Playing With Paper Blocks and Bunnies

Hello friends! Easter is coming for us for very soon and I’ve been enjoying all of the Spring that’s starting to come up outside with flowers and buds on the trees! It’s still a little cool, but hopefully the weather will even out and stay warmer!

Since I’ve been trying to get motivated for Easter, I’ve pulled out some papers from my stash and have been inspired to CASE (copy & share everything) a friend that really inspires me to use things I have! First, I’d like to share a fun Easter card that I’ve made for a sketch challenge that I was inspired by as well:

That sitting bunny is so cute! (Thank you Carol…more on that later in post!) If you check out the sketch from the Sketch Saturday challenge blog (see in challenge list below), you will see all of the fun angle strips in the sketch. I thought it would be fun to pull out some Easter papers from my stash. I wasn’t sure how to do the background until I saw that this sitting bunny worked perfect for a part of the paper pad that had this wheelbarrow image in it! I cut it out from the paper and placed the bunny on it.

For the background of the card, I thought it would be fun to use my stencils to create a scene with grass and clouds. The wheelbarrow bunny fit in the open area and then I used the angles from the sketch to cut pieces with the same Easter paper pad. I just eyeballed everything by marking notches and lining those notches in my paper trimmer to get a straight cut. Even the solid paper on the base layer came from the paper pad. I just cut it A2 size to fit over an A2 top folding white card base.

The sentiment was stamped and cut out with the coordinating die. I added some shadow under wheelbarrow with a green marker (not really the color I wanted, but it worked), and colored a bit of pink on the bunny too. I added teal rhinestones next to the sentiment and done.

Next, I wanted to share something else that I was inspired by from my friend Carol at https://ourlittleinspirations.blogspot.com who sent me a very cool card and kind gift:

She always inspires me with her “snippet” creations and coming up with cards like this one to utilize those pattern papers we hoard so much! The pattern is very pleasing to the eye and so I wanted to create one myself! With all of the papers I have, I’m sure I could make a zillion cards! 😆 I also love how she used a monochromatic green theme with it…which I will need to try another one with this idea! You should go check her blog out and be inspired too!

Also, she was very kind in sending me these die cut sitting bunnies & stools! I do not know exactly where this bunny is from, but I’ve seen it around the craft world. So cute! Thank you so much for your kindness and inspiration my friend!

So here’s the card that I created inspired by Carol. I really love plaids and I thought it would be fun to re-create her design which I measured out her pieces and cut based on what I thought they were. It was really fun and not as hard as it looks like it might be. I wrote the measurements and cut from the same Easter paper pad as I used on the card above. I started with a white base…that way if I messed up, it wouldn’t matter too much. The sentiment piece was also from the same paper pad. I just white heat embossed the sentiment and added some stitch details with a white gel pen.

I used one of the sitting bunnies that Carol provided me with, and tried to match up what I had from my stash the best I could to die cut some hearts along with the A2 side folding card base.

I brushed the hearts with a glitter brush pen and called it done.

I had so much fun playing with these paper blocks and bunnies! I hope you’ve enjoyed my creations and inspiration today as well! Thanks so much for stopping by! C U SOON!

Challenges:

Sketch Saturday – #746 optional twist: feature an animal (top card)
Simply Create Too – Bunnies & Blooms #198 (top card)
Make My Monday – Spring, Flowers, Weather, etc. #221 (top card)
Fab ‘N Funky – Spring #591 (top card)
Daring Cardmakers – Spring is in the Air (top card)
The Paper Funday – Anything Goes optional: dies #63 (top card)

Hearts and Flowers for Sparkles Monthly Challenge

Hello friends! I hope you’re having a great week so far and enjoyed a nice Valentine’s Day yesterday with some yummy sweets! We enjoyed some treats of our own! 😉

Today I have a new challenge to share with you for the Sparkles Monthly Challenge blog and this month the lovely Dawn would like to see some “Hearts & Flowers” on your creations! Although Valentine’s Day is over, I think hearts are great for adding any time of the year, so check out the inspiration from the design team and here’s what I’ve made:

I’ve made a mini slim card using the Taylored Expressions Hearts in Bloom Layering Stencils which are so great for mass producing several cards at once. For this card and the other cards below, I decided I wanted to use the TE Hearts in Bloom Foil Panels which works with these stencils. I foiled them with gold foil. I think the foiling adds such a pretty shine and glitter. I also used the TE Love & Hugs Foil Panels for the sentiment and die cut it out with the coordinating die set.

