Wednesday 27 July 2016

Challenge Twenty-Five. Week Two- Winner's Week

Hello everyone, welcome to the second week of our Anniversary Challenge on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. This week, we are announcing the winner of Challenge Twenty-Four. The winner of the £15 prize to spend at Chocolate Baroque is Carole, whose project was drawn by Random.org as the overall winner. Congratulations Carole, 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.

The Top Three this month have been chosen by the Design Team, and it was a tough choice as always, narrowing the decision down to just three entries, you have created some fabulous projects again this month. The Top Three in no particular order are:


Congratulations ladies, you can display the Top Three badge on your blogs. 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 our current challenge. You can find the details here.

We have some more Design Team inspiration to share with you this week.

Magda has created a little envelope to put money into as a gift perhaps. She has used some of our Teeny Weeny stamps to decorate the envelope:

Dominike has created three beautiful tags, combining dark, milk and white chocolate colours:
Vronnie has used the lovely Tangled Birch stamp to create two cards, the chocolatey colours give the image a completely different look. The white 'snow' is very effective on the kraft card.

Claire's gorgeous chocolate bar is created using background stamps, something that we might normally bypass on a stamp plate in favour of the main images. The rich gold colouring makes this card look very decadent.
We hope that these projects will inspire you to create some chocolate creations of your own, and join in our special Anniversary challenge this month. Remember, the prize is a whopping £25 this time around, enough to treat yourself to an A4 set of stamps if you are hankering after something special! You just need to create something using chocolate colours, but can incorporate other colours as well this time, as a departure from our regular challenge criteria.

We will be back next week with another post, and 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.





Wednesday 20 July 2016

Challenge Twenty-Five- Happy Second Birthday to Us!!!!

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new challenge on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. This challenge sees the celebration of our second Anniversary since we first started. It seems incredible that we have been running for two years. We could not have done it without your support, and continued visits to the blog. We would like to recognise you our readers throughout the month, and so we have two sets of prizes to give, one at the beginning of the month, and one at the end.

Our first prize is a set of cards made by the members of the Design Team across the year as part of the Challenge Blog inspiration. The photographs that you have seen on the blog of these cards do not do them justice, and they really are beautiful projects. The winner of these cards has been drawn by Random.org from all of the commenters from the whole year since the beginning of Challenge Thirteen. The winner of these cards is June Fletcher. June, if you can contact me via my blog I will arrange to have your prize sent out to you, as soon as possible.

Now, onto this month's challenge! We are going to have a slight change from our usual challenges for our Anniversary challenge; we are not going to use one of our usual colour swatches, but we are simply going to use the theme of:

CHOCOLATE

Your projects can be in any format, cards, tags, mixed media, scrapbook pages, whatever you like, simply using chocolate colours in your project somewhere. You can incorporate white chocolate, milk chocolate, or dark chocolate, but please ensure that we can see that you are trying to go with the chocolate theme somehow. You could think about chocolate flavours like mint chocolate, chocolate strawberry, neopolitan, chocolate orange, and incorporate other colours, but always adding a bit of chocolate to your design.

The Design Team girls have really come up trumps with some stunning designs for you this month, and we hope that you will all join in the fun and create some chocolatey loveliness to share with us. Lesley has very generously offered to increase the prize for this month's winner to a £25 voucher to spend on stamps at Chocolate Baroque. All of the usual rules apply, and for those of you who are new to the blog, and as a quick reminder, I will just run through the basics for you. Our challenges are monthly, launched on the third Wednesday of every month. Please stick to the chocolate colours suggested in the above paragraph as best as you can, but you can incorporate other colours as well this month. One lucky winner will be selected by Random.org from all of the entrants who have used Chocolate Baroque stamps currently available on the website. We welcome entries incorporating other stamps and images, but they will not be eligible for the prize. All entries will have a 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 will close at 12.00 p.m. on Tuesday 16th August 2016, and the winner will be announced on Wednesday 24th August 2016. Here are some projects for your inspiration from the Design Team.

