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Sunday, March 26, 2017

Day of the Dead and Sin City Stamps!

How many of you Dream in Darkness fans got to go blog hopping with the Sin City Stamps Inspirational Team and special Guest Designers Sari/Granne and Anne ...our own CT's?  Well still time until the 27th so go get hopping after a quick look at my Day of the Dead Tiara!  There is one tiny mistake or many large mistakes but we are focusing on the small one now hmmmm? so who can leave a comment and tell me what it is?  Might be a prize in it for you??  Or the Frog might eat it...a chance we take! :)



The base is a dollar tiara from my fav store the dollar tree and I have had plans for it for ages and here it was! So the lovely sugar skull that reminds me of the La Catrina was colored up fancy and bright in Spectrum Noir Markers and fussy cut!
The side pieces were the yummy flowers on the sheet stamped over and over and then sprayed with a glue Tattered Angels and outlines in gold as was the skull.


I as you all know love anything shiny even though I know my photography skills say no vehemently but I saw where duct tape was being stamped and embossed and of course off I went to find my metal stamps!  Now on this I can say no more!  Think about it???

I was supposed to be a blogger for the hop but the horrid ugly flu took me down a peg or ten so here is my late offering to the Day of the Day!  Hope you enjoyed!  Check the links below for more goodies and a good chance to win a whole Sugar Skull Sheet on our Facebook Fan Club Page!



Don't forget about our challenge at Dream in Darkness enter HERE for freebies from Sin City Stamps!

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Ask Not...

Give me a skull in a bell, and I'm off!
Stamped the skull (and a few other items) then covered in Masking Liquid before I continued.  I also did multiple offset stampings of the sides of the bell, so it looks like it is still swinging.  And after all the fun on the facebook fan page when the Vulture got blotto, he had to get re-inked too.  He's a bit "Bah Humbug Cynic" about it though.


The "moon" (which is actually a pocket watch!) leaves, and vulture also got stamped first then the masking liquid treatment.   I wanted the leaves to look as though they were piled up against the fence, and also stamped the brick part of the vulture upside down to extend the brick "wall" he sits on.   After that had dried I carried on... heat embossing the fence mesh - to discover embossing powder sticks to dry masking liquid.  So I scrubbed some of it off the "liquid" and heated up - fortunately when I peeled the "liquid" off afterwards, the excess ep on top of it also came away.  I clear-embossed the ghost-bat stamps, expecting the melt to keep future colourings off - another way to mask something for protection against later layers.
I had to stamp the tree silhouette several times to get the length, sometimes stamping only the bottom bit of the trunk, upside down, to extend it.  I had to use the owl - the mesh fence round him merges well with the other one, and there needs to be someone as audience.

For the sky I lightly coloured with overlapping several shades of blue Inktensse pencils, then with a damp sponge, blended the scribbles.  A Gabrielle Pollaco Tuscan Wall stencil  had just turned up on my doorstep (honest, I don't remember buying it!!!) and has a segment of brickwork that made a great extender to the Vulture's base.  It would also break up that expanse of blank mesh, as does the ivy from the same stencil.  Various other sprays, washes etc happened...

After fussy-cutting the skull/bell and fixing it with a brad so it can toll, the moon looked pretty flat, and the vulture had almost disappeared.  So they got re-done, fussycut and stuck over the originals with foam dots.  Then time to add the text on this journal page... and yet again, Seth Apter's Drip stencil to the rescue!!!

 Visit this month's sponsor  Sin City Stamps and have a look....uh hmmmm the Frog is very keen on Sin City Stamps soooo you might want to make sure you drop by and give that FB like and take a look and of course! enter YOUR DARK, WEIRD, OFF-BEAT with nothing cute!! this month for stamps!!!!

Link up your dark, weird creations with the Frogster here...

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Thursday, March 23, 2017

Bouncing Skulls and SinCity Stamps Sugar Skull Blog Hop!

Welcome to Dream in Darkness!