So after foiling everything, I used the stencils to create the pretty bouquet of flowers with the hearts in it and then added a frame around the edge with a TE Diagonal Stitch Mini Slim die that doesn’t cut anything, but adds those slash marks. I used some foam tape to pop up the foiled sentiment and just attached everything to a coordinating mini slim card base.

I couldn’t just make this one to show you, so here is the whole set of cards I’ve made together:

Those stencils create all of these patterns at one time. I just lined the foil panels up at one time and then used each stencil for the colors. If you didn’t want to use the foil panels, you could also just use the stencils on one sheet of cardstock and then cut them apart to make the card fronts.

I found these sets to become very addicting! And just like that, two of them have been sent out!

I’ve been really busy with creating behind the scenes and I will be sharing more soon! I will be around to see what’s been going on with you all shortly! I really appreciate your kindness and support…it really means so much!❤️ Thanks for stopping in!

Challenges:

Try it On Tuesday – Hearts &/or Flowers
Make My Monday – Love
Allsorts – Anything Goes/Hearts
Ally’s Angels – Anything Goes
Little Red Wagon – Show Us Some Love/Valentine
Crafty Gals Corner – Add a Heart
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday– Fun with Foil

Art Journal Inspiration and Valentine’s Day Cards!

Good evening friends! Tomorrow is about “LOVE” for Valentine’s Day! I hope that whatever you’re doing that you spend it with those that you love or at least tell someone how much they mean to you! I have a special post this evening that is dedicated or inspired by love. ❤️

First up is my art journal page with the prompt/theme of “LIGHT/KEEPING IT LIGHT” that I’m guest hosting this month for the Art Journal Journey Challenge. It’s been so fun to see all of the wonderful art created so far!

This page was inspired by not just the “light” prompt for the challenge, but it was also inspired by the love of my life. We have spent many moons together and have enjoyed our time in the moonlight as we both love nature and have spent some time traveling and seeing some beautiful things. I’m so thankful to have had these special memories with him.

For the background: I started with a 5.5″x8.5″ watercolor with pre-punched holes at the top with my Zutter machine. I used my watercolor to create the blue sky background with an idea of where I was going to place the moon. I left that area to watercolor in the yellow rather than the blue. I then used some white opaque copic watered down and splattered over top for stars. The “moon” was die cut in white with a heart shaped die and I added a moon stencil over top to make it look like a heart shaped moon and glued it in the center of the watercolor background.

The bottom portion was made with just ripping some cardstock and ink blending one with the greens and one with greys and black. I die cut the trees in black and glued them in place and then added the ripped layers over top.

I stamped the Lavinia Stamps “Star Gazers” stamp in black in and fussy cut it out. I colored the rocks they were sitting on as well as their wings and popped them up on the grey ripped border. I also hand drew more rocks around them and used a white gel pen to highlight. I added some glitter to the wings. Lastly, I wrote over black cardstock with a white gel pen, cut them out and attached to the ripped green border. I then used a black pen to doodle around the words.

Next up are a few Valentine cards that I’ve made. I’m actually really bummed because I would’ve shared another two cards that I made, but I forgot to take photos of them before I sent them out! I used a pizza theme and they were so fun!

This first one is for my husband and I’ve used the Craft Roulette #201 parameters to create it:

We had to make an easel card, so I decided to make a heart shaped one. I’ve used the cute skunk from Lawn Fawn with all of the “sweets”. (which was also one of the parameters) My husband loves his sweets! I also had to use “quiet” colors and some sort of bokeh, so I’ve made a bokeh background and used a solid heart stamp in white over the blended colors. It reminds me of those conversation hearts. This skunk makes me smile!

