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...

-------------------------

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

---------------

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

Drip Drop Drip Drop

• Summer Rains or sweat in the South?
• Melting Snow in the North?
• Hero-ing Seth Apter's Drip Drop die?

• Life is full of rules
• Long lists of them
• Bullet-pointed
• Going on forever
• and ever.

🌟 1   From my Not-PC journal/altered book:

Heroing the "surrounds" of card after cutting the die out. The yellow is the page underneath.   They look like bullet points as each makes a different point.

Also used Billboards stamp set, Spinners  stamp set (Word Spin), Unfinished stencil
And from Rubber Dance stamps, the zebra rhinoceros, who is telling us we must use Butterflies in our work, not zebras!  Yeah, right... who's he fooling???
The lowest "bulletpoint" was covered in Goosebumps, and the texture seems to have gravitated to the ink of the stamp underneath:

🌟 2  Jar Labels:

Must be time to go fishing to pickle some more!

Used the DeMengted Derma technique over the DripDrop die cut (tinted the crackle medium red first), and used Kroma Crackle the trad way (tinted yellow) for the inner label which was glued to the back of the diecut.  A light layer of pouring medium over the yellow crackle so it stays on, and a dab of gel medium behind the cabochon, and it has survived whereas the newt eyes have all been eaten.

🌟 3   Name Badge:
I actually started doing several to take to a class to share, but it didn't eventuate.  One side of the card had metal foil glued to it then over-stamped using Thunderstorm.  The other side had stamps, stencilling and random painting.

 After cutting dies, the inner one was turned round, so each "tag" shows both sides of the card at once.  Since I'm not handwriting names after all, I've used Spellbinder Art Nouveau font dies, cut then glued together 5 layers of  each letter, then added several layers of embossing powder over them:  They stand very high above the surface, and stand out well.

🌟  4  Spider's nest:
Converted to a spider's nest by wrapping a fluffy yarn round the ring part to cover it completely, with a few criss-crosses to later glue the cabochon with spider to the front, and a label to the back.  The drips have lilac flowersoft glued to them.  This could be turned into a brooch if you glued a fixing across the back.

🌟  5  David Bowie's Comet

Is there Life On Mars?  

It rather flew off on me into a Fat Book page (6" x 6"):  The front & back pages started with a layer of black tissue crumpled down, then a layer of blue tissue lightly crumpled, with some stamping using all 3 stamps of the Faded Fragments set, and Spinoff in the Roundabouts set.  Some Robo stars diecut out of the "paper" florists use these days.  Some stardust (kindy glitz).  David Bowie is framed in a comet of Golden's Pearl mica flake medium, and the skully one done in kroma crackle.

🌟   6:   The Inside pages:  NASA sent a robot in a spaceship, and apparently found enough "evidence" for Martian Life, that as Comet Bowie whizzed  past us headed that-a-way, David must have hopped aboard to check it out.  Of course, he doesn't need to wear a space suit any more, just a gauzy shroud.

Blue tissue paper was stamped as for the other side, before crumpling onto the page spread - without any black paper underneath.  Looks rather different than with the black under.
Once I saw Seth's pieces in facebook using the CHA releases (drool), I completed the page without text, until the new Alpha Drips stencil could get to me from Stencil Girl (along with some others haha) - and then I used the wrong colouring agent (pen) for the text so it's not as crisp as I would like... maybe star nebula dust got in the way 😄

🌟   7  The quick-witted will remember this picture from 1 February's post - and realise it changed once the pieces got onto the page:

Layers of dies can give quite a different effect to using pop dots in random places on a cutout.  The left-hand one has two layers glued on top of each other, then heat embossed with 3 layers of embossing powder, then another layer of reds and blues along the drip line. Under it is a skeleton leaf.  Why?  A veil over a mystery.  Under that are 2 more layers of the die glued together with the edges painted yellow, and glued offset, ie not aligned with the edges of the upper layers.  That gives more dimension to the frame.   A bit flamey all round, and the leaf/veil floats above the surface, giving more depth to the face underneath.

The right-hand one is a layering of 3 different dies:  in red the Robostar die, then a white dripdrop, then a robo ring with blue embossing powder.  On top of them is Kaisercraft's Nutcracker die, looking suitable robotic.  After putting this piece on the page, the robot was too busy and indistinct, so I cut another one, painted it gold with Jacqurd's Lumiere paint and glued it on top of this one..

