Christmas Birches card created for Chocolate Baroque

Good morning. I have had some little Xmas bauble stickers in my stash for years and thought that they would be perfect hanging from the Tangled Birch for a Christmas card. Think that I will make a few more of these and get my stickers used up.

Unfortunately I had a little trouble photographing this one. It is mounted on shiny mirror card and has lots of sparkly glitter texture which is very difficult to see in the photo. It looks lovely in real life. It would still work without the baubles, or perhaps with some gems of die cut snowflakes. I hope that you like it.

Materials:

• Tangled Birch stamp and sentiment from Christmas Candlelight
• 12 X 17cm black card blank, silver mirror card and white stamping card
• Ink sprays (blue, yellow, orange, opaque white and clear mica)
• Inkpads: Versamark and Memento (Tuxedo Black)
• Heat embossing powder (silver with glitter)
• Alcohol markers (black, mid and light grey)
• Watercolour pen (yellow)
• Glitter pens (red and green)
• Christmas bauble peel off stickers
• Fine crystal glitter

How to make it:

1. Stamp the tree and heat emboss with sparkly powder.
2. Cut a small circle to act as a mask and spritz the background with sprays. Remove the mask and colour the moon with yellow watercolour pen.
3. Add touches of colour to the stamped image with glitter pens. Add some shading around the outside of the trees and at the base of the scene with grey alcohol marker.
4. Trim the card, outline with black marker, mount onto mirror card and glue to the card front. Stick down the baubles.
5. Stamp the Christmas banner with Memento ink. Colour with alcohol and glitter pens. Cut out and glue to the card front.
6. Finish with fine crystal glitter on the foreground and tree branches.

Textured Book Covers using the Tangled Birch from Chocolate Baroque

I hope that you like my texture project for the blog today. I got the idea from one of Lesley Wharton’s demos on The Craft Channel where she used Brushos to make lovely background papers and book covers.

Materials:

• Tangled Birch stamp
• A6 (approx. 10.5 X 15cm) hard backed note books, scrap acetate, kitchen towel and cartridge paper
• Brusho’s and Ink Sprays (pinks and blues, some with mica)
• Starlight paints (with crushed gilding flakes) or metallic acrylic (gold and pink)
• White Gesso
• Mod Podge (Matte finish)
• Tacky acrylic glue
• Glitter glue (pink and gold)
• Alcohol marker (black or dark grey)
• StazOn Inkpad (Black)
• Microbeads (pink and turquoise mixes)

Summary of techniques:

1. The blue textured paper was created from waste kitchen towel initially used to mop up waste diluted Brushos from my craft mat. I spritzed on a bit more colour. When dry the towel was scrunched up and the layers separated.
2. The pink textured paper was created with thin cartridge sketching paper and ink spritzers, some with mica.
3. The papers were applied to the book covers using Matte Mod Podge. The wrinkles created a lovely texture. I sealed the blue tissue with Mod Podge on the outside too, and used both layers as it was quite translucent with just one layer. I left the pink textured paper unsealed.
4. When dry I rubbed over the surface with metallic acrylics to pick up and highlight the textures (using a little on my finger).
5. The Tangled Birch was stamped onto acetate with StazOn Ink. The back was then coloured with metallic acrylics.
6. When dry I added a layer of white Gesso. This made the translucent acrylic more solid and opaque. The image was cut out and glued to the book front with tacky glue.
7. Glitter glue was added to the image front. I used Pinflair glitter wands which work well on acetate. You may want to test this as some glitter glues may not stick well to acetate.
8. Microbeads were dropped into a thick layer of tacky glue for added texture.