May is the Word

Well, well, spring has finally arrived at the northern part of globe...

Less snow, much more light, temperature rising ...

and that seems to get elf's cranky

I got this senselessly cool stamp set from happy mail (hugs Anne),

and totally wanted to create with it. So I got some watercolor paper,

my H2O colors and start coloring - enjoyed truly making these.

So beware of Elf's this time of year - Hope they go to sleep or

in these cases: someone will but them to sleep ....

Pick a Word

Asylum Anne's main "social media" contact is facebook.  There, quite a few people are not so much making a New Year Resolution, as picking a word for the year's focus. If you did, how are you getting on with it?   OK, so this piece says "create", and appears to be giving the lie, but my "word" for this year, if I must have one, is "use up"  This is NOT the same as "do not buy anything new this year" (*wink*)

But there are various things I've bought in the past that haven't grabbed me perhaps.  Or people have given me bits & pieces that are still on my desk needing to be released from that bondage, by imagination.  And there are things I've bought for my retirement when I expect to have a lot less "discretionary income".  But why wait until then?  Especially when I've discovered the odd thing that doesn't keep too well... like the TH Distress crackle paint - in one, the brush has hardened to the paint, so much so that when I opened the near-full jar, the brush stayed in the paint!

This is how I feel about stash that behaves like that:

Kaisercraft chipboard/mdf off-the-page thingies will always keep, but I've used a plaque to act as a supporting background to the bulk of the additions and "create" which is probably also Kaisercraft, but I'm not swearing to that (don't like the taste of soap in my mouth).  The TH distress crackle paints were clumped & smoothed onto the word.  The plaque was first covered in black gesso, then several layers of Stencil Girl stencils - the Sea urchin used several times.
This angel, and a tree elsewhere were sent me by Teamie Granne/Sari.  They (and a 3-layer  diecut cog) got heat embossed three times to build up a thicker layer of glossy goodness.  The angel was then stamped into whilst molten with a Seth Apter alphabetic stamp (stamp it into an embossing pad first so it will release cleanly after the embossing powder has cooled)

I've been playing for a while with making my own colour mixes of embossing powder, or using multiple colours on one item.  The cog had layers of oil rubbed bronze, then part-damped for Lindy's Gang Terra cotta rust, and Byzantine bronze.

There are diecuts, bits of wire also cluttering my desk, so here goes:

And everything comes together, to remind me of so many stash themes and techniques to be re-used, as:

Doesn't that skull (a spectacle lens) look different from this angle. I've got another one to use up too...

How's your year starting up?  Done anything dark, gruesome, or off-beat to share?  here, would be a great place...

An InLinkz Link-up

Spring forward

March Challenge winner is...

#4 from Crom's Cubby Hole!

We all loved your mixed media Spook triptych!

This is Asylum Anne's second month as a Stencil Girl Voice.  That meant she got the April Club stencils in January to create something in time to celebrate their release.
So... the draft test piece: some very white kiwiana 12x12 paper, the stencils, Carabelle's very long quelques notes de music and just for fun, LeighSB Design's Bizarre Beasties (digi stamp) in the corner.

It is Spring, and a rather bedraggled bird - stenciled onto a ripped up & dyed Egyptian Cotton sheet (tmi?) - suddenly realises he needs to refurbish his wardrobe in order to attract a mate?

Beautiful gaudy (diecut) glittery wings are order of the day. The top one painted with a Resene house paint test pot of glitter blue, then over it, heat embossed part of the stencil using Emerald Creek's Mardi Gras.  The other 2 were covers generously in pva glue, then glitter(red) and glass glitter (green) poured over.

Before working the new stencils, the first layer was bare tree trunks of September 2017 Club, using Lindy's Gang Steel shimmer Magicals mixed with pouring medium.  The second layer was Black birds in trees stencil using Michael deMeng's Warm Usszh recipe (quinacridone gold and a bit of van dyke brown paint)  After that the hearts and flowers of this month's stencil release were superimposed, one of the birds heat-embossed.  Those are real feathers sprouting from the tailor text.

And the animal/birds?  They're probably thinking back to the tale of Little Black Sambo, "Now who's the smartest tiger bird in the jungle"

Please share your own warped humour in art, your dark, your weird HERE

You want a Valentine card as well???

OK, ok, rubber arm twisted.  Just because it's the last day of Leigh SB Design's My Dark Valentine hop.  You can have a card... AND an envelope!

A blank card made of kraft, sprinkled Paper Artsy Infusions and spritzed.  The card curled quickly, giving the 2-directional streaming

The inside I stamped the XXL Carabelle stamp, Steampunk Mechanique, and wrote a poem for it:

Valentine

When Cupid’s sharp arrow doth strike,

All thoughts of food are fled:

I am a sandwich short of a picnic,

A few noodles short of a chow mein!

