Final CB makes for TV show!

Hello there - I know I know - I've been overdosing on Chocolate Baroque but I promise these are the last show samples I am logging here!!!

this one is an A4 canvas - I worked with brushos...love the colours on this.

and finally a very simple card - a band of distress inks and then black inking over the top.

No more now - I promise!!!

Big hugs

Rachel x

more CB makes

Hello there - hope I'm not boring you with these Chocolate Baroque show makes - three more cards that I made to share with you today - the first one is my favourite! Hope you like them!

Brushos really are magic! Lots of fun here!!!

More brushos but also stamps and stencils and distress inks too!

Stamps and painting with luscious powders here....

Have a great day! 

Big hugs rachel xx

Chocolate Baroque Box

Hello lovelies! I do hope you enjoyed the shows yesterday - I also hope you spotted this box - I loved making this sample - lots of fun!

The lady stamp is the obvious addition from chocolate baroque - I coloured her with distress pens and waited to add her to the box. The box was created by first sticking numerous items onto the lid and then painting everything in black gesso. Once dry I 'painted' everything using luscious powders mixed with water before sticking the picture of the lady on too. I tried to match the colours with those I had chosen for the lady!

Big huggles!

Rachel x

Chocolate Baroque one day special

Hello hello! Did you check out the one day special that launched from chocolate baroque on Hochanda last night? If so I hope you like the stamps/stencils. I have a few samples to share with you today that I made for the shows. I hope you like them....

I created the background on this one using distress inks and the larger buildings stencil plus the crackle stamp. The main image was stamped and embossed in white and I used infusions to create the background.

This one uses the smaller of the building stencils and two of the russian doll stamps and the crackle stamps - I worked with distress inks and distress oxides to create the card.

The outline stencil was used to make this one and one of the building stamps from the russian doll set.

I do hope you enjoy the shows!

Hugs

Rachel x

Tim's feminine side

Hello there!  How are you? I hope you are well and happy. Today I have a post on the Countryview Challenges blog. The theme for the challenge this month is 'inspired by Tim Holtz'. This time I have decided to work with Tims more feminine side and have made a card for mothers day on Sunday. I am sure my mum won't see this as we are in transit just now and I suspect computers won't be on her mind when we reach our destination! So I am safe showing it here!

I have used distress inks in a variety of colours (ripe persimmon, dried marigold, wild honey, ) and two of the new stencils from Tim Holtz plus the flowers and dies to cut them. Here's my step by step....

Here I used the distress inks to create a base background and added water by spritzing and flicking.

Next I added abandoned carol through  the first layering stencil ....ornate.

and then through the next layering stencil ...floral.

Next I cut the flowers and stalks using thinlet dies. Then I stamped and coloured them using distress inks and the stampers-anonymous-tim-holtz-stamp-set---flower-garden-.

I then glued the flowers on and added the words.

I do hope you can join our challenge which you can link up to here.

Have a great day!

Hugs

Rachel xx

Clarity Cumbria makes from Saturday.

Hello lovelies! I have lots of lovely makes to share with you today from the fabulous workshop me and my girls and mum attended at Lindale on Saturday - Clarity Cumbria. We all had a fabulous time and managed to make a good job of the samples that Jo brought - but we all used different stamps from Jo - just the ideas. Penny even drew her own!

Here are my makes ....

4 Cards I am very happy with ....

This is my fave - a great good luck in your exams card I think!

Here are Lucy's makes ... I think she did brilliantly - the peacock card is my favourite and I think is the best card she has ever made!

Here are Penny's cards - she was having a penguin day! Bless her! 

I think we had lots of fun and made lots of great cards!

Have a fabulous day. Its a special day for me today - it would have been mine and Shauns wedding anniversary - I wish he had been spared so we could have shared more. I still miss him every day and always will. He was a very special man. 

Big hugs

Rachel xx

ccc: two or more patterned papers

Good morning all! Time for another Christmas card club cardset this morning. Our theme this fortnight was paperned papers. Well I'm not much of a one for using papers and I really wasn't sure where I was going to go with this one - but thankfully at Clarity Cumbria we last got a paper pad as our take home item and also lots of inspiration about using them. So I reached for my 'Northern Lights' paper pad and came up with the following funky makes - I'm rather pleased with them!

