Ghost

My creative Mojo has been with ATC's this

January, partly, because I decided to be brave enough

to take part to some ATC swap's.

I've been wanting / thinking to participate for years, but but but...

Here's one I made for Gecko Galz FB challenge

Using ATC set and Spellbound set together with pits and 

pieces from my Halloween stash, :=)

Here's one I made for the Oddball swap:

and here's one from the Vera Lane swap

and the latest one for Blank Page Muse challenge

So I'm having creative time with ATC's, what have you

been creating this month, let us see and link HERE.

Farewell to Poe

Last day of the Poe blog hop, and we lay the poor man to rest.  How?
Mwahahaha!!!!  With some of our hostess Leigh SB Designs' dodgy-digi characters!  Oooh I loved overhearing their conversations in this Journal page!!!

I thought he had a tougher stomach than that, given he was the Literary Master of Gothic mayhem.

After arranging & printing out the digis, they were coloured with Derwent Inktense pencils and watered in.  Then the joys of masking them to overstamp backgrounds with the help of Carabelle: their Collage: envolee d'oiseaux, and massive Mecanique Steampunk.  And half-hid, Crafty Individuals' Airmail Owl.  And if you're wondering, it's easier for me to have got all these rubber stamps from the West Island, at Time To Create, rather than out from Europe.

There may still be some hoppers "out there" - find them: ​

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Happy Birthday EA Poe - again!

What is Poe reknowned for?  Writing.  How do we know that?  Because his writings were published as books.  Where do we find books?  In a library.  How do we get to read them in our own time?  Borrow them from the library of course.  Is my questionable Librarian Past catching up with me?  Am I overdue????

You can't tell?

I'm not sure either, largely due to the weird date stamp of Andy Skinner.  According to his stamps, the book has been borrowed by Mr O'Neil, T Rope, and various other weirdly-named personages, including Mr Two Balloons - perhaps Monck Mason's alias?  Carabelle's creation et reve secret set gave me both the book title on the card, and the pointing hand. Leigh SB Designs provided the only digi stamp:  Poe I printed out, then smeared with interference paints for that subtle "je ne sais quoi" !

Keep hopping through the Poe blog hop:

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And Poe did write...

Not just about the Darling Lenore and that pesky raven, but about hot air balloon trips, pirate treasure, death and being buried alive...  and Creative Jumpstart 2018 has Birgit Koopsen making a little (accordian) book. Cover:

Stamps used:
Our cover Man, Ode to Poe - a digi from Leigh SB Designs
digi skull by Rick St Denis for Blank Page Muse
 "Dead Men...", top-hatted "raven", opened skull, flying skeleman, crackle (heat-embossed) are all Blank Page Muse
Wizard bookshelf (parts used twice) and Airshow, are from ButterSide Down
Background text from Seth Apter
Rabbit is Alpha Stamps.  Why?  Why not!  There would be plenty living in the graveyards - food for ravens perhaps?  The tags are from them as well.
And what with the last page, and the back cover, we know what Poe REALLY died of!

​

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Yesterday...

Was Poe's birthday, but the blog hop is taking 5 days to celebrate.  He was a writer, but as computers didn't exist in those days, he almost certainly had a pencil case! Asylum Anne found it:

  Or something similar for quills and quill-trimming equipment.

His wee notebook is full of cartoon sketches of ideas he doesn't want to forget - for me, it arrived with the poseable doll hanging around in these photos - from Silver Crow Creations

The detailing on the outer lid of the tin owes itself to a Joe Rotella recipe in Creative Jumpstart 2018, with random bits of sweat/patina heat-embossed on the edges.  The bird - originally white, and the chippies brownish, were treated with Viva's patina, and paints.

Don't you love his dancing pose?  I guess Poe kept notes anywhere there was a blank space to write on.  On the back of his tin, heat-embossed stamps from Smeared Ink reproduced his inky memos.

On the inside, Smeared Ink, Blank Page Muse, Carmens Veranda all provided aide-memoires

And as you can see, it was a well-used pencil tin!  Emerald Creek embossing powder again - a chunky one, Burnt Copper Leaves - providing the grubby patina man can only get on a tv remote these days.

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Happy Birthday Edgar Allan Poe

Asylum Anne creeping out of the work overload and not sure she wants to face a world with Poe's imagination rampant.  But there's a blog hop celebrating Poe's birthday going on, so what's a girl to do - say she'll create nevermore???
Creative Jumpstart 2018 is also happening this month, and several of the classes are reminding us of collaging scraps of paper all over the place, that's what probably influenced the style of this tag:

There's a fabulous large stamp of Mermaids on the Rocks (no it's not cocktail hour here) over at Rubber Stamp Ave which a while ago I had inked up, then cut into triangles.  Handy now. random limbs across the tag.  Various other scraps of paper, and a Disney sticker of Aurora (they spelled it wrongly - should be "Lenore").  There's a Carabelle stamp, some coffee-dyed paper from a Takeaways order sheet, a Warning from a die's packaging et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.   AND from Leigh Snaith-Brunton, one of her new digi Poe stamps.

Join the hop here ​

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And the December WINNER is ....

So off it went, year 2017, but it still has something to give ....

for our awesome Winner for December 2017....

And the winner is ...

#6 Dark Rosaleen with her fabulous and moody digiart 

Kym, email us at dreamindarknessblog@gmail.com to collect your goodies!

New Year and New "larks" as the saying says,

I hope you'll play along with us all year long,

creative hugs!

January's challenge HERE

Last Year's Stuff is This Year's Use-by

New Year's Resolution:  USE what I already have!

A box canvas - already meant as an art print, with tomatoes, leaves and other fruit printed on it.  Painted over in gold Lumiere paint, then stencilled - finished off the tube of texture paste.  

Crackle paste over the dried stencilled patches (sortof). 

Layer of medium over the crackle to stop it all cracking right off. 

Skulls from October. (Time to make a new batch).

I don't "do" floral-pretty, yet I have a stash of flowers.  weird huh?  

So I pulled out heaps of white flowers, leaves and arranged them 

around the piece (oops, where was the camera???)  

And a few metal leaves and filigrees, 

resisting the temptation to go steampunk 

(apart from the clock bottom right).  

Some discs out of computer hard drives, 

some top-hat-wearing skull cameos

 that have been round forever.  

Sprinkled Paper Artsy infusions powder over all

 the flowers and leaves, then water-spritzed to activate.  

You wouldn't believe there was any lime green used, 

it has been overwhelmed.  

I oversprayed with Lindy Stamp Gang's Moonshadow Golden Dubloons, 

and their Fabio black round the edges.  The black has rather disappeared, 

but gave some of the crackle areas a pewter look.

And the whole piece...

.....

What a great resolution - I really, really should do that too ...

hmmmmm .... well, anyhow, this time I had some NEW

stamps with me from Unity Stamp and I made a tag,

coloring it with Inktense pens.

You know... sometime it feels like there is a sorrow for

every happy moment in life...

But, I (Granne) wish you all a very happy

 and creative year 2018, hope to see

many, many wonderful art pieces linked to our froggy, :=D

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