Flower Power and Crafting Live tickets to give away

Morning Peeps, it's Saturday so that means it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week Tracy has chosen the them of 'Flower Power', one I think we all enjoy. Our sponsor is Tattered Lace and there are three prizes to be won. 

It's been a bit of an off  week here, too hot to craft, plus I've not felt too good and will be pleased to get my next surgery over and done with. And we have one very poorly Holly. When a lab doesn't eat you know something is wrong, a trip to the vet, bloods and scans and a diagnosis of a Pyometra and Panreatitis. She had a big operation on Tuesday and seems to be doing OK and is now eating again, but lost a whopping 1.1kg in that short time. Poop baby, so much to go wrong when she is only four.

Back to craft and I have some tickets to give away to Crafting Live in Doncaster on 15th/16th July. I realise distance means not everyone can get there but it you can and would like tickets please leave me a comment on this post, if there are several of you I will draw a name and be in touch.

The card above is one of my samples for a recent Create and Craft TV show featuring a new release from TL's Fleurs Flower Forming range. The flowers were made from card coloured with Dylusions and Mica Spray and then cut and formed using the Fleurs system. The DP is from stash although I have no idea of the make, the sentiment is Rate Earth and I tucked some TL Ivy around the flowers.

Happy weekend all and do pop over to the challenge blog to see all the lovely flowers on display from my teamies.

More Butterflies

Good morning Peeps, today it's my turn to post on the Chocolate Baroque blog, my shares are all samples from the recent Hochanda TV show which was all about the most beautiful Butterfly stamps and stencils, they were so popular that they sold out twice.

If you would like more details of the stamps and techniques I used please pop over the the blog here. The stamps I have used are CB Just Butterflies, CB Words to Dazzle and Sparkle, CB Patchwork Butterfly, CB Pretty Poppies and CB Words of Love. You will find them all by following my links to the Chocolate Baroque store.

I hope you all have a lovely sunny day and my thanks for your visit today.

Birthday Boy

Morning Peeps, it's Saturday so that means it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week it's Wendy's son's Birthday and she has chosen the theme of 'Birthday Boy' and she is giving a lovely stamp set to this weeks winner.

I created the background with masks and Pan Pastels then stamped the scene using stamps from Chocolate Baroque's Kingfisher collection. I stamped and coloured the Kingfisher a second time and decoupaged him.

I also have my mid month share for Penny Black and More, a Pan Pastel background again, masking to create the panel and stamped with the beautiful PB Hollyhock which I coloured softly with pencils along with PB Aspire and PB Dream sentiment.

I do hope you will join us his week at Allsorts and if you have not already done so Penny Black and More as well, please do pop over to the challenge blogs to see the inspiration on offer from my team mates.

May your star shine

Good morning Peeps, just popping in with this months 15 minute cards for today's Chocolate Baroque post over on the DT blog.

These are all cards made for last months Butterfly shows on Hochanda TV, the beautiful stamps were so popular which is no surprise as most of us love our Butterflies.

The card at the top is such a simple one, the Butterfly was stamped with DI's, cut out and the coluor dragged out then covered with Glossy Accents and fixed onto a piece of hessian matted onto the base card. The sentiment stamped with sepia archival and fixed with s twine bow.  As the Butterfly and tag were made from snippets I am popping over to the Snippets Playground with this one.

Using a Butterfly from the new stencils I applied texture paste onto an Oxide Ink background, sprinkled gold mica powder over the wet paste, heated with a heat gun and 'squished'.......another technical term........the bubbles then left to dry.

This one also uses one of the new stencils which I laid onto a piece of watercolour card, spritzed with Dylusions then randomly stamped Butterflies, stamping one further one, cutting out and mounting onto the base along with some ribbon and a button. 

This one has a quick Pan Pastel background and a masked sun, then using DI's stamped with flowers and Butterflies.

Many thanks for taking a peek today.

Country Manor

Morning Peeps, it's Saturday so that means it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week Tracy Mouse would like us to use 'At least two dies' on our artwork Our sponsor is Marianne Designs.

My card uses several Tattered Lace dies from the Country Manor collection which were launched on Create and Craft TV a few weeks ago. I created a sun ray background with masks and Pan Pastels, coloured the lady to coordinate with the frame, Ivy and sentiment which are all from the same collection and finished with a double bow.

Happy weekend all and please do pop over to the challenge blog to see the inspiration from my teamies.