Just Tim Holtz sizzix dies, Northern lights paper pads and a little stamping too - I think they're rather effective! What do you think??? And quick - these three were made in under 40 minutes!

Hope you have a great Sunday!

Hugs

Rachel x

Coffeepot and mothers union class

Hello lovelies! How are you today? I hope you are doing well! I am good and feeling a little more relaxed now that my coffeepot and Mothers Union class/demonstrations are done. Only my samples to finish for the Chocolate Baroque show next week and a couple of DT pieces and then I can breathe easy!!! Its a good job I like to be busy!!!!

I want to show you what I actually did at coffeepot/mothers union. Coffeepot was on Monday - I gave everybody the choices of cards ...these are the samples I showed them...

The bottom sample is here in closer picture.

And this is my final sample.... the background is distress oxides and DI combined.

All stamps are chocolate baroque. Except the eggs!!! They're an old wooden stamp belonging to my lovely mum - thanks mum!

I did the same for the mothers union on Wednesday but didn't take the tulip stamps with me. I demonstrated the distress ink and stencil background, the clouds background and also showed them a shaving foam background. I then allowed then to do their own background and colour in the daffs image which I stamped for them! The average age was probably 80 - but the ladies did enjoy themselves which is wonderful. Being a church group I also gave them all diecut crosses to add if they wanted to. 

It was fun to do both classes this week - I'm glad its not every week but I did enjoy it!

Have a great day!

Hugs

Rachel x

Vintage Ad card

Good morning all! I hope you are doing ok. Today I have a vintage ad card to share with you. Its part of a card swap I'm involved with. As soon as I saw the theme I thought I would use an ad from a stamp by crafty individuals - I love this stamp! Here's the card....

I stamped then masked the image then created the background using distress inks and infusions and a stencil.

Here's a closer look. I coloured the chickens using distress inks again.

I do hope my swap partner likes this!

Hugs

Rachel x

Emi's card

Hello there! I hope you are doing ok and if not sending hugs!

Last week it was my oldest daughter Lucy's besties birthday - so I had to make a card! She's a bit crazy so I used the visible mad hatter image to make her card.

I started with a distress background and added stencilling and extra stamping. I had already stamped and masked the image. I then removed the mask and coloured the mad hatter.

I hope she wasn't offended!!!!

Have a great day!

Hugs

Rachel x

Infusions and paint mark 2

Hello there! Well I've been playing again - so much to do but I can't keep from getting mucky with paint and infusions! This time I've been playing with a new stamp set by Kay Carley that jumped in my basket at Countryview crafts too!!! Here's the results of my play...

I used watercolour cardstock and stamped the main floral image a few times. Then I used infusions in blackcurrant and spritzed. Next I added some royal blood infusions and spritzed with water again.  Onto the painty part.... I used some tinting base from decoart and mixed some of the royal blood infusions in with it - I used this to paint around the flowers. I mixed more tinting base with blackcurrant and violet and painted some of the flowers in. Lastly I did the dragonflies and the words...

I am very pleased with this - the stamps are so very pretty!

I want to enter this into the paperartsytopic-3-paints-with-infusions

and also

craftstamper take-it-make-it-challenge-march

Have a lovely day!

Big hugs

Rachel x

Powertex workshop makes

Hello lovelies! How are you? I hope you are doing good. Last wednesday and this wednesday I spent a couple of hours in Carnforth at Rowantree crafts  learning about powertex. On the first day we spent time learning about and playing with powertex and making a canvas and figure. On the second day, with it all dry, we decorated our projects.

This is the canvas .....

here's a close up... I used bronze powertex and used their paints and varnish on top. The main colour was a green colourtrix. This was really just a technique based learning exercise.

The main piece was the figure....

This one was made again using the bronze powertex and a dishcloth plus some torn pieces of teeshirt. Plus some netting.

