Still Time to Enter and Sponsor Info!

There is still time to enter August's challenge, remember you have the entire month to get in so got a last minute creep you want to let out?  Then you know where to let it out at!  Thanks for all the awesome entries this month so far, we are loving it!

Now for sponsor information: there is no sponsor so you know what that means?  Let the craziness begin with team Dream in Darkness!  But wait...no wailing or gnashing of teeth, there will be an amazing, wonderful, fantastic, awesome, well you get the point, PRIZE anyway!  Two of our wondermous creative team members have donated some duplicates from their stashes of rubber, yes, rubber stamps and as of now the prize has totaled up past 15 dollars worth of stamps from VivaLasVegaStamps! and Rubber Bandit stamps!  We want to enter ourselves for this booty of treasure, which brings us to our 3rd point.

  September is Pirate Month!   Well, since Talk Like a Pirate day occurs during September we are declaring it Pirate Month!  Yes, on September the 19th  if you go to certain fast food places like  Krispy Kreme and Long John Silvers on Speak Like a Pirate Day and  you actually order like a pirate you get an item free.  How fun is that?  So the theme is still Anything Goes but we wanted to take a moment to remember our friends the pirates!  What awesome creepy crawly makes they do give us!

So, summary: still time to enter, FANTASTICAL PRIZE for September, and Pirate Month is September!  Do we need to say more to entice you to get busy for those entries for September?  We thought not!  Latest news update on Evil Froggy on September 1st, if you have been following the plight of CT Nan, you have a shock in store for you!  Not another word more, our lawyers have advised us to speak no more until the first.  Plus, there are eyes everywhere and we have found 2 ears..just eyes and ears!  Talk about making you think twice??

The house IS in quiet a state of turmoil at the moment which only makes us more eager to make some twisted, other worldly makes for you!  And that squeak in the floor is definitely something...but we feel almost 79% sure you are safe to enter the house and add your makes.  Hey, not bad odds don't ya think? Buwahahahaha!

Look at this Beauty by CT Anne!

When I saw this I was totally amazed at the thought process and work behind it!  CT Anne took Teri's adult coloring page freebie from Teri's Delicious Doodles Facebook page and came up with what we all think is pure genius!  Here are her words to introduce this awesome make!

"Who would have thought it! Teri's Tropical Masquerade is a Troppo Haunt! Beware!!! She is ready to chop your head off if you open the door!"

This inspired me beyond words to think out of the box!  Please check out Delicious Doodles Challenge "White on White" and Teri's Etsy Store where a delicious adult coloring book "Go on, Be a Devil" is available now!

And watch out but do enter our house and quietly leave your entry...we mustn't wake up you know who! 

CT Nan's Take on the Challenge

I drew the small straw following CT Granne's fantabulous make for Delicious Doodles Challenge theme of  "White on White".  So as I looked at the awesome freebie adult coloring page found on  Teri's Delicious Doodles Facebook page,  I just began coloring the bird and from there the colors came for each part.  Not white so what next?  I saw this pile of black and white papers in my stash and the sentiment hit me.  And here is my version of the lovely.

Make sure you visit Teri's page and grab this beauty and go to Etsy where her downloadable adult coloring book "Go on, Be a Devil" is available.  Also keep visiting her page for news on a printed adult coloring book!  So much to look forward too!

And we are looking forward to seeing more of your awesome entries this month!

We Are Catching the Fever at Dream in Darkness!

Have you heard?  Adult coloring books are all the rage right now and we are loving them!  And guess who has one coming out very soon we hear?  Yep, you guessed it, the fabulous Teri Sherman at Delicious Doodles!  Now listen carefully to this...go to her Facebook page and you can get one of her pages free now!  We all did and decided to challenge ourselves to make something for our midmonth post.  The theme for the Delicious Doodles Challenge this month is "White on White" and CT Granne is starting us off with a bang!

 CT Granne made this beauty using the free coloring page found on Teri's Facebook page and a beauty she is!  Come back Monday for CT Nan's take on our challenge to use this fantastic page!  You can also got to Teri's Etsy Store and buy her adult coloring book titled "Go on, Be a Devil" gothic themed downloadable now!

