1 October~Better known as THE BEST MONTH OF THE YEAR!

Yay!! It's finally October, month of the skulls, skellies and 

everything nice, I hope you guys will give us a busy month

linking all your fabulous Halloween and Day of the Dead and

other artsy, creepy, dark, strange  ---- well anything but cute ---

creations to us to come and see.

I made a skully card to honor the season

Using black inks, alcohol inks and VLV stamp

And lets see what Anne has for our delight:

To never...

Insist people respect your body - if your child doesn't want to hug Uncle Bob or Aunty Jane, don't force them, teach them they are in control of what is done with their body 

and back them up every time.  Otherwise, maybe...

Gallows stamp ButterSide Down
Text die Spellbinders sent me instead of what I really ordered - not my scene, but I've put my own spin on it now!
Blank Page Muse stamps - ATCoin back, Steampunk Gentleman (wings only), owl & moon
The skeleton & spooky tree-house scene are unbranded dies.

And yes we meant to scream out the title of the post! Too bad the letters can't be BIGGGGGEER!

The winner of the challenge for the great Fall month

of October, will be getting very seasonal die: 

Layered Jack-O-Latern

That's cool, ehh? 

wicked cool!

To win it ya gotta be in it! Show us your October fun, we can't wait! Trick or Treat what say you?? What's your personal art outlet? Stamps, Inks, Paints, Words? Bring us your story...

An InLinkz Link-up

Happy Birthday Dad

As you may recall, I had some skulls readied for projects a while back.  I also had umpteen diecuts hanging round the desk, so it was time to put them together.  I painted the entire boxed canvas yellow, then stencilled the Sunburst over it with gel medium, which will dry clear.  Several washes including black, quinacridone gold, dioxazine purple... then wiped them off the stencilled areas to reveal the yellow rays.

Multiple cereal boxes were cut with Seth Apter's Take Flight die, glued together, then heat embossed with Stampendous' chunky metallic seasonings.  Some was dabbed on to the skull and heated on as well.
Down the bottom, more layers of paint and washes, understamping and overstamping, including use of Strumpet stencil's  Fetus.

4 sets of Sizzix Feathered Wings  were handy, so I layered two of each to make 2 sets of wings.  This set had Paper Artsy Infusions (which I first came across in July's trip to Australia) sprinkled over, spritzed with water.  The edges were tipped with gold Lumiere paint. The largest cross of the die set was cut out of a sheet of craft foam (it also shows the embossing component easily) painted, and strips of bling added.  The top of it had to be snipped to fit under the skull, and a jewel popped under the bottom to keep it raised off the surface.

On my (now late) father's birthday, and as we head into Christmas, a time of celebrating a special new birth, I also remember the children that did not live long enough to have their birth recognised.

Your darkness can be shared here.  And come back on New Year's Day and we will see what Santa brought us to creArte with.

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.