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Issue 20 August 25th 2014

This week's original email was a team effort by myself and Lesley Wharton, based on a card making class she taught at the time.

This year, it is a lovely coincidence that Lesley and her husband are visiting us for the August bank holiday weekend, so we decided we would both have a go at making a new piece inspired by this week's tutorial.

Contents

What you will need

Masking tissue
Circle dies or circle cutter
Distress inkpads: Shaded Lilac, Picked Raspberry, Peacock Feathers
Stencil brush
Versafine inkpad: Onyx Black
White Sharpie marker
Distress markers

Step by Step

Choose three circle dies of various sizes.

Cut each one from the centre of a large piece of thin card. These are the stencils you will use to create the coloured circles on your card. Keep the cut out circles (you will need the largest one later).

The largest circle will be central on your card. Place the die on your card to judge where to place the stencil and hold in place with a piece of masking tape. Position the stencil over the die and tape down on one side.

Remove the die and using the masking tape as a hinge, flip the stencil out of the way while you position the smallest stencil on the card.

The composition of the circles is up to you - you might want your circles to overlap a lot, or just a little. Once you have your small circle stencil in place, hold down with tape.

Swirl colour through the hole with a large stencil brush. Tap it onto the inkpad to pick up colour and swirl it from the outside in towards the centre.

Remove the mask once you have the depth of colour you want and repeat with the second circle.

Flip the large circle stencil back into place and stencil your third colour through the hole.

This final circle may show some overlapping colour from the other two, but you can minimise that by putting plenty of ink down.

Cover the large circle with the die cut you saved earlier.

Stipple the same colour ink around the outside edge of the circle to create a soft halo.

You may find switching to a smaller stencil brush helps with this final stage.

The close ups

Once you have your basic circle composition finished, you can choose a suitable stamp for the centrepiece. Trees and lollipop shaped flowers look great framed by a circle, or try a bold text stamp.

For this card, I stamped the flower from Breath of Spring, then used a white Sharpie paint pen and blender pen to add white to colour it. The waterbased paint mixed with the distress ink to create pretty pink shading. The leaves and stem are coloured with Distress markers.

Here is a similar card I made last year without the fuzzy halo around the circle, but which uses a mix of colours blended through the circle stencil. The sentiment is from Artistic Expressions.

2014 Artwork

Lesley and I were not paying attention to each other while making these cards so we were both amazed at the similarities between the two!

"Bee" Happy by Glenda - I've used Honey Bee and Punky Romance with Memento inkpads in various shades of yellow. More details will follow on my blog later this week (glendawaterworth.com)

Be Happy by Lesley. Lesley has used Key to my Dreams stamp set and Happy Words and Birds clear stamp set and she will be blogging about this later this week too (thepaperengineer.blogspot.com).

Where to buy

Materials used in this project are available online at

www.chocolatebaroque.com

The back story

I originally ran this series in 2013 and this time round, I am using my own tutorials to inspire me to create a new piece of artwork to share with you each week.

I love to create and I am also passionate about inspiring and enabling others to create too. I hope that this email gets your mojo working and you feel motivated to get into your crafty space and have a go.

Glenda

PS - if your creation features Chocolate Baroque stamps, then why not share on our Facebook Group or our wonderful private forum. In both places you will find a wonderful community of like minded Chocolate Baroque fans.