress Inks: Shaded Lilac, Wilted Violet, Lucky Clover, Cracked Pistachio
Stencil, mini mister, waterbrush, brayer
Lilac ribbon

Instructions:

Trim a piece of green card to fit a 5" x 7" card blank, and then trim a piece of white card slightly smaller. Using a brayer, cover the stencil with Cracked Pistachio Distress Ink, and place a piece of white card over the top. Remove the card, spritz with water, and then place another piecce of card over the stencil to get a second print. (I found that I liked the second print better than the first). Dry the print with a heat gun.

Stamp the butterfly image onto a piece of masking tissue, or copy paper, and cut out to create a mask. Stamp the butterfly onto the background using Lucky clover Distress Ink, and cover with the mask. Stamp the butterfly twice more with Wilted Violet, and remove the mask. Using a small amount of Distress Ink and a water brush, lightly colour in areas of the butterflies.

Stamp the sentiment using Lucky Clover Distress Ink, and add a pice of ribbon, before attaching the background to the dark green card.

Thank you to the rest of the Design Team girls for your inspirational cards 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 projects 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.










Wednesday 23 March 2016

Challenge 21, 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 Twenty. The winner of our £15 prize to spend at Chocolate Baroque is Sharon, whose card was drawn by Random.org as the overall winner. Congratulations Sharon, 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 our Design Team, who have had a really tough time choosing just three projects from such a fabulous selection of entries. The Top Three in no particular order are:
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 this page. Well done to everyone who entered, and we hope that you will enter our current challenge. You can find the details here.

We have some more Design Team inspiration for you this week.

Claire's dreamy tag incorporates one of our single cling stamps, and a beautiful background:
Julie's pretty floral card has a lovely delicate feel, to both the background and focal image:
Anne has created a fabulous haberdashery scene, with so much detail:
Thank you so much for your projects girls, we hope that they will inspire you to get creative and join in with the current challenge.

We will be back next week with more projects from the Design Team, but until then, we look forward to seeing 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.



Wednesday 16 March 2016

Challenge Twenty One

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new challenge on the Chocolate Baroque Chllenge Blog. Thank you to our loyal supporters, and to those of you who are new to the blog, we really appreciate your visits, and love reading your comments.

We will be announcing the winner of Challenge Twenty next week, so if you entered the challenge 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, pens, pencils, 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.

We have a beautiful colour palette for you to play with this month, and the Design Team girls have created some gorgeous inspiration that we will be sharing with you over the next few weeks. Here is the colour swatch for the new challenge:

The challenge will close at 12.00 p.m. on Tuesday 19th April, and the winner will be announced on Wednesday 27th April 2016. Here are some inspirational projects from the Design Team for you:

Asha has created a beautiful Easter card, those flowers are stunning:
Dominique's card utilises our newest Babushka stamps, and the background is so pretty:
Vronnie's big butterfly is resting on a gorgeous watery background:
Thank you so much girls for your inspiration using the new challenge colours. We hope that they will inspire you to create a card, a tag, a piece of mixed media, some kind of 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 challenge, and look forward to seeing your projects, Judith xx





Wednesday 9 March 2016

Challenge 20, Week Four

Hello everyone, and welcome to our final week of Challenge Twenty 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, and the DT inspiration this month. There is still plenty of time to enter, and you can add your projects to the link in this post.

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

Sue created a soft and magical fairy landscape, while still keeping within the colour palette.




Janny's steampunk owl, on a super textured background is sure to bring a smile to anyone's face:
Hellen's beautiful encaustic wax card is enough to encourage anyone to want to learn a new skill, it showcases the tulip stamps beautifully:
Sharon's CAS card showcases the lovely lace flower, using embossing as a resist, with white accents:
 Lesley's striking card on the other hand, is balanced by black and is stunning with the small stamped tiles around the central sentiment.
We have a free download from Lesley this week, a truly gorgeous paper that we know you will love. 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 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 stunning projects for your inspiration using the free download. Claire has made this absolutely beautiful floral card:
Anne has made an amazing mixed media piece:
Dominike has used our latest Babushka stamps and created a little tag using the download, such a lovely idea:
She has also created one last piece of inspiration using this month's challenge colours for you, mixing the Babushka stamps and one of our older stamps, and created a little scene:
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 in the meantime. Don't forget, 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.





