Chocolate Baroque Guest DT Post

A few weeks ago I was offered the opportunity of doing a Guest DT post for the Chocolate Baroque DT blog, which blew me away. Also made me panic somewhat I must admit. What to do? So many talented crafters  on their site quite makes you feel the pressure,lol.
This was my project, I decided to stick with what you know, a card, but I did add extra pressure on myself with colouring the image. All my regular visitors know how I feel about my colouring, but even I was quite pleased with the finished result.

This was actually the second image I coloured, as I tried first stamping onto a piece of mountboard, as I had an idea to add some magnetic photo paper to the back to turn it into a removable fridge magnet, but the Promarkers tended to bleed badly on the mountboard, so I reverted to normal card for the image.

One of the wonderful things about Glenda's stamps is how beautifully they mix and match, you are never limited to working just with the stamps in a particular set. For this project, I’ve used stamps from four different Chocolate Baroque sets: Serenity, Gothic Fragments, Floral Edges and Words of Wisdom. 

I began by taking a piece of white card roughly 6” x 6”.  I sprayed it with a mix of blue and purple; I mixed Distress Re-inkers (Salty Ocean and Seedless Preserves) with water in mini misters, but any spray inks will do the job. After spraying, I blotted the paper with kitchen towel, which left a lovely muted background.

Now I overstamped this piece with a couple of stamps from the Gothic Fragments, one of the Floral Edges and the Wisteria branch from Serenity. So the overstamping stayed soft to match the background, they were all stamped in Salty Ocean, and each time I stamped the image onto scrap before stamping on my background, giving me a paler second generation image.  I sprayed a second piece, roughly 3” x 6”, in the same way, then overstamped with another of the Gothic Fragments, finally inking up the Old English Prayer from the Words of Wisdom set in Versafine Majestic Blue and stamping that over the top.

Next I took another piece of white card, and stamped the Buddha image from Serenity in Memento Tuxedo Black, as I was going to colour it with Promarkers.  Using the ink left on the stamp, I also stamped a post-it note mask for the image. I trimmed the mask on the lines, so I would not get a ‘halo’ effect around my image. The post it mask was placed over the top, so that I could add colour to the ‘sky’ around the image, using Adirondack inks in Aqua, Stonewashed, Sailboat Blue, and just a touch of Denim at the edges, with a Colorbox Stylus tool. You can do this with sponges, an ink applicator or brushes, whatever your preferred method is. The sky took up roughly 2/3 of the image, so the bottom third was coloured for grass, again with Adirondacks in Willow, Citrus and a little Lettuce. Any of these inks can be swapped for whatever dye based inkpads you may have.

After this was totally dry, I added colour to the image using markers. The final touch was to add gilding flakes to the shrine the Buddha is sitting inside, and to the adornment on the Buddha's head. This I did by using a Versamark pen, Judikins Sticky Stuff embossing powder and gilding flakes.The background sheet, Buddha and the Prayer were each matted onto dark blue card.

For my base card, I cut two sheets of dark Grey Metallic card to 9”x 7 1/2”. Measuring in 1 1/2” from one short edge on each sheet, I scored a line down the card. At this point I also cut two sheets of white copy paper to make an insert for the greeting later, always wise when using a dark card base. Sandwiching the two white sheets between the two pieces of card, I punched two holes in the narrow section that had been scored. Now I threaded fibres through these holes, and tied together.  You could use twine/ribbon/string,  whatever you like. My ‘fibres’ are actually ‘eyelash wool’. I added a pale purple and pale blue brad top and bottom of the spine to secure it firmly.

Now the background sheet was stuck to the card front using double sided tape, and the Buddha image mounted on top of that, again with tape.  I added little foam pads to the back of the Prayer, to give a little dimension, and mounted it at an angle partly over the Buddha image.The final little embellishment I spotted lying on my desk- a little punched dragonfly. I had some scraps from a project a few weeks ago, using gilding flakes on black card, and had punched a few dragonflies and butterflies from the last bits. I added him with a little blob of

silicone glue.

 

 Supplies:

 Chocolate Baroque stamps:Serenity, Gothic Fragments, Words of Wisdom and Floral Edges.

 DI ink refills Seedless Preserves and Salty Ocean

DI Inkpads Salty Ocean and Seedless Preserves

Adirondacks Aqua, Stonewashed, Sailboat Blue and Denim, Willow, Citrus and Lettuce.

Memento Tuxedo Black 

Versafine Majestic Blue 

 Sticky Stuff embossing powder

 Versamark or embosssing pen

Gilding Flakes

 Markers of choice.