This is another fun card that I’ve made for a friend! I couldn’t wait to use this fun mosaic heart from Taylored Expressions. It came as a freebie for a limited time with a Valentine release. I like that it comes with the solid heart backer which makes putting it together easier. I ink blended a panel in two shades of pink and then die cut the heart with the pieces. I used the frame cut in white and then popped in the ink blended pieces inside the frame.

The embossed heart background was made after cutting out a piece of Bubblegum cardstock with the postage rectangle die. I stamped and die cut the sentiment over top of the heart and added some gold rhinestones.

And this card was done for the Inky Stamper FB challenge which was to create a square card. I have made this one 4.25″ square and used the cute Snail stamp set along with some Doodlebug papers which you can also find in their store.

I just stamped, colored and cut out the images, added a border at the bottom and cut out a scallop square in white and stenciled some clouds at the top. More pink papers onto a white square card base and called it done! There’s nothing better than getting snail mail!

I hope you’ve enjoyed my heart-filled post today and you’ve been inspired in some way! Thanks so much for stopping in and I’ll see you again on Thursday for a new challenge to try! Happy Valentine’s Day!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – LIGHT/KEEPING IT LIGHT (art journal page only)
Crafty Animals – #80 Anything Goes + animal (skunk card)
Critter Crazy – #83 Anything Goes + critter (snail card)
Pearly Sparkles – #92 Love/Have a Heart (skunk card)
Creative Knockouts – #514 Love/Valentine’s Day (skunk card)
A Place to Start – Monochrome (mosaic heart card – pink)
Aud Sentiments – #310 Dies/Love/Wed/Anniversary + sentiment (skunk card)
Creative Inspirations – For Someone You Love/Special Friend (mosaic heart card)
The Male Room – Valentine/Use a Heart (skunk card)
Crafty Catz – Anything Goes optional: Valentine/Love (snail card)

December AJ Page-Keep Dancing + book and review

Hello friends! Hope you had a great Christmas and were able to make some wonderful memories! I can’t believe that we are ready to close out another year! The time just goes way too fast and there’s so much more to look forward to! I think the theme for my upcoming year is in this title post – KEEP DANCING!!!🕺

The last Saturday of the month (AND THE YEAR!) brings us to the monthly Art Journal Page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper)! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” December prompt of “Previous Prompt”:

Since this is the time of the year that we have a “look back”, I thought it would be fun to take one of this year’s previous prompts and come up with a new AJ page. I chose April’s prompt of “SHINNY/SPARKLY”, and you can catch that page in the photos below or see my previous blog post HERE.

There’s nothing quite shinny or sparkly than New Year’s Eve! I always think of the ball dropping on Times Square in New York, but it also had me thinking of a disco ball that is very sparkly. Found this image online and printed it out. Cut it out with a circle die and then added a bit of colored shading with my markers in grey. I took a sponge to add glue to the entire ball and then covered it with chunky glitter. I added some sparkle images and filled them with silver glitter and then die cut the numbers and glued them over top of the ball.

For the background: It’s just a 6″x9″ black cardstock pre-punched at the top and then splattered with silver watercolor. I added some music notes and die cut stars. For the bottom, I used some woodgrain texture paper and cut strips to make a wood floor for the Riley the Moose disco dancer. A silver metallic paint pen was used for the ball string at the top and the wording around the top of the ball.

I stamped, colored and hand cut the moose and popped him up over a die cut shadow for under his feet. I typed a quote on the computer and printed it out over silver cardstock. While it was still wet, I sprinkled clear EP over top and cut rounded corners for the page. Lastly, I just popped up the glittered ball with foam tape and added some silver rhinestones at the bottom.

I thought it would be fun to do a review of all of the monthly pages that were created this year. I put the months in order below. (If you are on my website, just click on the photos to enlarge them.)