 And we have been told by someone who wishes to remain nameless, that the entries are fabulous but some names are missing.  Hmmm could he, I mean, they be talking about you?  I wouldn't want to be the subject of conversation with this errrr person if you know what I mean? 

Hit the blue linky so fondly called Evil Froggy to enter this month's challenge!

NOW~ Buwhahahaha~

July's Winners and CT Anne Reveal All, Well Almost All

Thanks to all who entered out 3rd challenge at Dream in Darkness for July!  You are all winner's in our eyes and we certainly appreciate you entering our humble challenge!  And believe us the voting process is very hard for us!  Shouting and throwing things about the house do occur but before any blood is shed we have to come to a decision!  So here they are!

1st Place
#25 Laila aka Koneko

Congratulations!  Please email CT Nan at dreamindarknessblog@gmail.com

2nd Place
#22 Monique

Congrats!  Your awesome badge awaits you at the above email address!

3rd Place
#6 Donna Mundinger
 

Congrats to you!  Check out your badge at the same email above!

And now the Creative Team wants to share some of their stand out entries:

CT Anne

"Teresa's Brian/Brain was in the running - I liked that the central image, Zombie Brian, was surrounded by plenty of interesting secondary elements - damaged brains, grasping hands, the barbed wire. And need I mention the blood? No, I thought not."

CT Nan

"Crafty Rose's #15 is so awesome with so many fab elements of a tag! Love that she used Frankinella and of course, my man, Poe! All my faves in one tag, how fantastic is that?" 

CT Granne
"# 24 Crafty Debs Love the stright combination of red and black and really enjoyed the tutorial, Fabulous set!" 

CT Kim
 #9 Gina, I love the Poe doll! So wicked cool and fabulous tree! The vulture is so awesome! We all need a Poe doll with pet Vulture :)

Awesome work by all!  And now we begin our journey for August's winners!  So keep those entries coming!

CT Anne finally agreed to let us see the rest of her "eyes" teaser!  So we turn the post over to her!

 " Eyeball Wormetti from Teri Sherman - my springboard this month. So what to put with it? I already have her chess pieces, eyeball-less as they are, and so the chain of imagination takes off. Chess pieces need a chessboard to sit on. Raid the washi tape stash for some black-dominant tape and lay down on the journal page. The whitish streaks are tar gel drizzled over the image & page."

 

Poor Pawns, it's a tough life, everyone's after your balls, no matter what the Bishop says!

"The eyes, how can they offend thee? A Royal Command perhaps. More likely one could take offence at that worm of tar gel oozing over the text of my journal page, but who's telling this story? - another colour sequence for this platter of pasta"

The completed page looked a bit sparse with all those white squares, and Barbara Willis' doll face stamp was lurking on my table, so some judicious part-stamping in a lightly murky ink colour along with an anonymous spiral worm, and the odd ant from vlvstamps.com helps reduce the starkness.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/232785695/digital-stamp-set-creepy-alphas?ref=shop_home_active_1&ga_search_query=alphabet
https://www.etsy.com/listing/228257814/digital-stamp-eyeball-wormetti?ref=shop_home_active_1&ga_search_query=wormetti
https://www.etsy.com/listing/232816170/digital-stamp-set-skully-chess-pieces?ref=shop_home_active_1&ga_search_query=chess
and the doll face:
http://www.barbarawillisdesigns.com/item_35/Field-of-Dreams--Rubber-Face-Stamp.htm

 Now we are waiting for your plate of eyeballs, or worms, or whatever icky thingys you can come up with!  It's your turn now! Whew, we are tired from searching for our missing teamie so we leave the rest up to you!  But do watch you back will you? Buwhahahaha! 

We Challenged Ourselves with Some Help from CT Granne

We just can't get enough challenges around here at Dream in Darkness!  The oh so wonderful CT Granne sent each of us teamies 3 marvelous stamps by  Finnstamper Company!  An awesome rat, fabulous skull, and  fantastic fly!  Then she issued us a challenge: Create something, the same type thing, with the stamps and the ideas began flying throughout the Dream's dark house!  A post card was the final winning idea!  