🌟   8   Robo star dies frame the starburst stamp from the Faded Fragments set - made to measure!  For other subtle texture, stars were diecut from florists "papers"  I suggest you try a heat gun on each first before glueing down and heating to hurry the drying!  One melted, one evaporated.  And the mesh-like sheets need to be sandwiched between two sheets of paper if they're to cut through.

🌟   9  You can get all of Seth's goodies direct from him.  If you're mad about stencils, they are made at Stencil Girl.  Dies, embossing folders and some stamps are at Spellbinders.  Others of his stamps are at Paper Artsy (did we mention he has a line of Fresco chalk paints with them too?) and still more stamps with Impression Obsessions

🌟   10  FINALLY...... (last bullet in the brain)  As I sweat in nearly 30-degree (C) summer heat, I see quite a few of you "northerners" have thawed out enough to put up your dark, weird, off-beat, definitely not-cute projects on our challenge.  There's space for more of course, add yours here and one of the darkest, creepiest, most off-beat pieces will win something from Seth's generous gifts to us.

More webs a-tangling, and a spider in a peach tree.

Well, I finally managed to retrieve my Grumbacher palette knives - I think the frogs eventually found more fun climbing the cherry trees overhead, as the cherries are ripening beautifully at last.
And I started using them, the biggest ones are great for slathering stuff through stencils over large areas, but I also had fun using them with their water-miscible oil paints.  Being me, a palette knife risks being not only a tool, but a part of my "stash".  But these are still too good to use, so I grabbed an old worn small-bladed one, cut 2 of the blade shape of the big one and glued to each side of the small blade.  The original trowel blade is at the top, the small one with one piece of matboard so far:

Knowing I wanted to do some stringing webbing, I used the crop-o-dile to cut nicks all round the cardboard (and tested the Original discreetly as you can see near the handle, for future reference).  I then started collaging painting and stamping both sides.  The "back" side also got strips of ribbon, washi tape, diecut skulls, stamps from Seth Apter, and the stamp phrase from Rubber Dance being heat embossed.

 This picture of the "front" side is at an unfinished stage, and my camera files AND paint edit programmes are all being as glitchy as me lately, so I can't even enhance the one pic I took of the front side progress.  But there are collaged elements, diecut offcuts, more of Seth's stamps and more paint.

 I added this chippie skull from Things To Alter after giving it a glaze (not a wash) using Grumbacher's Gel 531 Transparentizer, with a drop of van dyk brown acrylic paint.

I've been playing round with the Gel 531 medium quite a bit, and there'll be more in another post this month, but look at the different it makes to a very opaque colour, compared with adding water for a wash.  After stamping in Indian ink another Seth Apter stamp on a white ATC card, I painted the stripe down the middle in undiluted van dyk brown acrylic paint.  Being a very opaque paint, you cannot see the stamp underneath.  Dipped the brush briefly in water to do the wash top-right, then with a fresh brush mixed some Gel 531 transparentizer with a drop of the paint to do bottom-left area.  With the glaze you get a fuller sense of the colour, and the under-stamping seems to stand out better too.  After it dried, I inked up the worm and bee stamps (viva las vegas stamps perhaps) with indian ink again, and "framed" the card.

  The glaze stood out far better on the skull than a wash would have, without reducing the impact of the cut detailing.

The skull was glued over the collage with a couple of small peacock feathers as vestigial ears, the centre line of each feather crossing the eye sockets.  A mohair yarn was wrapped between the notches I had cut on the outside edges, criss-crossing the front of the blade only, like a spider's web.  I wrapped (covered) a wire, mixing a multi-colour yarn with another intermittent-bubble yarn, then coiled the whole lot, and glued round the outside edge of the blade.  Just because I wanted to.

After sending you off to hunt for Christmas decorations in Shelob's lair a few days back, there had to be a spider here too.  This came from Eye Connect Crafts, was painted with mica washes then wrapped.  The weird peacocky bit IS vestigial feathers off a peacock, still on the skin.  Limbs are attached with brads, so they can crawl further up to its web :)

Below it are some prunings from my blackboy peach tree and some uneaten bones, webbed (wrapped) around the handle.

Still on yet more medication myself after/with a bout of not-whooping cough, my camera is struggling to make sense of what I see, and can only give me this as an overall picture of a (faked/enhanced) Altered Grumbacher Palette Knife: 

If you're not dying from spider bites during decoration-retrieval, we challenge you to web up your weird, link your creations here.. and be in for a chance to win goodies from this month's sponsor, Grumbacher  

Merry Christmas 👼

The paintbrush slipped...

