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

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Challenge 13, Week Five and Another Prize!

Hello everyone, and welcome to our final week of Challenge Thirteen. Thank you for all of your lovely comments throughout our Anniversary month, we really appreciate your support. As a final gift this month, we have a prize to give one of our commenters from across the month. The winner was drawn by Random.org, and the lucky recipient is Kate. Congratulations Kate, we hope that you enjoy your prize. Please contact Lesley at her usual email address: lesley@chocolatebaroque.com so that we can send your prize out to you.

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. As always, we have had a diverse range of stamps and styles cropping up, and it has been hard to choose which projects to feature. Here are a few that we would like to mention:

Barbara has used one of our Year of Stamping stamps to create a watery card full of colour:

 

Carole has created a lovely background using one of our Floral Edges stamps, perfect for the Patchwork Butterfly to perch upon:

Kate's background is a perfect match for her main stamp, great use of the two stamps together:

Finally, Kristiina demonstrates a very clever slate technique on her card, showing the stamps off against a dramatic black background:

Thank you to everyone who entered this month, and we hope to see lots more entries from you before the challenge deadline next week. There is still plenty of time to enter, and you can find the link in this post. Remember, you stand the chance of winning a £15 voucher, details of which can be found on the How it Works tab at the top of this page. We will be back next week with a brand new challenge. 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 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