Happy Birthday Chocolate Baroque

Good morning crafty friends. This post is a little photo heavy as I've been a busy bee making this project to celebrate Chocolate Baroque's 5th Birthday. Pop on over to the challenge blog as there is a competition with a Spring theme and prizes to be won! I can't believe we're celebrating 5 years of Chocolate Baroque lovelinessjj. I've been lucky enough to be on the DT for 5 years in June. As the saying goes time flies when you're having fun and I always have fun with Chocolate Baroque stamps. This concertina book  is my DT project for this week and it uses lots of my favourite stamps.

I began by cutting 4 squares of white card (12.5cm) and lining them up to stamp the main flower images (from Poppy Meadow) and masked them with Pebeo masking fluid. Next  creating a distress ink background using shades of blue and green inks, misting with water and swooshing my card through the inky puddle. Once this was dry I stamped lots of foliage from Wild Meadow using different shades of green ink. 

I removed the masking fluid and coloured the flowers with coloured pencils. I decided my meadow scene needed some butterflies and a touch of magic too. The butterflies were stamped onto the project and also onto some of the lovely sparkly self adhesive acetate which is perfect for wings using Black Stazon ink. I cut out the butterfly wings and removed the backing before dusting over with mica powders. I layered the butterfly wings up with silicone glue.

I stamped the fairies with black archival ink and gave them some sparkly wings too. You can find the full fairy collection here

Lastly I made a cover for my concertina book using distress inks and mica powder applied to copier paper. While still wet I crumpled the paper up and left it to dry. Once this was dry I used it to cover two greyboard squares, one for the front and one for the back. On the front cover I stamped another fairy using black archival ink. It can be a bit tricky to stamp on such an uneven surface but if you do get any little areas that don't stamp properly you can just use a black fineliner pen to fill in the gaps.

To assemble my little book I glued my 4 squares onto a long strip of paper that I'd folded into four panel concertina. I attached the ribbon to the inside of the back cover and then glued the inner section to both front and back covers.

I'm entering this project in the following challenges:

Addicted to Stamps: pastel colours and a stamp

Deep Ocean: spring is in the air

Dragonfly Dreams: spring is in the air

Fresh Brewed Designs: Flowers

Imagine That Creative Playground: Spring

Paper Shelter: Flowers everywhere

Really Reasonable Ribbon: spring with ribbon/trim

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge: April showers bring May Flowers

There is so much inspiration over on the Chocolate Baroque Blog it's well worth a visit if you have time. Talking of time, I'd better go as it's time to go to work

Happy Crafting and a big thank you for visiting today

Claire xx