And my skeleton became a Zombie Skellie.

I'm taking Michael deMeng's Skullduggery online class at the moment.  Like all his classes, it is interesting, teaches me all I know about using paint and mixing colours, as well as covering assemblage, clay, right glues for right places... and they're well-edited.  However my wee skeletons ended up fauxfolksy and zombified.  Let me quote:

"... Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Not only is this a marvelous event where relatives celebrate the memories of the deceased, but it is also a chance for the living to mock the reaper. It’s a way for the living to say: “Neener, neener you haven’t got me yet”. One of the ways that Mexicans do this is with little skeletal toys known as “calacas”. Usually they are playful scenes where the skeletons are in the engaged in everyday activities, riding bicycles, walking dogs, dancing with devils (okay, so this one is perhaps not an everyday activity). The idea is to have a little fun with one's mortality. Well, that is what we’ll be doing in class. Using doll parts, action figures, and other found objects student will create little skeletons that will tickle your funny bone."

My "people" are enjoying a good harvest ("Neener neener, we won't starve to death THIS winter".  The All-seeing Eye of God is overseeing it all, of course.

I like the crisp stamping I got from Rubber Dance feather into clay, into which I settled the eye-bearing wings. (It's my photography that's a bit blurry)

The awesome wooden shrine/altar frames come from Silver Crow Creations, as do the fruit, wings (clear plastic which I coloured with alcohol inks.)  I made the skelicat (or is it a skuldoggery up to some skulduggery)  If I made more I'd be better at them haha.

Onwards, ever onwards through the 31 Days of Halloween Blog Hop, the link on the sidebar will take you away from me alas, but to discover more inspiration for you to appease our evil little froggy.

Sweet Music, we shall dance you to the death

Even a sweet theme such as "Music" gets twisted in the Asylum of Anne's brain.
Another in the Deconstructed Art Journal page swap going on in Middle Earth this year.  Take an 8"x 8" paper, fold in half and decorate portrait angle.  For 6 people this time.  I cut up a songbook, so everyone has a different song to sing.  I did an extra one for Mr Ed Poe - "Evertrue Evermore" - the third one down!

 The front and back pages: A scrapbooking page full of toitoi "flowers" (a native pampas-type grass) didn't need much more to be done to it.   The Jester from the late Blockhead Stamps was also heat embossed.  I love his squeeze box.  Carabelle Studio have some rather different stamps.  I'm using a Seth Apter stamp to head up the front page - rather tongue in cheek - "everything imaginable is here"  and down the bottom, Rubber Dance instructs you to Go where the music takes you.

 Just before we turn the page, here's your "mood" music  The back page is rather sparse - Stampendous rendering of Danse Macabre, and a cloud giving credit to the stamps and stencils used in this piece. Seth Apter's Explore stencil was the first layer to make it onto the page, then Retro Comet and starburst now discontinued by Artist Cellar then one from the Sacred Heart series at Stencil Girl - since all the songs that were the starting place seemed to deal with love not being as satisfacory as one would wish, the barbed wire across the heart seemed appropriate. (And green is the alternate colour to pink for the heart chakra)

Then it was out with the stamps

Rubber Dance for the wee dancers

Blockhead for the squiggles and notes on the die-cut witch,

Rubber Stamp Ave for the musical bird that is the witch's alter ego.

I added diecut music notes as telephone poles, and birds on a line (presumably all singing their hearts out in 4-part harmonies)

I hope my teamies are proud of me - there's pink in the framing!!!

So if you hear what you think is wind through the trees, hearken closely, it could be Witchy breathing a new song into the skellies, bringing them back to life for one night only.

OR... it could be Evil Froggy demanding more weird stuff from you all!

Though if you carry on therough the 31 Days of Halloween blog hop, you could be rather stunned by what's already being put on offer.

