Halloween Apothecary for CVC

There are some fabulous Halloween projects out in blogland again this year and I am just loving seeing creations by Shelley Hickox and Richele Christenson. If you haven’t seen Richele’s configurations box, you really should go take a look at the stages she has taken us through to make it, fabulous work.

Halloween Apothecary

Beware a photo heavy post!!!!

So this is my DT sample this month for Country View Challenges where the lovely Danielle has chosen ‘Something Spooky’ as the theme. This is my interpretation of it.

It started with a large 10 x 12 inch canvas.

But I turned it over as I wanted more of a shadow box design. I painted the edges black and added tissue tape to give me the framed effect I wanted.

I then made the background using distress paints, spritzed, smooshed and card dipped into it, drying and dipping until I was happy with it. I then used the paints and distress inks with Tim Holtz masks to give more layers and dimension. If you can see the eye chart I used the bumping method too (learnt at a Lin Brown workshop). I then stamped some stamps from The Chemist set.

Next I set about making a corked dome and as with all the other bottles you will see I smeared matte medium on them, let them dry and then covered with rock candy crackle paint.

This one has a distressed charlotte doll inside.

Here are the bottles and labels, all a mixture of ideaology and 7 Gypsies.

This bottle had a remnant rub label (bone dust) and has some small plastic bones and some glitter inside it.

Wow the crackle really shows on this which has some glitter and re-inker inside it.

Here is The Chemist himself, framed with the new sizzix TH ornate frame die. This was daubed with distress paints and alcohol inks to get the rusted, aged effects.

I started to gather other pieces I wanted to use and rusted them, some naturally with white vinegar and water and some with rusting powder which ...........

..........  included the border and these wings. The number plaque was given the crackle paint treatment

A collection of more spook elements. The bats and cobwebs are TH dies and both given a coat of rock candy crackle paint. The little birds came from a Halloween confetti bad I bought last year (in fact I didn't use them in the end) and the spider and fly are plastic.

The candle stick was rusted and the skull was given a coat of distress paint and rusting powder added in places. The pumpkin is made of foam and has been cut in half.

These are the vintage ephemera, stamped and distressed using TH stamps and you can see the paper clip was rusted too.

These are two pieces of wood I cut down, inked and added rock candy distress paint to these too.

So onto the finished frame.

I added a door bell .....

and also added this at the end as it needed something here for balance. I think it has worked well.

So there we are, hope you enjoyed all the photos (all 26 of them lol), there is so much going on in this piece I just wanted to capture it all.

October already and soon we will be well into our Christmas makes.

Thanks for your good wishes for Cimmie. The vet was very pleased with his paw and took the stitches out which meant he could have that horrible collar off. He's allowed out to play again and was out all day yesterday till late evening, so I think he's happy to be getting back into a normal routine. His brother didn't miss him though, all he did was hiss at him when they came in for supper last night. Brotherly love!!!!

Have a great week.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Tim’s September tag and more .....

Gosh I am right on the wire this month with my contribution to the September tags of 2013. All the details of how Tim made his tag can be found on his BLOG and I have used the same steps but made three projects - one just like Tim’s, one the same but with different colours, masks and stamps and my third a Halloween card and with it being almost October that seemed to fit nicely.

Tag 1

The same steps and supplies Tim used

Tag 2

Distress stains - salty ocean, crushed olive, tarnished brass, mustard seed and peeled paint.

Masks used – splatter, bubble, honeycomb, schoolhouse, dot fade, cargo and measured.

Stamps – Haberdashery set

Distress inks – walnut stain, crushed olive, salty ocean, vintage photo and black soot.

Halloween card

I enjoyed making this in the  same style, using the same techniques as on the tags and was pleased with the colour combination.

I used a leftover frame from my workshop project this week (a post for that soon) …..

and added embellishments from the stamp sets.

The 31 was cut out and covered with glossy accents to give it some shine and make it ‘pop’ more.

Distress stains – pumice stone, antiqued bronze, antique linen, picket fence, brushed corduroy

Masks – stripes, clockwork, eye chart, burlap, schoolhouse

Distress inks – weathered wood. iced spruce, victorian velvet, black soot, walnut stain

Stamps – mini halloween, mini halloween 2, curiosities

My favourite has to be the card I just love the colours and textures.

I hope your weekend went well and that you have a great week ahead. Cimmie is off to the vets tomorrow morning (see my last post for photos). He has been so good bless him, lets hope he can have that collar off and go out to play tomorrow.

