Loving the New Sparkling Trees Christmas Stamps from Chocolate Baroque

I just love the Sparkling Trees stamp set, especially the reindeer. I have given instructions on how to create a mirror image stamp of the reindeer – so that you can have 2 facing each other on your design.

Materials

• :Sparkling Trees and Christmas Candlelight stamp sets
• Smooth cream and mid brown card
• Adhesive, 3D gel glue, foam pads
• Inkpads: Versamark, Versafine (Black Onyx), and brown dye based ink
• Distress Ink (Gathered Twigs and Peeled Paint)
• White gel pen, fine tipped brown and green markers, green glitter gel pen
• Polychromos pencil  (dark brown and green)
• Embossing powder – Glitter in white base, and WOW Pepper (Earthtones)
• Clear glitter glue, Glossy Accents (Ranger), and greenish gold PVA pearls
• Pricking tool or needle
• Gold coloured faux gems, green velvet ribbon and brown organza bow

How to make it:

1. Make a top folded card base with cream card to give approx. A5 (14.5 X 21cm) finished size (landscape). Prick a border around the front edge and add faux stitching with brown pen. Stamp the fir tree branch with brown ink and enhance the edges with green Distress Ink.
2. Cut a large circle from cream card approx. 8” (20cm) diameter and ink the edges with brown Distress Ink. Glue to the card front. Glue on the ribbon strip and gems.
3. Cut a slightly smaller circle from brown card approx. 7” (18cm) across. Stamp the trees, stars and snowflakes with Versamark and heat emboss with glitter powder. Tip: Heating the powder from underneath will prevent all the glitter flying off before it embeds into the molten powder. Draw the ‘landscape’ and faux stitched border with white gel pen. Colour the central star with green pen. Add glitter glue to give extra sparkle. Mount onto card front with foam pads.
4. Stamp the Christmas tree onto cream card with Versamark and heat emboss with brown powder. Colour the baubles with green glitter marker and green pencil. Add highlights with white gel pen to make them look 3D. Add Glossy Accents to make them shine. When dry cut out the tree and mount onto the card with 3D gel. Add the organza bow.
5. Stamp the sentiment onto cream card with Versafine. Colour with pencils and coat with Glossy Accents. Tip: Some inks and pens will bleed when covered with Glossy Accents – Versafine and pencil are ok. When dry cut out and mount onto card.
6. To stamp the reindeer I used brown dye based ink. To make the reverse mirror image stamp I made a ‘stamp transfer surface’ by sticking a piece of cling mounting foam to acetate. The cling side then sticks to your acrylic block giving an acetate surface to stamp from. Ink up the stamp and stamp onto the acetate surface, then transfer the image onto the paper from the acetate. Hope that this makes sense. The image will not be as sharp or strong as the direct stamping. Use the fine tipped brown marker to go over and touch up the image.
7. Colour the mirror imaged reindeer with brown pencils, cut out and mount with 3D gel. Finish the card with PVA pearls.

I have been playing alongside the Chocolate Baroque Monthly Challenge

Have you seen the Monthly Challenge from Chocolate Baroque? Each month they post an inspirational picture and colour scheme.  Why not join in the fun and you could win a voucher to spend on their lovely stamps.

I had so much fun mixing and matching stamps from my stash and really enjoyed working with colours that I normally would not have chosen.

Materials:

Stamps from Autumn Hedgerow, Nature Table, Underwater Kingdom, Nature Fragments, Texture Fragments and Abstract Fragments sets.

White and dark green card

WOW embossing powder – Earthtone Grape

Pens: Watercolour, alcohol ink, gel pens in gold and white, fine tipped markers in brown and dark green.

Inkpads: Dark brown Dye based, Distress inks – Scattered Straw, Gathered Twigs, Peeled Paint, Dusty Concord.

How to Make:

Stamp and heat emboss the foreground rocks. Mask and stamp the foreground and brick textures with Distress Ink. Tip: Create masks by stamping on thin copy paper and cutting out.

Apply a thin wash of water to soften the wall texture at the edges around the central area, and on the bottom ground texture. Add dots of watercolour and Distress Ink to suggest foliage and flowers. Paint green mossy bits on the brickwork and foreground. Fully dry before the next stage (as in the picture below).

Multicolour stamp the flowers using watercolour pens on specific areas of the stamp. Stamp the twigs with dye ink. Dot with watercolour to give extra foliage.