So off we all went to our rooms stamps in hand and lots of rats and skulls and flies swarming our brains.  When the timer went off, we rushed to post them to each other and anxiously await the return mail to reach of our mailboxes outside of our rooms!  Yes, we each have a mailbox, privacy you know!  Especially with our sudden anxiety over CT Anne's involvement with Evil Froggy!


So here is what we each made and mailed to our teamies!  

CT Anne

.. It was great to be introduced to Finnstamper.com. Always interesting to see what is common or different between countries by way of stamp catalogues. These are the clear polymer type. My mail revealed a mouse, a fly, and a skull. The fly is a generous life size. So is the mouse, as I had the opportunity to compare. It is winter in Middle Earth, so mice come indoors looking for warmth and goodies. They love chocolate wrappers, but one got caught out by a trap, and I eventually found it. Now I'm not bothered by that, but posting a photo of it freaked even my fellow Darklings, so I have censored this post *sigh* The mouse is now buried in my garden, to be exhumed for bones for future projects, I hope – sometimes chicken bones are too big... but back to the stamps. Use them on a postcard.

The proverb, “Rats desert a sinking ship” came to mind, but I always remember writing out a sequence of proverbs at school, and the teacher had followed “Rats desert...” with, “Look before you leap”! What a combination! So I started throwing stamps onto a journal page with that story in mind. The Finn skull clearly had to be giving a warning from the depths of the ocean, about the dangers in the waters. I found the focal section of that page would adapt very easily to a 100x150mm postcard (4”x6”) to deliver the main message. At which point my camera refused to operate, so out with the cellphone and try to learn it... not as well as I'd like.

For both page and postcard, I stamped the “foreground” stamps with coloured dye inkpads and heat-embossed with clear embossing powder. Lining up stamps with the same position on the card when you've several to do for a swap is a doddle with unmounteds – place it once, drop the block over it aligned to the sides of the card, so when you lift the block up, the stamp is aligned just where you want it for the next imprint. I masked them, and stamped the sea – the one stamp was used at varying angles to fill the water area, then heat embossed that. Again, another advantage of unmounted stamps is that you can choose with your fingers how much to press down to print or not, and bend the rest of the rubber out of the way while you do so.

The beach stamp had some wee fossils in it, so it got used several times to expand the beach, though the beached ships were surrounded by inkpad daubing – a muddier sandbank!
The water was coloured in with a “custom” colour – several Golden acrylic paints in shades of blue mixed with iridescent medium, and watered down to a wash which was sponged over the stamped waves and some blotted off. Iridescent medium is a simple way to get the gleam into flat paints, instead of spending a fortune on twinkling H2Os or similar sparkles. Or it can be brushed over a finished project for full-on sparkle. On the postcard, the wash was diluted further before wiping very lightly over the sky area. On the journal page, a different colour mix, without any iridescent medium, was lightly dabbed with a dry sponge all over.