 Today we are joining in with the Sin City Stamps Sugar Skull Blog Hop! We're happy to stopped by and Asylum Anne has some bouncing skulls to share below! But first a few deets on the Hop!

 Sin City Stamps is having a blog hop so that you can meet all of our Inspiration team members along with a few guests, that's us! Also, have a fabulous play with the Sugar Skulls stamps designed by Sin City Inspiration Team leader, Michelle Frae Cummings. We want you to discover more ways to create with these stamps and possibly win a set for yourself!

 No matter where you have started, to qualify to win your own Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls stamp set, (we are giving away 3!) we ask that you visit each of the blogs participating, leave a nice comment and then come back to the Sin City Blog and let us know which blog projects you liked the most and why.
The blog hop will end on the 27th and the 3 winners will be announced on the Sin City blog and on our FB Fan Group on March 28th.
Here is your Hop List:



Now on to bouncing skulls...
Well that sounds a bit unkind... are we in a bowling alley?
Did someone die?  
Asylum Anne has hijacked the Dream In Darkness blog today, to join the Sin City Skull hop.
Skulls can usually be found wherever there is a tombstone, but someone has interred someone's ashes in the same tomb as well:
I stacked 4 layers of the Sizzix tombstone, removing the centre panel of the middle 2 layers.
Inside a skull still survives - looking a little radioactive perhaps.  Some distressed ex left their ashes for company too 
I have a habit of disguising a "grubby" background - which is part of a cereal packet -, as well as around the bottle of ashes, using Seth Apter's Explore stencil - with "unsettled" it seemed an appropriate one to use.

I've also been playing with Marottes again. To quote Wikipedia, "A marotte is a prop stick or sceptre with a carved head on it. Jesters usually used a marotte. The word is borrowed from the French, where it signifies either a fool's (literal) "bauble", or a fad/craze." So here are my crazies, settled onto chopsticks.
They all started by being stamped with Stazon onto an old bit of cotton sheet.  They were then embellished - coloured in with Bic alcohol pens, or over-covered with stickles and kindyglitz.  And wee flowers hot-glued to the fabric.  The far right marotte is an anomaly - you're looking at the back, which has the stamped image done in a dye ink on the INside of the fabric.  So it already looked faded, and subsequent spritzing caused the dye to run and blur. 

 Who would believe that inside this faded sad creature is(was) a wild animal!  Perhaps a werewolf.  A gusset of leopard-print elastic where the front & back seam is, wraps round her neck as well, and she's gone from tattered faded beige to animal fur too.  The backs of the middle two have some of the small stamps on the skull plate inked.

The sugar skulls and flourishes come from Sin City Stamp's Skull sheet.
The dates on the tombstone - click for the link - October 31,  1923 
The bottle of ashes

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS?
Around the world, we are disrupting our body rhythms by indulging in clock-changing.  Springing forwards, falling back...  Clocks and watches all get mucked about, and end up a few minutes different, or forgotten about and are an hour out.  But a stopped clock is right twice every day.  And this watch will be right.... once in a lifetime.
There is a small hook (off a suspender aka garter belt) at the bottom, that hooks into the braid at the top end, to sit around the wrist.  Stamped on tyvek is the Skull with Crown Crow and Spider.


Carry on with the Blog Hop and be back here later in the month for more fun with this month's sponsor, Sin City Stamps. Scroll back  up to the top to get your next stop! Don't forget to leave some comment love at each blog to be entered for a chance to win this sheet!


Sin City Stamps Shop
Sin City Stamps Fan Group on Facebook
Sin City Stamps Inspiration Blog

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Saturday, March 18, 2017

Window to the Soul

Being very inspired from our fab sponsors



And had great time making this AJ page


Great image isn't it, want to change to win some 
Sin City rubber? Do link your strange, dark, alternative
art HERE, we'll be thrilled to see it.
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Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Winner's Post for February and Steampunk Circus Fun!