Starting off your Chocoloate fix is a stunning tag book from Debbie, combining rich colours, a beautiful combinarion of stamps, and a blend of those all important, light milk and dark chocolate colours. The cover looks just like a chocolate box with its rich purple colour and gold embossimg:
Next up comes her cherry and chocolate tag, a rich coloured background with a warm melted chocolate feel, and lovely cherries scattered all over the place, and a central bunch of cherries on a gold splattered disc.
Two little chocolate rapberry tags are hiding behind, with a white chocolate coating:
Then comes chocolate and strawberry, with a bee patterned tag:
Chocolate orange with this delightful ombre tag:

A sumptuous white chocolate and lemon tag is next:
Finally a Mint, Orange Chocolate finale:
This tag book is full of colour and sure to whet your appetite for all things chocolate, Chocolate Baroque, that is! Thanks Debbie!

Here is a delightful tag from Magda, using gesso for texture on her tag, and a piece of gelli plate printing where she has stamped her image.
Asha has created a cute card using one of our very useful Owl Edges rubber stamps. Her choice of colours are perfect for the Chocolate theme:
Finally we have two cards from Anne. The first, a lovely Chocolate mint offering, using the Crackle Rose stamp:
The second, a variation on the first card, a stunning twisted easel card, with a chocolate bar as the stopper. Chocolates and Roses make the perfect gift, don't they? She has used one of Lesley's downloads, previously offered on the challenge blog to create this card, incorporating some of the elements into the card in such a clever way:





Thank you so much girls for your chocolate inspired inspiration. We hope that these projects will encourage you to get your thinking caps on and create something yourselves and join in with our Anniversary challenge.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our challenge blog team. You can get in touch by sending a private message. Details are at the end of this blog post below the comments section. We hope that you will enjoy the new challenge, and look forward to seeing your projects, Judith xx




Wednesday 13 July 2016

Challenge 24, Week Five

Hello everyone, and welcome to our final week of the current challenge on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you for your lovely comments throughout the month, we look forward to reading what you say, and appreciate your support so much.

This week, we are taking a look at some of the entries that we have received for the current challenge, and showcasing a few of them on the blog. We also have a bit of a taster about the next challenge, so be sure to read to the end of the post!

We have had some fabulous entries from you this month, and hope that you have enjoyed using the colours in the current colour swatch. Well done if those colours have taken you outside your comfort zone, and allowed you to create something that you would not normally consider. We hope that you enjoy the selection of projects that we have chosen to share with you.

Partial stamping of one of our clear heart stamps on this card, makes a great design on the three panels.
Penny has created a fabulous sky for her entry:
Kate's soft colouring has created a beautiful backdrop for the musical themed stamps:

Carole has used one of our newest stamps in the gorgeous card:
Shelagh has created a beautiful blended background for the butterfly lady, adding decoupage and acetate for interest:
Thank you ladies for your beautiful entries, they show some fabulous techniques and are very inspirational. Thank you to everyone else who has entered the challenge this month, and we hope to see lots more entries from you before the deadline next week. There is still plenty of time to enter, and you can find a link in this post. If you have any questions regarding the challenges, 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.

Next week sees the start of Challenge Twenty-Five, and our second Anniversary! It seems incredible to think that we have been running for two years, and we have enjoyed the adventure so much. The creative journey, working with the beautiful colour swatches and interacting with you, our viewers, has been a truly rewarding experience. We hope that we have inspired you with our projects, our tips and tutorials, and that you will continue joining us for our weekly spot of colourful fun and crafting as we go into the next year.

Challenge Twenty Five will be a little bit different to the previous challenges, we do not want to spoil the surprise, but we hope that you will join in the fun next month- there will be prizes! The girls have been pulling out the stops to create some extra special projects for you, and we hope that you will pop in to join us with our celebrations.