The fly didn't fit on the postcard, so it went on the backside, inked and heat-embossed, then a stencil over the top coloured with inkpad daubings. Hands up everyone that likes holding a fly in their 
hand!!!

~~~Supply List~~~CT Anne~~~

Links to CT Anne's stamps used:

www.Finnstamper.com Mouse, Skull, Fly
thirdstoneshop newly revived  Wave, Plunder Pirates, Dunes
Unknown, possibly Paperartsy: sea shell border
http://www.alphastamps.com/ “Postcard”
http://buttersidedownstamps.com/ Humongous Squid, Medusa jellyfish, Compass jellyfish, Triarthrus, Moray eel, Fossil beach
http://www.silvercrowcreations.com/ Please, Flying Crows, Flying Fish, Silly Bird, Beached craft, Boat silhouette, Tornado

                                                                   CT Granne

CT Kim

Stamps, rat, fly, skull by Finnstamper. Fence, Hampton Arts, Flower Celery. Colors various Americana Multi Surface Satin, Distress Paint, Distress Stain, Distress Ink. Ranger Embossing Powder. Stampendous Pink Ink. Cards made from Bristol board.

                                                                   

                                                                     CT Nan

 

Junk mail decorated with stamped images by Finnstamper and VivaLasVegas Stamps on paper bought at a Hong Kong market for burning purposes? Very thin and fragile but awesome texture so I stamped and then helped it to tear into strips where it had started to tear.  Then put another piece of junk mail, an envelope painted mixed media and copied and attached to original junk mail. Then gently glued the thin strips in place. Also used "Catacombs" stamp by Butterside Down.

Fun was had by all and even with No Good CT Nan's being very late due to her sudden......disappearance due to a certain Evil Froggy and his cohort CT Anne's disappointment with the number of entries!  Yes, we haven't forgotten her and her plight but at least she is being allowed her crafting toys, even this deliciously evil duo couldn't be that bad as to deny her those things!

See you when you sneak in and remember, Evil Froggy won't hurt you....not if you are entering the challenge anyway.....Muwahahahaha!

It's Hot at Dream in Darkness for August and About to Get Hotter!

Welcome beloved inhabitants of Dream in Darkness house of dreary, dank, happiness!  It is now time for Challenge #4!  We are sponsored this month as you may know by the magnificent Teri Sherman of Delicious Doodles find her at  Etsy Store ArtiDoodles!  So without further delay we present our makes using images from Teri!

First up is our Guest Creative Team member for August!  Give a great big welcome to Arline Grant!  Here is a bit about Arline...

"Thank you so much to Dream in Darkness for this opportunity to be a part of the team this month.  I have been doing digital scrapping for about a year and a half.  I went in search of some elements to add to a photo of one of my granddaughters and was instantly hooked! There is something for everyone and a whole new creative world was found on the other side of the door.  My best advice to anyone saying "I can't do that."...  YOU CAN!  Come play with us.

My piece is named DEMONS.  We all have them.  We fight them.  Do not let them define you."

 GCT Arline

Using Teri's "The Witches Cat".  Also used to create this Crystal Rain's "Poe" and Holliewood Studio's "Halloween MC" from Mischief Circus.   Border from Tangie Baxter's "Assimilation 1"

CT Granne

Using:

Rosita

Grotesque Cupid 

Poppies paper and skulls are not in the shop - yet anyway..

CT Anne

  Minestrone - pasta - but what's with the eyes? And where did this creepy font come from? And who let the snail-trails get onto the page?

Yep, it is another teaser from CT Anne!  We have to wait for the rest along with you!  The guesses have run rampant but not a word from CT Anne but an evil snicker at our distress!  So come back and check to see the rest of the "Eyes" on July 7th when we announce the winner's of July's Challenge!

CT Kim

Using Eva the Witch

CT Nan
using "Let Me Out"

CT Nan wanted to send a symbol of solidarity to her teamies, yes, even CT Anne who is assumed innocent until....Anyway, she made tees for the Dream in Darkness team!  That is all the info we have right now.......

Now you know the next bit!  Your turn to show us, run don't walk, leaving the light off, all that stuff BUT we do need to continue our quest for CT No Good Nan!  Evil Froggy and his "helper/leader" still have not returned her to the house!  Yes, she made a project we know she is being allowed her crafting supplies, limited we have heard though! oh the inhumanity! so we must make Evil Froggy happy right away!  She has been missing almost a month now, so either she is really not missed at all (hmmm interesting thought!) or we just haven't tried hard enough!  So get out those supplies and craft away and most importantly: enter them below!  

We will leave you with this one thought.  If we let Evil Froggy and "helper" aka CT Anne keep No Good Nan.....they may come after others and not just teamies!  That's right! Look over your shoulder, what was that sound? A croaking? An evil snicker?  

Yes, time to get serious here at Dream in Darkness...lights off and out!

As always it is Anything Goes, except cute...

An InLinkz Link-up

Kindly link to Evil Froggy above or he will "enhance" DT Nan's rubber stash. And you can only guess what THAT means bwahahahaha!!!!