Scrabbling for a Song~Day 2 31 DOH

It started with a kiss...  my wallet kissing a load of Junque Shoppes, on what is normally a 4-hour drive to my daughter's family, but which added over 100 km and 4 hours travel time.  Looking forward to a cosy evening with daughter, I had forgotten Friday night is her Colouring At Home evening.  Oooh, the challenge!  I don't colour, I'd brought nothing to craft with, I had NOTHING.... or did I?  My wallet had opened for a scrabble set, which I got for the letters.  So there's my canvas.  Walking past a Rock shop earlier I'd picked up a free copy of NZ Musicians magazine - and that was on the way to a decent art shop, where I'd picked up a couple of water-soluble oil paints and some Atelier tinted black acrylics.  So I borrowed a paintbrush and glue stick, and started picking "ransom" words and letters, collaging onto the scrabble board, and meeting daughter's colouring-in friends.  I also carefully cut out a guy with a microphone, used him as a stencil and mask as well as collaging him.  So I brought it home this far along:

We have farewelled a few great musicians in recent times... David Bowie, Elvis (again???) and it's nearly John Lennon's anniversary, so the scrabble-ouija board invited their shades along to this song fest.
Now about that Ghostopus - did you find it on Day 1?  A Spellbinder die on some of that foam plastic-y packaging, a double-letter score for the G and the S, and a triple word score all over should match all those tentacles.

 Mad Rat have witches flying everywhere, including across this board.  Sponging off some of the water-soluble oil paint freed up the depth of colour so you can see there's a witch in that ghostly-green silhouette.  You'll be hearing more about Grumbacher another month.

Third Stone Stamps have a huge selection of skeletons to dance and flip and laze about, including the cat dancing under the octopus.  The Rubber Dance feather makes a pretty good skeletal spine too.  It's all about recycling here, and re-interpreting, too.

I'm sorry about the bilious pink watermarks - my teamies insisted we use pink through this Halloween month, and I don't "do" pink, so I hope they're satisfied!

So if you hear music on the wind, or from deep inside the planet, watch the wall my darling, while the "gentlemen" sing by.

And if you're tempted to look, go look at the next person in the blog hop - on the sidebar. 

....and our Challenge Link up...HERE

Dancing with the Flowers with Ink Bottle Bodies!

Love these little fairies with their ink bottle bodies! And they wanted to dance with my lovely flower Bibi sent me with my order from Rubber Dance Stamps so that is what they are doing and having so much fun!

I used a kid's large Go Fish card to back my embossed paper that I used way too many Nuance Powders on but ended up liking it :)   I used a flower from the Textured Flower Set and my fairies are from the Fly Mail set at Rubber Dance Stamps. 

Come play with us this month just a few more days left at Dream in Darkness so jump HERE and leave your entry with the frog man!

Think You Can't?

Of course you can!  If we insane teamies at Dream in Darkness share anything with you it is that you can do any crazy, weird, odd, anything that makes your heart soar!  Leonardo was considered quiet insane with his drawings of flying machines but was he crazy? Nope and he never thought he couldn't and Mona from Rubber Dance is here to inspire you to do the same!

Used packaging and some Holtz's papers and the fabulous Mona Lisa from Rubber Dance and a great sentiment from the "Think Again" set from them, too!

Come join us for that chance for some lovely rubber from the amazing Bibi at Rubber Dance Stamps at Dream in Darkness HERE

Just Like the Song Says Love Hurts

Hi lovelies!  CT Nan still hanging in there and wanting to show some love to the fabulous Bibi at Rubber Dance Stamps!  I ordered this set "Arty Hearty" from Bibi at the last minute for this month as my other stamps have gone hiding during my many trips to my house, the hospital, and staying at mom's and to my surprise they were in the mail today!  Fabulous service and the nicest lady to deal with EVER!  I have some shall I dare say?? pretty ideas for these awesome stamps but right now I am feeling the lyrics of that old song love hurts....even if it isn't over a break up or fight...loving someone completely can still hurt when we loose them or we are loosing them and can't stop it.  So here is my offering today with my whimsy girl's face saying it all.

Lots of time to enter our challenge at Dream in Darkness this month for some awesome awesome Rubber Dance Stamps so come play with us!  Enter HERE

Night out with Rubber Dance and chippies

From Anne's amazing "Blue light District",

it's time to move on to a Party District

and have a night of the nights...

GROO - OOVY!!!!

Silhouette is a chippie and all the colors are from DI ink pads.

Stamps from our fabulous sponsor, RUBBER DANCE:

background here and sentiment here.

Same background stamp combined with inks, melted crayon, 

chippie, glossy and sentiment from Visible Image.

Join the party and link your alternative, dark, weird, digital, hybrid, mixed media - anything but cute makes HERE

for a change to win some brilliant rubber from our magnificent sponsor

who is - by the way - giving free shipping to DiD players 

all over world ( code to use is: DiD6716 )

YEAH, BABY, YEAH!