Be prepared for Valentine Day

Enjoying the Leigh SB Design My Dark Valentine hop?
Are we sending/receiving Valentines?  If you're worried Evil Froggie might make a snatch for them, I have a couple of Card Guards ready for duty.  Whaddya think?  This fella turned up a day early - he's #13, and Valentine Day is 14th.  So even in my time zone he's well ahead of EF.

Here they are, keeping an eye the letterbox

Thanks to Michael deMeng's online class "Altered Alice" for sending me down this path!

The heart a-top #11 does spin (radar?  Windsock???) , and his spear has already seen effective action.
I'm sure I have ordinary cards, but could only find minis, looong oval, round, or Shakespeare-quoting packs, so had to go shopping for a pack of cards, and what I got had numbers up to 13 as well as the trad court cards.  C'mon, this is supposed to be  a Dark blog, so of course #13 was perfect for the this Red Queen's guard.

and continued like this

Yes, genuine oyster shell and sand pen shells were used - this guard has given the shirt off his back In Service - and is down to the bare bones of his arse!  So he got some coats of paint to warm him.

I have to thank Elli Jenks, of Rubber Bandit Stamps, and Brightsea Village for this other Guard's head, she's fantastic at making polymer clay pieces so I hope she's ok with how I used this one:

This post has been hijacked to participate in Leigh SB's Valetine blog hop, so leave us some love, and off you go.

An InLinkz Link-up

Harvest

It's Autumn here, though we've had a couple of summer cyclones pass through this last fortnight.  So between rains, I'm out harvesting ahead of winter.
In a jar, place 2 dragon teeth, a piece of tyvek coral, and a sprig of tansy.  Drizzle in some acacia tree sap.

Add human bones, 2 witches captured at full moon, a sprig of rosemary, a sprig of wormwood and a string of micro-gourds.

Cap the jar, and shake for 5 minutes every New Moon.

Set Pantrygoyl over it to guard contents from black cats who might be looking for their witches.  The crown makes him feel important, and ensures his reliability to the task.

Plus he (unusually) has a fine head of moss-hair, which better not blow away!
The 'goyle is made from Polymer clay by a friend of mine, Elli Jenks (also of Rubber Bandit stamps and Brightsea Village fame)
His crown, Sizzix Twisted Edge die, heat embossed after curving into shape.
The skellie and witches from Silver Crow Creations.

Your weird dark and creepy makes deserve a wider audience too, so add them here for us to shiver over!  Even though E.Frog is very busy splashing in many many deep puddles, he knows when you're creating!

Calamari with an Attitude!!

Hi peeps, juts a wee reminder that there is

still time to make some ODD / DEEP /DARK makes

and join our challenge of May, sponsored by the fabulous

This time I didn't go with her awesome digi's,

but take some rubber/paints/embossing powder and spray in my hands, and made a ATC.

Octopus is from VLV and so is the sentiment , 

what's left of the poor fishes that dared to confront the

mighty Octopus is a stamp from Rubber Bandit.

I wish you'll have a creative weekend!

Granne

P.S. Stop by tomorrow, we are part of...

Link up to our Lucky 13th May Challenge HERE

Magic surrounds us .... with Rubber Bandit

CT Granne here with some ATC's to share.

You know the feeling when you have crafting stuff that 

you absolutely wanted to have - and then you just can't 

get around to do anything with them...

Well if you don't; lucky you ... I had that 

feeling with my Gelatos... BUT the I saw this tutorial

and absolutely wanted to try to make drips...

And since I have some stamps from our fabulous sponsor

I took a muesli box, gesso, gelatos, water and stamps 

from The Cats Whiskers and Night Owls -sets.

I think my gelatos will be on my crafting table more often from now on...

And here is a wee reminder about the awesome set 

that will be going to a this month's lucky challenge winner.

Some froggy green rubber, YUMMY!!

Make froggy happy, play here

Rubber Bandit "As the Crow Flies" Tag

CT Nan here with a short one for you today!  Rubber Bandit Stamps is our fab sponsor this month and I got the set "As the Crow Flies" to play with and decided to try a technique with gelatos and multiple stamping with one layer of the silver gelatos on the flying crow from the set.  I used a black tag with gelatos, blue and green, applied first so the silver stamped crow took on a slightly blueish hue and shimmers like crazy!

I backed the tag with my piece of paper I keep under my work to catch all the yummy colors left over or blended on to it and this one had some shimmer sprays on it that matched the crows shimmer to a "T" so I liked that.  The sentiment is from the set and embossed in silver.  Please check out their link for some unique stamps you are sure to love!

There is still lots of time left to enter our challenge and the prize is these wonderful stamps that I couldn't bring myself to ink up to show the image!  I didn't want to spoil them for you but they are beauties!  So get inky or digital and make something odd, weird, dark, just NO cute and go see Evil Froggy.  He is getting quiet grumpy again....so the house is keeping an eye on each other to make sure no one takes an unplanned vacation before Creepmas season :)

See ya there!  And to make it easy just jump from HERE to get to the linky post!  Yes, magic we are!

To Grandmother's House We Go ....with Rubber Bandit Stamps...

Welcome Back!

We are just beyond the midpoint of November and where on Earth has the time gone! Wow!

Today I have a postcard play I did with my awesome set of Rubber Bandit Stamps! These are really awesome stamps and make a great impression. Please hop over and visit the fantastic shop!

Next week here in the US is Thanksgiving, so this is my take on a possible journey to Grandma's house :)  But really this was just an excuse to play. The background is Distress Ink. The images are stamped with Distress Embossing Ink and heat embossed in Ranger Superfine Black. All images are colored with Inktense color blocks and a waterbrush.

Anyone for blue hardboiled eggs?