See you next week!






Wednesday 6 July 2016

Challenge 24, Week Four

Hello everyone, and welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you for the wonderful entries that have been coming in for the challenge so far. We hope that you are enjoying the current colour scheme and the inspiration provided by the Design Team each week for you. We hope that if you have not entered already, you will take part, and share in the creative fun this month. You can add your project to the link in this post.

We have some more super inspiration from the Design Team this week. Vronnie has created two beautiful cards using Brushos for her backgrounds:

Anne's has created a dramatic sky for her card adding foliage from the Wild Meadow stamp set.
Magda has created a musical tag, with toning ribbon:
Thank you so much girls for your projects this week, we hope that they will inspire you to join in with the challenge and create something yourselves.

We are taking the opportunity to meet another member of our Design Team this week, and on this occasion, it is Zoe's turn to talk a little bit about herself, so that you can get to know her a little bit better.

Hello, I'm Zoe. I live in a lovely Dickensian seaside town called Broadstairs on the South East coast in Kent. I'm 54 and married to Steve, have a Daughter Ashley, who is 32 and lives in Canada. We have an adorable Shih Tzu called Ernie, he's now 11 years old.
I've been a Foster carer for eight years now and mostly look after babies. I owned and managed my own Hair Salon for twenty years previously. Having been in the industry for over thirty years, I decided I needed a new direction, plus my back and neck suffered as a result of the standing in odd positions for so long. Although carrying babies around day and night isn't exactly a walk in the park for my back either, hahaha!
My Great Nan taught me to knit when I was five, and I've dabbled all my life with various projects involving mostly paper and card. I think that I was born with a pair of scissors in my hand!
I've always been creative and have a good eye for colour and composition. I started seriously card making eighteen years ago, starting of course with a card kit as a gift, and just went from there. Stamping, stencils and masks are my real passion, and I love creating my own backgrounds and techniques using inks, paints and general messy stuff, I like mixed media too. I'm quite fickle when it comes to techniques, styles and colours, I get bored easily, and so my styles change daily. I've always loved blues and greens, but I love ALL colours really, I favour bright rather than pastel shades.
I'm a relatively new member to the Chocolate Baroque DT (family) and I'm loving it, such an honour to use such wonderful and unique stamps and work with such amazingly talented and dedicated team mates.

Zoe has made a card especially for this post, showing a technique that she enjoys.
She has used:
Butterfly Dreams stamp set
Decadent Brocade stamp set
Mica spray inks in three colours
Rose dies
Silver glitter glue gel
White paint pen
Fine-tipped marker pen

She started by spraying the three colours, letting them run and merge. She scrumpled up a piece of cling film and wrapped up the background, only leaving it for about ten minutes. If you leave it for too long, the cling film will stick to the background. She removed the cling film, and then finished drying the background with a heat tool. This reveals little crinkles of shimmer on top of the colours, it is subtle, but pretty.

Using Versafine Smoky Gray Ink, she stamped the background using the flourish from Butterfly Dreams, and the floral flourish from Decadent Brocade. She heat set the background and added some highlights with a white paint pen.

She cut the die cut shapes, and coloured the top layers of the leaves and roses with the same colour spray mica inks as before, and dried them with the heat tool. She then stamped the beautiful butterfly from the Butterfly Dreams set using Versafine Onyx Black ink. She coloured the image using a turquoise and blue ink.
She stamped the sentiment from the stamp set, added the butterfly using a hot glue gun for added dimension, and glued the leaves and roses into place. She drew the butterfly antennae using a fine-tipped marker pen, and added some silver glitter glue gel to the rose centres and a few extra dots here and there.

Thank you Zoe, it was lovely to hear about you, and to see your lovely project. We would love to know what your favourite colour combinations are, so do leave a comment in the comments section.

We will be back next week with another post, more projects for you to see, and some exciting news ;) Don't forget if you have any questions, and cannot see 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.