Wednesday 2 March 2016

Challenge 20, 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 our 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.

This week, we have more inspiration from the Design Team. Claire has created a magical card using some of our fairy silhouette stamps:

Dominike has created a fabric purse, to hang from an apron, using one of the new Floral Background stamps:

Anne has made a super book stand:
She has very kindly written a tutorial, so that you can have a go at making this fabulous project yourself.

Materials:

Rubber stamp sets: Words of Inspiration, Indian Elephant, Punky Flowers, Gothic Fragments, Exquisite Edges
MDF Book Stand
White gesso
Acrylic paints: pink, pearl pink, dark red, orange, yellow
StazOn inkpad Jet Black
Zig 2 Way glue pen
Fine-tipped alcohol markers: black, pink, dark red, orange
Polychromos pencils: pink, dark red, orange and yellow
Cut-N-Dry Foam
Gold gilding wax
Iridescent spray varnish
Scrap paper for planning and masking
Dye based black inkpad

Step by Step Instructions:

The MDF stand was first sealed and primed with white gesso. TIP: When painting MDF items, it is often best to paint them after constructing, as the MDF can expand slightly, making it difficult to fit the joints together afterwards.

The sides were painted with pink acrylic. The back and front panels were painted using orange and yellow acrylics. I painted from the outside edges working inwards and blending the orange into the yellow in the centre.
The sides were randomly stamped with the paisley motif from the Indian Elephant stamp set, using StazOn. A bit of colouring was added using pencils.
I cut a piece of scrap paper the same size as the front panel in order to plan out the stamping. I then worked out the order of stamping and which images needed masking. You will need to protect the foreground images while building up the scene. I stamped the lettering, elephants and border from the Exquisite Edges stamp set with dye ink onto copy paper, and cut around them to create masks. I added a few dots of Zig 2 Way Glue to the back, and left to fully dry. This then acts as a temporary tacky adhesive to hold the masks in place while stamping.
It is tricky to stamp some areas on a ready-made item. The stamps need to be positioned on the stamping block to enable stamping into corners, etc. It is also easy to slip when you are stamping at an angle on a 3D item. TIP: You could paint a piece of card to fit the area, stamp onto that instead, and then glue this onto your project afterwards.
I first stamped the sentiment, elephants and lower border with StazOn Ink. I then covered with masks as shown in the picture:
Next I stamped the background arches from the Gothic Fragments stamp set, with a mixture of pearl pink and red acrylic paints, using Cut-N-Dry foam to apply the paint to the stamps. TIP: squeeze some acrylic paint directly onto the sponge and work it onto the surface using a palette knife. This saves washing up of palettes and it wastes less paint.
Place the coloured sponges face down on a craft mat and the paint stays workable without drying out for ages. Apply to your stamp with a dabbing motion. Clean your stamps quickly after use with warm water. A soft toothbrush can be useful to remove paint from the stamp crevices.
Next, the tall stylised flower from the Punky Flowers stamp set was stamped with dark red acrylic paint. The top of the stamp was then stamped with StazOn along the base. The masks were then removed.
A bit of colouring was added using marker pens and pencils. The pencils gave a nice textured effect to the elephants. I then outlined the elements of the tall floral stamp using a fine-tipped black marker. This brought the images further forward and created a nice frame up the sides of the scene.
I sprayed the book stand with pearlescent varnish to protect, and finished by adding gilding wax to the edges.



Anne writes, "I had so much fun using this month's hot colours to decorate this book stand for my desk. The colours just said Indian Theme' to me. I used acrylic paints, and mixed and matched stamps from several different stamp sets. The design could easily be adapted to create a wall hanging or small canvas.
Good Luck everyone with the Challenge- some wonderful projects on here already this month. Anne xxx."

Thank you so much Anne for a brilliant tutorial,  and to the rest of the girls for your inspiration too. We hope that you will be inspired by these projects, and join in the challenge yourselves. We will be back next week with another post, and some more projects 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.