Evil Froggy says if you want to win this stash of Rubber Bandit Stamps, then you have to enter something fabulously 'odd' or 'weird' or just plain quirky too. Digi, stamped, whatever, just play it's great!

So what are you waitin' for??? Link up HERE

Have a safe journey, wherever you travel to!

~kim

Looking Out, Looking In, can one see Poe's Bandits?

So, the month started with a trio of ATCs.

Fly By Night Collage from Rubber Bandit Stamps is a great ATC-sized stamp, and lent itself to experimenting with different colourways.  I stamped with an Indian ink pad, and later went over the all-black ravens with a dark blue pen.

 I stamped & fussycut then overlaid a stone window frame from Third Stone Stamp (Formerly Third Coast Rubber Stamps.)  And a chance to try some moonlight drifting over the windowsill.  What a great scene from your bedroom window!  Have a couple of detail moments:

But if that's what's outside, what will you see if you turn round and look inside???

When one looked back, this Haunted House loomed, threatening to stitch us up (or you could stitch it up, yourself)  Now Halloween is past, so this might not be as creepy a post as you could expect, but I hope you find some dark or strange moments among it - or at least some dark, warped humour..

 and tossed carelessly at its steps...

The  "window frame" (the only stamp not from Rubber Bandit): we were looking out has changed.  I came across the heart picture somewhere online, and it just begged to turn up here.  So, how did those Pilgrims cope in a new land, with strange beasts and plants?  Would they recognise poisonous plants?  Might some friendly Indians wise them up?  Or weird them up - have the last laugh instead? ...  Lets browse through some pages, and consider... 

 And a faint hint that Halloween past, Thanksgiving Present, will lead to Christmas Future:

Supplies:

So many many stamps including the Fly By Night collage on the ATC, from Rubber Bandit Stamps

Blackbirds in trees stencil -  Stencil Girl

Feathers, Woodgrain (made raspberry jus - sorry, blood drips) stencils - The Crafters Workshop

Broken circles (roses) stencil - Joggles

Window frame - Third Stone Stamps

G45 papers from Alice in Halloween and Rare Oddities sets

Outside accessories: fruit tree prunings, upper jaw of a fish :)

For a parting shot, I recently was in a "postage stamp" swap.  These I got from Elli, of Rubber Bandit, and probably explain how the Pilgrim's CookBook got around the New World so thoroughly:

Wow!  Was this worth the wait and the tease?  We sure do think so.  Here at the house of course we do not use that cookbook!  And now for a look at the winner's prize from our awesome sponsor Rubber Bandit!  We didn't ink them up to show the images cause then they wouldn't have that fresh rubber smell on them when you open them up!

Another bit of a tease but you can see some fabulousness to be won but you can't win if you do not enter and enter you must to keep that dang frog happy going into the holidays.  So see you at your blog when you hit the blue linky, errr, I mean graciously leave your offering to Evil Froggy ......nervous screams coming from the house, gotta run!

November and Rubber Bandit is Here

Thanks to all who visited during October and left comments and/or lovelies with Evil Froggy, the old grump was finally temporarily appeased!  This month we are being sponsored by Rubber Bandit Stamps and we have an awesome grab bag of amazing rubber stamps for this month's winner!  The owner of  Rubber Bandit is so modest she just wants us to tell you about her fabulous sites!  Rubber Bandit Stamps 

 for stamps and www.ellijenks.com for her super spectacular needle point, so please check them out and tell her the crazy crew sent you!  So get started with anything, medium, odd, quirky, dark, macabre make you want and get in the mix for the win!

Our September winner, Marilyn, has kindly acted as our Guest Creative Team Member this month and it is a doozy!  

Here is a little bit about Marilyn and please check out her blog at Seeing Things Art Apothecarium.

"I am a mixed media/digital artist living large on the prairies in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. You will find me in my office/studio everyday working on a digital piece or a mixed media project. I am a complete Photoshop addict!

I gravitate toward edgy, darker art and love anything mystical, macabre, weird or wonderful!"

DEAD FAIRY

Perhaps the winds were too strong,

perhaps the rains too difficult to survive.

She lay in a heap beneath the redwood trees,

lost in the brown decaying things.

I lifted her from that tiny cold grave,

her wings tattered, her bonds so fragile,

and I took her home.

"I used so many different elements from so many of the digi kits offered

over at Mischief Circus, well I lost count!!

Some of the major contributors were Cryztal Rain’s fabulous paper sets

Torn Journal Papers and Dirty Paper Stax

Human Skeletons and In The Witch’s Kitchen by Pink Lotty."

Thank you Marilyn! Please show her some love and hop to her blog when you can! Her art is fabulous, if you have never visited, what are you waiting for???

Our sponsor, Rubber Bandit, gave CT Anne free reign to pick some rubber stamps for us to create this month with and she chose "Home Baking Set" and "Kitchen Scales Set" to challenge us to creep out the Thanksgiving menu!  So here are some fab cooking related makes and we also got an awesome "As the Crow Flies Set" so we mixed and matched...who said kitchens had to be 'normal'... Muwahahaha!

And now for CT Granne.....

CT Kim has this one for us!
 

The red shirts always go first...

Teasing CT Anne has shown us this and  says if this is what is on the side showing......wonder what can be on the other side?  
 

And bringing up the rear is CT Nan...

Please note that my whimsy skelly girl is only using her knife to portion out the crow as you can see her tummy is full right now with one beak and feet and all!  And, no crows or tiny people were hurt in the making of any of these projects!

It's your turn to show us your uniqueness and we can't wait!  And remember we like odd and quirky a lot around here maybe because we are all ODD!  So bring it on this month!

Evil Froggy commands you....link up here......muahahhahahha

An InLinkz Link-up