It was great fun ruching the fabric and getting all the folds. I'm really chuffed with it and will defintely be making more stuff!!!

Have a great day!!!

Big hugs

Rachel xx

stamps and stencils distress oxides play

Good morning! I have an inspirational (I hope) post over at stamps and stencils today - it explains how I made these journal pages...

You can find the full details here.

Hugs

Rachel x

Infusions and paint

Hello there! How are you? We are good but busy. I have a whean of things to do before I head off to the southern hemisphere and yet here I am playing at paperartsy....I couldn't help myself!!! The new challenge is all about paint and infusions. I started by painting two different fresco paints onto a card - captain peacock and caribean sea. Next I added some infusions whilst the paint was still wet and spritzed with water. I dried everything off then added some grunge paste through a stencil and then added more infusions and spritzed again. Then I dried the card off and stamped the sentiment in versamark before heat setting white embossing powder.

This was lots of fun! And I like the results too!!!!

I would like to enter this into the paperartsy topic-3-paints-with-infusions.

I would also like to share with you a blog candy going on at the craftbarn

You can try to win by visiting the craftbarnblog here.

I am certainly going to enter!!!

I had a lot of fun on Sunday when I entered a beginner strongwoman competition - there were 5 events - deadlift, weight hold, clean and press, farmers walks and atlas stones. I was really pleased with my personal achievement - even though I came about 22nd out of 24. There were some seriously strong ladies there! Here's a few pics.

Have a great day!

Hugs

Rachel x

Non- traditional colours at Christmas card club

Hello there! How are you? Its come around to Christmas card club again and the theme this fortnight is non-traditional colours. I love this theme - I wish i could have made more cards - but here's what I've come up with!!!

An exercise in distress, stencils and crazy dogs!

Simple and fun! 

I do hope you like them - I do!!!

I would like to enter these into the new challenge at A vintagejourney where the theme is 'all aboard'.

Have a great day! 

Hugs Rachel x

Spring is in the air

Hello hello hello. How are you today? I hope you are doing well. I'm feeling a little low but am fighting it - looking forward to seeing my mum today!

I decided to decorate a piece of MDF that I bought when last down at Indigoblu headquarters. I used lime-marmalade paint as the base coat and decorated after that using stamps from the following sets....live-laugh-love-a5-red-rubber-stamp
wild-meadow-a5-red-rubber-stamp
plus luscious-pigment-powders-green.

Here's what I did...

I gave the whole piece a coating of the lime marmalade paint. Once dry I stamped the leaves then mixed up the green luscious with water and painted the leaves.  Next I stamped some of the flowers out on card, coloured and fussycut them. I did the same with the butterflies and dragon flies.

Then I had the fun of sticking the extra bits on - oh and diecuttting the words too.

I have this hanging in my hall - I love it! Such a blast of spring colour!!!

Hope you have a good day - whatever you're up to!

Hugs

Rachel x

Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep cheep - put a bird on it at stamps and stencils

Hello there! How are you? Another day in March and another new challenge! This time its Toni's turn to choose our theme at stamps and stencils - this is what she had to say....

One of the joys, at this time of year, is to wake up to the glorious sound of birdsong. The challenge this month is in celebration of our fine, feathered, friends. We would love to see your mixed media projects, that include at least one bird. Whether it's a  journal spread, an assemblage or card, just make sure that a little dickie bird or birds, feature somewhere. Please don't forget to include stamping, or stenciling or even both! Can't wait to see your creations!


So I decided to go ahead and have a play in my journal - using stamps and stencils mostly from Dina Wakley.

Here's my final piece and I have a step by step in photo form to share with you.

First off I used a Clarity mask, stencil brush and adirondack ink to create a cloudy sky.

Next I added some grass using meadow ink and again a stencil brush.

I used the stencil from Dina Wakley to add some birds in latte ink.

Next I stamped these scribbly birds using potting soil archival ink...

I then used distress inks and pens to colour the birds.

I added a sentiment and some more vegetation - the last thing I did was to use a posca pen to add some red paint dots around the edge.

So I hope you can join us! You can find the page to add your makes to here

Big hugs

Rachel x