Fan of peacocks

I love the extravagance an opulence of peacocks so I have tried to capture it in this card, which is a submission for the Chocolate Baroque Challenge 11.

Materials:

Card:

White Card stock A3
Watercolour paper
Scrap card
Vellum

Stamps:

Chocolate Baroque - Tangled Peacock
Chocolate Baroque - Peacock Parade
Chocolate Baroque - Peacock Fan 

Ink:

Versamark
Distress - Mowed Lawn
Memento - Grape Jelly
Memento - Angel Pink
Distress - Picked Raspberry

Embossing Powders:

Green Glitz 
Blue Glitz
Purple Glitz

Quilling
JJ Quilling Pink 3mm

Extras:
Quilling tool
Quilling board
Stencil brush
water pens
PVA Glue

Method:

1) Start by printing the Peacock parade peacock onto some scrap card to make a template for the centre piece. I made mine "egg" shaped

2) Turn the template over and draw round it in pencil cutting it out of watercolour paper. I flipped it over so that the pecil marks would be on the back

3) Stamp the peacock on your watercolour egg shaped paper using versamark and then sprinkle with the blue glitz embossing powder. Shake off excess blowing where necessary and then cure with a heat tool. When set place in a heavy book to flatten it.

4) Cut 65 strips of 3 inch quilling paper and quill into 8mm coiled circles, use a quilling board to help with the sizing and glue - leave these to dry.

5) Take the fan piece from peacock fans and load up with versamark stamp this onto the vellum and cover in blue glitz, using the heat tool to cure. Remember not to scorch the vellum, repeat until you have 5 blue pieces.

6) Load up the "feather" from tangled peacock and stamp this onto vellum using versamark. Sprinkle with purple glitz and cure with heat tool. Do this until you have 10 pieces of the purple feathers

7) Take the small leaf shaped feather from the peacock parade set and stamp this in vrsamark 6 times onto vellum, sprinkling green glitz embossing powder. Cure the powder with the heat tool.

8) Fussy cut out all the blue, purple and green pieces from the vellum paper and slightly curl the purple ones so that they have some dimension. I gentle squeezed them in half.

9) Retrieve the egg shaped watercolour stamped paper from the heavy book and then blot some of the mowed lawn ink onto the back of an acrylic block, pick up the ink from the acrylic block onto the nib of the water pen and colour and shade the peacock as per the image.

10) Add the grape jelly purple colour in the same way as the mowed lawn colouring the segments as in the image

11) Clean the acrylic block and blot some angel pink onto it, load your stencil brush with the pink, practice swirling on some scrap paper and then move the swirling so that there is a border of light pink around the peacock which is heavier towards to the edge.

12) Run the edge of the egg shape over the distress ink picked raspberry (think of the edge of the card as a knife so it is at right angles to the ink pads) and lightly coat the very edge

13) Let the peacock dry and then flatten again using heavy books

14) Take the quiled circles and using your fingers shape them into tear drops. If you use the "join" where you stuck the paper as the point of the teardrop then it gives the best results.

15) stick the blue fan pieces behind the egg shaped template as per image, next glue the image onto some A3 card, and then add the purple and green feather of the peacock tail.

16)Put the quilled teardrops as a border around the egg shape leaving space at the bottom

17) Cut the outline around the peacock tale leaving a flap at the top (this is to fold over to add the back of that card as it is a custom shape

18) Make the back of the card, using the front as a template - you can skip the blue pieces if you like - it is an "igloo" shape. Stick the back onto the folded flap you created in step 17.

Beach huts

The lovely weather has had me thinking of the British seaside and the sand and beach huts as well as fish and chips by the sea. The beach huts and bright colours make me think of summer, so I will also be submitting this to the WOW embossing challenge for June which has the brief of "Summer".

Materials:

Card:

White Cardstock

Sandpaper

Stamps:

Chocolate Baroque: Seaside Dreams

Ink:

Versamark

Embossing Powders:

Primary Lagoon regular

Primary Apple Red regular

Primary Lemon regular

Paper strps:

JJ Quilling kit pack

Method:

1. Stamp the beach huts on to the white cardstock, using the blue embossing powder shake this over the first hut and then using the yellow shake this over the last beach hut (use different scrap paper to capture the excess so you don't contaminate your colours) and use the heat tool to cure

2. Stamp the huts again, this time using the red powder to cover the middle hut, and heat emboss using the tool.

3. Cut three pieces of sandpaper that measure 5.5cm by 6.5cm, cut out the beach huts and then adhere them to the sandpaper

4. Cut 3 piece of card stock measure 7cm x 6cm, dab versamark around the edges directly from the ink pad, add blue powder to one, red to the next and yellow to the last one. This creates the backgrounds. Use the heat tool to cure the powder.

5. Matt the sandpaper huts onto the embossed backgrounds

6. Lay a strip of quilling paper horizontally behind where the matted huts will sit and adhere to the card, placing the hut over it.

Dancing Dragonflies

This is a submission for the Chocolate Baroque Challenge 11. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it!

Materials:

Card:

White Card Stock

Scrap Paper

Watercolour Paper

Inks:

Spectrum Noir Aquatints: Perfect primary

Stamps:

Chocolate Baroque - May AYOS

Ink:

Versamark
Memento Grape Jelly

Distress Picked Raspberry

Versafine Black Onyx

Pens:

Sakura stardust silver

Quilling Paper:

JJ Quilling Opal Green 3mm

Embossing Powder:

WOW Silver super fine

Method:

1) Load up the stamp with versafine black and stamp onto scrap paper, this is to be used as a template for husking the dragonfly wings.

2) Place pins around the "clear" dragon flies wings and husk using a triple wrap, do each wing individually using the opal green paper. Repeat this until you have done all the wings on all the dragonflies. (husking involves wrapping quilling paper around the pins to create a shape).

3) Once you have constructed all the wings, cut 1 and 3/4 inch strips of the opal green quilling paper and create S scrolls to fill the wings. 

4) Put all the quilled piece in a box, arranging the wings in the order on the stamp (so you don't get confused later)

5) Using versafine black load the AYOS May stamp and print onto white cardstock, once dry cut out the dotted background.

6) Get some watercolour paper and using the two blues from the perfrect primary aquatint range, apaint a background to look like water (I alternated and used water to blend), allow this to dry.

7) Once the watercoloured background is dry matt the cut out stamp on to it, colour in the background of the plain dragonflies using the silver sakura pen and start to mount the quilled dragonfly wings, I did all the wings and then added the scrolls. Make pegs (tight circles) for the bodies using the opal green.

8) Using versamark, load up the stamp and imprint onto the watercolour card and emboss using the silver powder.

9) Using water pens colour the embossed wings using the grape jelly and picked raspberry inks to colour the wings, cut them out.

10) Mount the embossed dragonflies at different heights using the decoupage foam and the quilling to create depth.

11) Use the grape jelly ink to create a border with the water pens.