Valentine Day, a Day of Love. One always hopes it will be Happy Ever After, but it's not my favourite theme: I'm a big fan of the Day of the Dead concept, it resonates deeply within me. Could I combine the two? So when I found my other stash of
Paper Whimsy Alterables the other day, one with a skull stayed on the desk. In fact I rediscovered several stash drawer contents during this project - the roulette wheel really works, and I started thinking "Life is a Gamble with Death". And relationships are also a gamble. I painted the kit pieces Mars black, glued all together (except for the bones) and painted parts with the thinnest smear of interference colour paints. So all those vibrant colours, including that blue, are what you can get. The frame was then painted with graphic black, which is not as dark a black as Mars black. My stash of peacock tails and maribou feathers has been neglected for too long - and yes, you can get tail feathers this small. I just liked the grey fluffiness against the hard wings of the skull, and the pop of the peacock eye.
The bride was a "scrap" hiding in a stash drawer, and my project crystallized. Like the colours of the peacock feather behind the skull?
Where to place the bones (with a bicone bead glued to each end) was easy to decide after all, but what to put above that took a lot of auditioning before I settled on stamping on grey card then cutting to fit the Alterable's shape, and a chunk of mother of pearl shell.
Silver Crow Creations has all sorts of quirky stuff - like the roulette wheel, which spins when you twirl the nob in the centre and the ball spins round too. They have all sorts of ephemera scraps too, some in random bundles, which is how the bride came my way.
Paper Whimsy have a great selection of masonboard "kits", like the Spooky Terrarium.
Golden Paints are a good quality brand that I can easily get in NZ - unlike so many other goodies.