Take care.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Sweet Treats

A jar of Honey and some pumpkins make up my autumnal treats for this card. This all started with me playing with a dotty embossing folder and some paint and I ended up with a piece that reminded me of honeycomb so with that in mind I decided I wanted to make something for Jenny’s challenge at Frilly and Funkie – ‘Eat, Drink and be Merry’.

The background is one of my gelli prints with some stamping over the top, and I started with this, the honeycomb, some corrugated card and the stamped Stampers Anonymous bee.

It took me a while to gather all the elements together until I was happy with the design. The pumpkins are a sizzix die which I had forgotten I had and uncovered in a drawer, I cut three pumpkins using some leftover inked card and to add to the themed pieces I dripped tea over them.

The jar is a memory box die, inked, spritzed and flicked with water, heat dried and covered with clear embossing powder. The label is an internet download.

You can see the shine of the EP here and how the layers have built up.

All the other pieces I used are ‘scraps’ that came together to add texture, height and dimension to the piece.

I am also just going to squeeze this into the Artistic Stamper's challenge - Autumn, I think the pumpkins and colours fit the bill here. Our Creative Corner want forgotten things and the pumpkin die was a recent find (just in time for autumn and halloween). Lunagirl have an Autumn theme too and I will join in their challenge as well and Vintage Stamping Challenges have 'Anything in your Garden' as a theme. 

I haven’t been able to get so much crafting and commenting done this week as this poor fellow has been so miserable and needed more attention than usual.

Cimmie cut his paw last Saturday and had to have it stitched and is having to wear this collar until at least Monday when we hope the stitches can come out and he can go outside again. I am sure he is longing wistfully for that to happen.

You can see he is not happy. He gave us a real scare on Monday when he escaped and we had to follow him around the neighbourhood trying to get him back in again.

And he refuses to have anything to do with me at times. Roll on Monday.

I hope you are having a good weekend.

Have fun.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Happy Halloween tag

Well the sun shone today and we had a beautiful warm afternoon, just like yesterday but the rain has set in this evening, I'm glad I'm tucked up warm indoors.

I loved making this tag because it includes some simple stamping and then embellishing, two of the things I really like doing.

This uses mostly Artistic Outpost  Gothic 1 plate stamps for the main images apart from the crow which is from the Tim Holtz mini halloween set.

This spooky lady has been given an orange gem for her eye, she looks very medieval (not evil) in a way. Ken says she looks more like Queen Borg (Star Trek), as I don’t watch it, I can’t comment on that. I love the frame around her, I seem to have a thing about frames at the moment.

The top of the tag has some twirly wire (cut from the flowers at the bottom – waste not, want not as they say) and also one of Tim’s wishbones with Onyxite treasure gold over it. Ken kindly drilled a hole in it so I could hang it (a trick learned from Tim on the workshop day in August).

Finished at the bottom with flowers, metal leaves, green feathers and some green twine.

I do like making things for halloween, I don’t know why because I don’t really decorate the house or anything.

It's Halloween! It's Halloween!
The moon is full and bright
And we shall see what can't be seen
On any other night.
Skeletons and ghosts and ghouls,
Grinning goblins fighting duels,
Werewolves rising from their tombs,
Witches on their magic brooms.
In masks and gown we haunt the street
And knock on doors for trick or treat.
Tonight we are the king and queen,
For oh tonight it's Halloween!

Author unknown

I am entering this into the Artistic Outpost referral theme for September where the theme is anything goes.

I hope it’s not too scary. Enjoy.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Eclectic Elements–Wooden You for UPA

My article for Unruly PaperArts this month is about using wood in your projects and I chose the title ‘Altered Wood'. It is my last article as I am intending to spend more time on my own projects but I am so pleased it is not closing and will continue as a featured blogozine.

If you are anything like me you will have a box of things that you have collected with the intention of altering at some point. For me some of these have been collected at boot fairs, charity shops, left over containers or things I have specifically bought (like shadow boxes), but for this project I chose to use two of the boxes that the small wooden embellishments come in and I knew I wanted to make them into a configurations type box, hinged together.

Here are some of the photos from the article which you can read over at UPA today.

I would love it if you have the time to pop over to UPA to read the full article and step by step and perhaps leave me a comment over the there as it’s my last article for them. I’d like to wish Nicie and Zoe the best of luck in taking over, without them the blogozine would have had to close.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and for sharing in my artistic endeavours.

hugs {brenda} x0x