Use fine tipped markers to draw additional details and make the rocks 3D. Colour the rocks with alcohol pens, watercolour and Distress Inks. Finally add a few highlights with the gold and white gel pens.

Thread Wrapped Buttons

I followed instructions from Gina Barrett’s (Gina-B Silkworks) Button Making DVDs. So much fun making these and her instructions are brilliant.

I recycled a bit of faded lace to create the pincushion and coloured it with my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers to coordinate with my vibrant thread colours, and made a pretty scissor keeper to match.

These were my first attempts. Perfect for adding to embroidery projects or to bags. Think that I will be making a few more of these.

Art Clay Silver Leaves

My first attempts at using Art Clay Silver. So pleased with the results and really very easy to do and no special firing kiln needed.

How it was done

Simply coat real leaves with Art Clay Silver paste and leave to dry. Coating the backs gives the best texture of the veins.

Fire the leaves on the cooker ring.

After firing scrub with a wire brush to remove deposits.

They look lovely at this stage.

Treat with liver of sulphur to patina.

Scrub with wire brush and burnish with a steel burnishing tool to bring out the shine. The sulphur treatment has enhanced the leaf veins.

Now I will have to create a jewellery design to incorporate my lovely leaves.

Nordic Style Christmas Card–Designed for Chocolate Baroque

 

So excited to share my first design created for Chocolate Baroque.

Hope that you like this Nordic styled card. I just love the reindeer – a bit fiddly to cut out but well worth the effort.

Materials

• Sparkling Trees and Christmas Candlelight stamp sets
• Smooth pale blue card, small piece white card, Kraft Card
• Adhesive, 3D gel glue, foam pads
• Inkpads: Versamark, Versafine (Black Onyx), Distress Ink (Gathered Twigs)
• White gel pen, Polychromos pencil (dark brown), Soft pencil and eraser
• WOW embossing powder - Superfine Metallic Gold Rich
• Clear glitter glue, gold glitter glue, Glossy Accents (Ranger), and white PVA pearls
• Sharp pricking tool or needle

How to make it

1. Make a side folded card base with Kraft Card to give approx. 6” X 7.5” (15 X 19cm) finished size (portrait). Prick a border around the edge and add faux stitching with white gel pen.
2. Cut a large circle approx. 5.5” (14cm), and smaller circle approx. 2.75” (7cm) diameter from blue card. Stamp the smaller circle with the stars stamp, and the larger with snowflakes, using Versamark and heat emboss with gold powder. Enhance the circle edges with Distress Ink and add dots of clear and gold glitter glue for sparkle. [Stamping onto the larger circle: draw guidelines to divide into 8 equal sections and stamp the larger snowflake around the edge, fill in with the smaller stamp off the edge – erase guidelines after stamping]. Glue the larger circle and mount the smaller circle with foam, onto the card front. Draw more faux stitching lines around the circle.
3. Stamp the fir tree branch with Versamark, 3 times onto blue card. Cut out and add dots of clear glitter glue. Mount onto card front with 3D gel glue. Draw ‘landscape’ lines with white gel pen and add a bit more glitter sparkle.
4. Stamp the sentiment onto Kraft Card, and the reindeer onto white card, with Versafine. Colour with brown pencil and the lettering with white gel pen. Add Glossy Accents to both, cut out when dry and glue to card with 3D gel. Finish the card with PVA pearls around the large circle.

Peacock Card using wood carved printing block

Here is a card that I made for my beautiful sister.

I had fun making this one with inky backgrounds and mica paints for colouring – and of course a bit of glitter. The main peacock and background layer stamps are wooden carved stamps from Colouricous. The sentiment and die cut flowers are from Heartfelt Creations (Sentiment from Bold Vintage Floret Background set, Flowers from Sun Kissed Fleur stamps and die sets).

Fairy Princess Castle Card

This one was created for a little friend for her 5th Birthday.

This was so much fun to create. The main castle shapes were cut on the Silhouette Cameo using a cutting file from the Silhouette Store. The  letters and sentiment were digitised and created in the design software. I then further embellished the castle with die cuts – branches (Spellbinders Blossom), Birds (Sissix), Daisy border (Sheena Douglass), small flowers and leaves from a Forsythia die (Susan’s Garden). A bucket of glitter … et voila!