August already? For pity's sake where on Earth did July go???!?!?!?!?

This morning in my garden I saw

No wonder I haven't seen any butterflies, these guys must

have EATEN all the colorful and lovely species...

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Meantime, Asylum Anne has been empathising with those stuck in darkness for days on end and created a "Commemorative Bottle" that, now monsoon is upon them, may well have floated out of the Tham Luang cave system with a sadder outcome..

Tar gel and alcohol inks drizzled inside, stamps from Rubber Dance fishy sets  on the outside.

The fragile mesh of life, and the glow-in-dark thread of the rescuers guide ropes.  People glued at intervals to the mesh right down to the bottom of the bottle, where a skull represents the Thai navy seal that died.
Outside embellished with paper, embossing powder, crackle medium, shells etc

 Text "Thai caving" around the top

 Safety helmets & bling for the rescuers bringing them back into lightness

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These FinnStamper clear stamps might be flying on 

your way if the you link your art down below,

it's anything goes - but not the cuties.

An InLinkz Link-up

Day 21 31 Days of Halloween~Destination Unknown

Welcome to Day 21 of the 31 Days of Halloween! This is an annual Smeared Ink event and we are so thrilled to be playing along as Wicked Bloggers. The Wicked Blogger challenge is to post a new creation each day during October that contains a stamped image, digi or rubber! Check out all the rules and prize details at Smeared Ink.

There is a fabulous blog roll to follow and Hop to it! Find it on the side bar :)

Today is my turn, CT kim.

"Destination:Unknown" Postcard sized canvas, mixed media

For this postcard I had lots of fun trying some new things, well new-to-me :)
I made the background by swiping several Distress Inks on the mixed media paper. I let it dry them sprinkled and misted with water to blend them a bit. Once dry again, I misted with DecoArt Mister Shimmer White and some splatters of the same. This helped to tone it down in spots and make it blend more.

The balloon stamp is Hampton Art. I wanted a creepier version so I added my skull stamp given to me by the fabulous CT Granne. The skull is made by Finnstamper. This was the same stamp used on our CT postcard swap, I love it! Both images are heat embossed in black and colored with Distress Inks.

Love to hear what you think!

Remember to come back and link up your weirdly odd and creepy makes with us in our challenge!

~CT kim

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!