When rubber balloons haven't been invented...

In Jane Austen's day, there were no balloons, so what could one fly?  Plenty of skulls around... so let's take our protest of over a week of frosts to the skies with one - we're freezing to death after all!

All stamps are from Blank Page Muse.  I sprinkled embossing powders over Andy Skinner's Lava Paste for both the clouds (Peppered chantilly enamel) and frosts (Fractured Ice)  for some subtle colouring, before heating it up.  And because it's such a colourful "balloon, here's what it looks like in rubber:

We are sooo close to rewarding one of you with some goodies - 2 more dark and weird show'n tell on the column to the right......>

July 1 or Where did June go!!

Welcome to the latest New Month.  Congratulations to Granne for holding the fort while Kim tosses scorpions out of her suitcases, and Asylum Anne  ... sought asylum in work, and *shock* *horror!* OTHER crafts!!!

Well, Anne is back, and taking liberties yet again with a stamp company's blog challenge theme, "Let's Go To The Beach" over at Blank Page Muse.  Since it's midwinter for her, the idea of a beach might be a darn sight safer than trying to sail off the beach.  Don't Emerald Creek/Seth Apter's Baked Textures do Cthulhu proud! No wonder Anne is scrambling for a beach, any beach. He has her vessel firmly in his grip, and is dragging it down under the waves.

Already people have fallen and been trapped by seaweed and tentacles

The highly-textured flotsam is tyvek painted, pleated and heated.

All stamps from Blank Page Muse (formerly Sin City Stamps).

Steampunk Octopus frame from Creative Embellishments.

Tiny people from Silver Crow Creations.

Well thank you Anne for your kind words and WOW what a

fabulous beach piece you have created for our inspiration.

I felt like coloring and grabbed a big stamp

for that, and Inktense pens.

Bold sentiment is from Katzelkraft, stamped on vellum.


HelloHello

I am still cleaning up those scorpions...Asylum Anne denies anything to do with that... the dynamic duo above has certainly raised the bar super high! So (again) I am ducking out and hope to be back later with a treat to share...I try I really do!

But for this month how about some stamps for a treat for you??
Well you gotta play along to be in it to win it!

Link up whatever suits you this month you have a short 30-ish days to get your arty groove going, let's go! We do ask, please minimize the cute, however, a teeny bit o' pink may be tolerated in special circumstances!!

The prize this month to one fabulous arty soul...

A set of our newest at Blank Page Muse, stamps for the backside of your art coins!

A crazy hybrid Bird-Man

A gentle-winged-man

The only catch is you have to link up a new arty project below...

An InLinkz Link-up

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

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.

An InLinkz Link-up

Dear Reader... don't read so long that the spiders web you over.

Centuries after her death, (well, it was 200 years this July) people are still captivated by Jane Austen's writings.  It may be that a rather portly gentleman has  been reading since the first edition came out, never stopping to notice the spiders webs growing round him.  Even within Jane's tales of romance, there are some spooky places, creepy assumptions. What was the story behind Mrs Tilney's suite of rooms, wondered the heroine... and that got her into trouble before the Path Of True Love could be straightened, of course.

Paper Whimsy's Lacy Triptych with stand provided the foundation for this project.
The arched frames were given 3 coats of Emerald Creek embossing powder, then stamped while molten with the barbed wire brick fence stamp.  The side panels were done in Northern Lights colour, the centre panel in Midnight Sky.  The Lacework "roof lines" were painted with Jacquard Lumiere in Indigo, then a coat of Halo Blue-green, and heat gunned while wet for the bubbly texture.  The individual frame backgrounds were painted with white gesso.  Before completely dry, Lindys Gang moonshadow Tawny Turquoise was washed over, then a few drips of Moonlit Mulberry encouraged to flow down.

The barbed wire fence stamp with Indian ink was stamped over each panel, before gluing down the fussy-cut Austen stamps.  Strands of spider web are Helmar 450 glue (hot glue guns aren't a common part of my toolkit, else I'd have done that).  When this gentleman was glued down, the book was left unglued, for a touch of 3-D.  From his expression, novels are a new concept to him.

I used Emerald Creek embossing powders - they also have an American web site, or you can swap between the two (top right toolbar in the web page)  The box part of the stand was covered in some Graphics 45 Typograph paper..

Sin City Stamps have 2 new plates of Jane Austen stamps out, and here :)
Farewell Jane, and thanks for the hours of imagination you've stimulated.

Of course, if you've been working on something weird, off-beat, creepy, daaaark, share it with us here