In love and thus  blind.

No longer the brightest bulb in the box.

The lights are on, but I am not home:

Shipped but not delivered  - lost, so  lost for love.

Undelivered, Alack!  I am not the fastest ship in the fleet.

My heart  rends me a few keys short of a keyboard,

A few cogs short of the gear change

That would  bring together Toi et Moi

Cupid thou Nasty Cherub

I would change thine aim

But thou hast reft me of mine sanity,

Missing a few buttons on the remote,

A few keys short of a keyboard.

A few cogs short

In my heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And the front of the card:

The Cheery Lynn die, Hearts #2  has 3 different colours of embossing powder. The cogs were diecut from a juice carton, alcohol ink-treated.
Stencilgirl S271 Angel Circle, L157 city scape, Club 05-2017
Carabelle stamp set :Textes:  Zoom sur 1 souvenir.  Sorry I can't find it on their website, nor the one I bought it from.

As for the envelope... I hope it's got enough postage - that 20cent one better not be prophetic.

That Mocking bird that took out Poe last month is back, aiming at the cat???

Maybe there's more to it than that - an winged easter bunny with an egg-bomb?

Some love-sick boy getting his come-uppance?

 Zoom out, we want to see the whole thing to make our own minds up:

Can you see the postie daring to deliver this to anyone's letterbox???

Stencil Girl's Mixed Media Mail stencil's words pop up in serendipitous places, to comment.  A Silver Crow Creations rubber stamp simulates an Addressee.  Digi stamps include Delicious Doodles for the postage stamps (Cranial Caress and Samhain), Bloobel the Sick Boy and Kitteh, Ike's "Greece" is the building-courtyard scene.  Smeared Ink's Winged Grumpy and our hostess, Leigh SB Designs have the Oddleigh Mocking Bird, the egg, and the quote.

An InLinkz Link-up

Life is a Circus ...

Hello all you swell readers / players and followers.

As you can see, Dream in Darkness has got itself

a new lighter look. 

And with it we'd like to invite more players

to play, so not "just" dark entries,
are super welcome,
DO link up your strange, fun, bring your Snark,

Mixed Media, alternative, wicked, COOL projects

- you know we loooove to see them!!!
But sorry cute kittens don't make the cut !

We also are going to have a Twist of the month. 

It's a theme you can follow if you so wish 

(we are a easy going challenge - not must "have to" -thingy's). 

This months twist is the "Circus".

Here's Granne's take with a Circus twist

Altered photo frame from Ikea and mostly 

VLV stamps colored with Inktense Pen's

Asylum Anne's passport let her out of the country, but she nearly didn't get in to Australia - "they" scanned it several times before it would be accepted.  At least she got to Lismore for 4 days with Seth Apter, taking his Library of Memories class.  Although he had run out of stock, another classmate who regularly attacks Anne's credit card, Julie of Time to Create, had plenty, and reaped the benefits.  So with lots of new goodies on her desk, Anne went looking for the

 New chunky embossing powder on a cereal packet (just the right background!)  And like the phrase says, "Not My Monkeys, Not My Circus", this clown has one up on you!

A different embossing powder sprinkled randomly over wet paint.
Another ATC, with a new Carabelle stamp.  Don't know that we like the look of that balloon.

And a third ATC, with a new die from Carabelle making for a pretty windy tent.

Granne sent the stamps thank you so much.  The clown scraps came from Silver Crow Creations.

Dear Granne unleashed this Circus and made sure to send provisions to the Crew. BUT those insane monkeys stole the food along the way! Can you believe it?? Them clowns got something to do with it for sure! Even on a good day you know what can happen when h u n g e r overtakes you!?***%$#! And then leaving that drat tent flap open and all chopped up seriously...

Caution Contains (pea)nuts!

No Snickers is not a sponsor!

But...if you link up something snarky Circus-y or funky, or just totally mind-bending you are in it to have a chance at at "treat" from Sin City Stamps!

Link up Below...

An InLinkz Link-up

Asylum Anne - Lunchers and Lunchees

When your teamie sends you a snail from a French company, you just KNOW there's going to be a Happy Meal in that Happy Mail... at least Mona Lisa is having a decent meal.  She's a bit messy though - slurping snails in tail-first, letting the shells drop to her bosom.