Butterfly Dream

Morning Peeps, today I can share my news and I am so very thrilled to tell you that I am now a full time member of the Chocolate Baroque team. I have been doing GDT spots for a couple of years and since Lesley took CB to Hochanda I have been part of the TV design team and now I am going to have even more opportunities to play with CB's wonderful stamps, so I am well chuffed. 

I have two cards to share with you, the first you will find over at the CB Challenge blog and the second on the DT blog and is one of the samples made for the recent Hochanda One Day Special shows which was all about Butterflies, the stamps were such a success that they sold out twice.

The card at the top of this post follows the lovely colour palette from the challenge and the base has been created with Distress Oxide Inks Wilted Violet and Cracked Pistachio, probably my favourite colours from the Oxide range.

Using black Archival Ink I stamped the focal image from CB Pretty Poppies and sentiment from CB Words of Inspiration and also stamped the large Butterfly a second time and cut out. I bleached out the colour from the focal image and then coloured in with the same distress inks.

To add some interest to the background I used CB Large Crackle Background and the harlequin stamp from CB Decorative Edges stamping just parts of the images randomly and finally using the lid of an embossing powder pot as a stamp added some circles. Finally I coloured the extra Butterfly and placed under the sentiment.

My second card is one of my samples from the recent Hochanda shows which was all about beautiful Butterflies. My starting point was a square of 600gsm Fabriano painted with a thin layer of Gesso, then Oxide inks Wilted Violet and Vintage Photo followed by a mask and texture paste to create the 'flight' of the Butterfly. When dry I replaced the mask to colour using the same inks.

Next I randomly stamped around the edges with CB Large Crackle Background using the same DI and inked a few Butterflies using one of the new CB Butterfly masks. I stamped the large Butterfly from CB Patchwork Butterfly set, coloured with the same Oxide inks, cut out and fixed to the base card. The sentiment is from CB Pretty Poppies set ans finally I added some pearls to the Butterflies thorax and wire antenna.

I wold like to enter this one into the current Butterfly Challenge where the theme is of course Butterflies plus layers and/or the colour cream. Not much cream in this one but hoping there are sufficient layers with the Butterfly ans sentiment.

Thank you so much for visiting and hope your day is a good one.

Lanterns and blossoms

It's time for our challenges at Stamping Sensations and Penny Black and More where our themes are 'Use your Favourite Stamp' and 'Anything Goes'. As always there are wonderful prizes to be won at both.

June marks seven years since Penny Black and More started and my how those years have flown by and I am so pleased to say that many of the current Design Team have been there since the start. To celebrate we have a special prize of some really classic Penny Black stamps, you will find out more over at the challenge blog.

The new Penny Black Poetic collection are now available in the UK from Crafts U Love so I had to have a little indulgence and have used one of them called Flower Lanterns for my card this month. Using DI I 'blobbed'..........technical term...........some watery colour onto a piece of Fabriano, dried and then using distress markers direct to stamp and spritzing liberally with water before stamping the focal image. The sentiment is also PB and using the same colour DI as the background and a stencil added some pattern here and there.

It's another PB stamp for my Stamping Sensations creation, this one is called Magnolia Rhapsody and stamped using exactly the same process as my card above. The sentiment is from Visible Image sentiment and a real favourite and like the PB one above gets a regular inking. A few pearls and matted onto coordinating cardstock.

I really hope you will join us this month, as always we have some super prizes to be won.

Christmas in June

Morning Peeps, it's Saturday so that means it's time for our new challenge at Allsorts and this week Susan is asking us to start thinking about those Christmas cards with "Christmas in June". Our sponsor is Digistamp Boutique and Tattered Lace.

Thanks for your kind wishes after my two surgeries, I'm on the mend, one went well, the other not so much so and need another in a few weeks, C'est la vie !

My top card has Poinsettias made using the Tattered Lace Flower Forming system which was released on Create and Craft TV earlier this year, the dies for these flowers are from the most recent release, edged with gold pen and arranged onto some DP along with some Ivy cut from gold card and a TL die. The sentiment is Penny Black. I tend to make up a batch of flowers in different colours, it's the perfect way to use up scraps and then they are ready for a quick card, rather like this one. So you can probably guess where this one is going, yep right on over to the Snippets Playground.

My second card uses Holly Tree from Digistamp Boutique, it makes a nice quick card which I kept very simple as I think the image needs little more than colouring which I did with Spectrum Sparkle Pens, mats cut from TL Pin Dot frames and a double bow to the side.

Have a good weekend all.