The month's are flying past so quickly!  It is time to see who will receive Seth Apter goodies for last month's winner! 

#10 Susan Renshaw

Congratulations! Please email us at dreamindarknessblog@gmail.com for 
your prize information!

Thanks to all who played with us this month!  We hope you will join us again this month as we are playing with Sin City Stamps by our own CT Kim!

And a quick trip to the Steampunk Circus with CT Nan!




All using the fabulous stamps from Sin City Stamps!  The background stamps are from the Las Vegas Fun! sheet along with the many elements of the Steampunk Circus sheet!

 Now it's your turn!  Odd it up, add some dark, really weird something for us!  Just don't add that cute thing to it!  Muwahahahahahaha!

 Sin City Stamps Store 
Sin City Stamps Fan Club on FB
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Wednesday, March 1, 2017

March Challenge and Great News!

Welcome back and you have visited on a most special day in the house!  We are all so excited we can hardly keep ourselves from dancing with the Frog!  Now that is excited!  Why?  You may ask why all the commotion and cake being flung and confetti being eaten?  Well,  our own KIM is the new owner of Sin City Stamps!!! EEEEK!!  How cool is that??  To celebrate even more we are going to be using Sin City Stamps this month!!!!  And the winner this month gets???? Can you guess?  Yep!  Sin City Stamps!  Please go by the Sin City Stamps Facebook Fan Club and JOIN us!   Join us in this fun and exciting time with our own CT KIM!!

Now look and see what fab stamps YOU want from Sin City Stamps from the teams awesome play time!

In the midst of high Summer, with drought in many parts of the country, Asylum Anne is trying to be subtle about the need for rain on this fat page, with help from the Raindrops Waterdrops sheet of stamps

After black gesso all over the page, (made from Seth Apter's Splatter Proof die) swabs of Black-Green, Black-Red, Black-Blue Burnt Umber and Dioxazine Purple, some sweeps of Zinc white (which is a transparent white, whereas Titanium white is opaque).
Archival's Brilliance inkpad in Pearlescent ice blue on the waterdrops background stamp, various other water stamps round and droplets heat embossed in black, or Lindy Stamp Gang's powders: Angel Wings Mauve, Silver Moon Sapphire, Twilight Blue Slate, Queen Sheba's Silver, and Midnight Gold Obsidian.

CT Granne using stamps from Romance plate to make pair of ATC




CT Kim
caught blushing here!
I managed to pull together this fat page despite the fact that my trusty heat tool bit the dust...methinks it was Karma reminding me to stop waiting til the last minute!

"not yet fallen"


I called upon my trusty crafty stash to come to my rescue.
The base papers are fabulous Mixed Media papers by Brutus Monroe.
The color is provided by the dynamite DecoArt Fluid Acrylics.
Dimension and depth are found by using DecoArt Modelling paste, hands down wonderful! Paired with a steampunk stencil by Andy Skinner.
The star of the fatpage, well one of the stars, are the wickedly cool stamps by Sin City Stamps. I can say that in having made the rubber(err well hubs does that part) but I get to ink them up and cut them and ...smelllll...the rubber!

Stamps used are from these sheets:
Dress Forms
Barbed Wire
Wings




CT Nan is giving both sides of a visit to Las Vegas
 and how Lady Luck can be on your side or absolutely absent!


This journal page started as a catch all sheet but with some added colors it was what I wanted with the light and dark!  I used every element in the Las Vegas Fun! sheet..what fun it was, too!  And yep that is real shredded money courtesy of happy mail from CT Anne from SilverCrow Creations!

We can't wait to see what you can show us this month!  And please visit  Sin City Stamps and have a look....uh hmmmm the Frog is very keen on Sin City Stamps soooo you might want to make sure you go by and give that FB like and take a look and of course! enter this month for stamps!!!!


Sin City Stamps Facebook Fan Club Sin City Stamps


Link up your DARK, Weird makes, with the Frogster here...

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