Final Chocolate Baroque Guest DT make for this month.

Hi everyone,

Crikey where did this month go?  What with grandchildren staying over and Guest DT spots over on the fabulous Chocolate Baroque DT Blog it's gone by in a flash!  I'm scheduling this post between sleepovers by my little people and have to make the most of it as visits are few once school resumes in two weeks time.

Today I am sharing my final makes over on the Chocolate Baroque DT Blog using the beautiful stamp sets Christmas Candlelight and Sparkling Trees.  They definitely won't be my last make with these gorgeous stamps though as there are several I haven't used yet so their potential still has a long way to go.  My first card today still has lots of white space but couldn't be called simple I don't think, lol!

 

I took an A5 white card base and lightly drew in pencil around the outside of a circle die, taking it slightly off the edge.  I placed a strip of masking tape down the right edge of the card so that I was going to be left with a clean 0.5 cm narrow border.  I then inked up the reindeer with Sepia Archival Ink and stamped him to the top of the circle, followed by the tops of the trees using Black Archival Ink. 

I then cut a piece of white card slightly smaller than the card base to give a 0.5 cm border, placed it over the base and lightly marked where the die needed to cut.  I then stamped the three trees in the bottom left corner using Black Archival Ink.

I created a mask of the trees by stamping on a post-it note and a rough mask to create hills from torn copy paper.  I then used Distress Inks and brushes to give a hint of background hills both in the left corner and also behind the tree tops in the circle.

I watercoloured all the images with Distress Inks and added some Diamond Stickles to the trees and the reindeers antlers with a damp brush. (I only like a hint of glitter ;D). 

I stamped the greeting then 'rolled' the edges of the top layer on my scoreboard and gave it a finished look by going round with a gold Sakura Pen-Touch pen.  Finally I attached this layer to the base card with 3D foam.

The lovely reindeer has a Red Stickles nose!

My second card uses a 10 cm wide x 21 cm tall tentfold card base.  Because I make a lot of square cards I get quite a few offcuts this size when I'm making my card bases.

All the stamps used on this card come from the Christmas Candlelight set.  First of all I streaked ink direct from an Evergreen Bough Distress Inkpad from the fold at the top.  I then stamped the fir cone branch using Black Archival Ink followed by the lovely lantern. 

I used Distress Inks to watercolour the images except for the lantern where I used a metallic Viva Precious Metal paint.  It wasn't quite as translucent as I'd hoped so I went over the lines of the image with a very fine black pen. 



I stamped the Merry Xmas banner on separate card, coloured it, cut it out and attached it with 3D foam pads.

 

I have really enjoyed using these beautiful, finely detailed stamps to kick start my Christmas card makes this year and there are many more ideas still floating around in my head.  Do drop by the Chocolate Baroque DT Blog as there are some absolutely gorgeous ideas being posted by the Design Team.

Hugs
Lesley  Xx