Here's the whole page, where Mona is thinking "I look in the mirror to see a lean mean harvesting machine"

Guess that means snails aren't fattening.  Two of Seth Apter's Spellbinder dies are layered over a mirror (shimmer sheet), and Mona's reflection started at Things to Alter.  Sooo, several stamp companies have an Eiffel Tower, and a Mona Lisa besides Rubber Dance, but snail mail?  That's tucked away on a plate of postal-themed phrases - complete with snail.  Go check it out, and you'll be looking for opportunities to send people mail, with the best-decorated envelopes ever Envelope Stamps  My 93-year-old dad took the trouble to email me a thank you for the envelope I sent mum the other day.  OK, so that's not weird or dark or creepy, but just a reminder that there's more to inking up stamps than labouring over a pristine card.  And being unmounted, no problem to just have the front end of a snail hanging from Mona's lips.  A serendipitous note to Rubber Dance's Mona - can you see the snail feelers at the very left of the stamp?

I'm also in an alternate-month Deconstructed Journal page swap, so between Carabelle Studio's escargrot (well that's how the packet calls it) and this month's sponsor Rubber Dance we're in for a weirdly festive occasion. - or at least, Rascally Rooster is feasting, the snails probably aren't feeling so festive alas.

Let's turn the page of this Deconstructed Journal page.  You saw our happy sun-loving escargrot at the beginning of the month, BUT... Rascally Rooster clearly loves eating snails, and taunting them - with words from that Envelope plate again.  You'll find the "expired" barcode here and all the weeds, here .

Did you know that if you stamp with black ink, then pour embossing powder over, you don't really see the black at all - it barely changes the tint of a pale lilac-pink ep.  Rascally Rooster & Escargrot were fussycut after heat-embossing.  The stamps are so great as they are, I didn't colour them in on this spread.  Knitting yarn was glued down to extend the feather line.  The snail is raised off the page, so its wings will sit at the same level.  The wings have detailing etched into them.  So as not to lose that, I dry-brushed them with an interference paint over the mdf, as I did for the hand, and also the Reaper's blade.

The back page Features Rascally Rooster's flamboyant rival Rod Rooster telling us he's Too Sexy for his shell. (Well don't all males of every species, once they've broken out of their shirt-shell?)  He's certainly flamboyantly coloured (with Tombows mostly) instead of embossed.

The cage-like shell swings away - like Rod Stewart's shirt perhaps?  Or is it the snail that's too sexy for his shell, as he looks about to lose it too.

All the stamps used came from Rubber Dance except for Carabelle's Escargot.
The mdf pieces - Grim reaper, pointing hand, & wings all come from http://thingstoalter.co.uk/ and in a range of sizes.
Being a swap page, just like an ATC, I like to integrate the "credits" and let them be a part of the whole piece.

Living Down Under, I have to import most of what I like, and Rubber Dance in Norway, and Things To Alter in England have no problem supplying overseas shoppers.

So it's back to my inky roost to see what Rubber Dance inspires me to do, along with the rest of the packet from my team-mate Sari for next month.

Meantime I'm keen to catch up with your weird, creepy, dark makes posted *HERE*

The Circus is awol

Well, when they're not creeping us out at the circus, what do the clowns do for a vay-kay-shun?  Why, they head for the swamps... swamps of boiling mud to improve their complexions after a season's makeup.  The monkeys do what monkeys always do - exercise their curiosity bumps investigating the contents of some of the magician's props while he looks on almost as round-eyed as his Ass-istant (who he turned into a donkey for his personal ease of travel)

They toss the Elf-On-a-Shelf out, so he sulks on the fence and sabotages the mailman.  The worst juggler of the season has to practice for hours on end in the swamp, while witches fly above him trying to snitch his balls.

 

By printing the Mushy House out large I could open doors and windows to see who had checked in. 

I started by printing out our sponsor  Anita's Digi Art "Mushy House" on grey cardstock, and again reversed on white paper.  Cut the windows and door to hinge, and cut them completely out of the plain paper, to glue/tape to the insides of the door & windows.  The clown characters are "scraps" from Silver Crow Creations, as are the clowns.  The house was coloured, taped to a 12x12 page  of boiling mud. The spots on the mushroom cap, as well as the whole house, were outlined with glitter glue.  A "scrapbooking page" featuring bark shreds, and another of tree ferns (pongas) were also ripped and layered over the mud page.

The zombie hand from Butter Side Down was stamped on the page and also on a separate piece of blue paper, which was then fussy-cut, the bottom part removed, and layered over the image stamped on the mud, increasing the 3-dimensionality.  The balls it is juggling were drawn free-hand.  The Mail Monster from Third Stone Stamps was stamped on my fave fluoro green card, and fussycut.

The weird "plants" growing on the edge of the swamp are from stamp sets "Ville d'ailleurs: Urbania" and "Rouages auz petits pois" by Carabelle Studio but I bought them from closer to home, Time To Create in Australia - which we kiwis refer to as "West Island".

The witches background stamp is from Carmens Verandah

So, while the clowns are out of town, we can safely sleep at night... I hope! 

Enter this month's challenge HERE