I pre-punch the holes at the short side of the pages each month and then at the end of the year, I use my machine to bind them together to make a book. I add covers and decorate them. There is a post with last year’s book HERE.

For this year, I went with the vertical look and added a stretch cord to keep them together better. I also tried out the napkin with the cover:

The napkin is at the bottom with the foil marble look. My husband got some napkins for New Year’s, and I thought I’d try it out. I added some chipboard, stamped and cut out numbers and added some wooden pieces. I used the rose papers for the covers on the inside as well as the back of the chipboard covers. It was put together with my Bind-It-All machine and coils.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing my Art Journal Journey throughout the year as I sure have enjoyed doing them! I get to pull from my stash to use, but there is also so much more to use! So this means that I will for sure be continuing with this journey and I hope you’ll join me too!

Thank you so much for stopping by to have a look back. Wishing you peace, love and health for the upcoming 2024 year! See you in the next year friends!!!🎉

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Above Us Only Sky (New Year’s Eve Ball Drop on Times Square with stars in the sky!!!)
Crafting From the Heart – Anything Goes #8
Creative Artiste – Anything Mixed Media Goes with option of Christmas
Alphabet – ‘T’ is for Texture (texture on the top page with woodgrain floor, the chunky glitter disco ball. Texture on the book with chipboard, wood pieces and paste.)

Lots of Joy Mailed Out!

Hello friends! I hope that you’re having a great start to your week! We’re almost there as Christmas approaches us quickly! I’ve been enjoying the Season and having fun keeping busy. Currently baking cookies and decided to take a break from that to sit and make a post about all of things that I’ve been doing besides posting!😆

This is just one of the several similar cards that I created for my Christmas cards this year. It came from a Christmas in July card kit from Taylored Expressions. It mainly used the Wreathed in Joy Stamp & Stencil Combo set. There are dies you can cut them out with as well as foilable panels which is shown on this one.

I do not like to make several of the “same thing”, so I’ve changed them up to different colors, layouts, etc. So you can see the different versions I’ve done below. (If you are visiting my web page, just click on each photo to see it enlarged.)

*Apologies for the messy stack for photo taking…it was a lot to do all at once!

Most of these are blue and silver which is my favorite color combination for Christmas colors, so I did about 6 of these.

I thought these would be enough for all of the Christmas cards to send out, but I realized going back through my list that I wasn’t going to quite have enough.

So I’m glad that at the beginning of this month I took a Hero Arts Stamp-a-Long and made several different types of Christmas cards. Here are the results of these below: (Again, if you’re looking on my web page, just click on the photos to enlarge them.)

background using sprays and coloring die cuts

So some of these were also taken and used for sending out more Christmas cards. I’m glad that I did the projects for this class or I probably would not have had enough cards.

BUT WAIT! That’s not all! I’ve also made a few other Christmas items that I’ve also sent out. I’m also sharing some gifts and gift tags that I’ve made from a Taylored Expressions Advent Calendar that I got this year. I made some more cards and tags. (I tried out wax melting which is something I’ve never done…it was fun) Others are from classes I took or participated in Craft Roulette for.

If you’re on my web page, just click on the photos below to enlarge each one.

Wow, so that was a lot! I know that my blog has been pretty sparse with posts lately and I am finally getting around to posting the things that I’ve been working on, so I hope you’ll get that and you’re able to take some time for yourself this season and enjoy the peaceful quiet moments!

I will be sure to take a moment and catch up with everyone before Christmas arrives. In the meantime, it’s back to cookie making! Thanks so much for stopping in today!❤️

Guest Design for Try it On Tuesday

Hello friends! I hope that you’ve had a great start to your December month! I promise I haven’t been hiding, but it’s a busy time of the year and I’ve been doing all of the Holiday things, so my time has been limited. I’m glad to have just now finished up some Christmas cards!😉

Speaking of Christmas cards, I have something fun to share with you today!

Last month I had won a top 5 in a challenge and was asked to be a guest designer for this Try it on Tuesday challenge! I really enjoy playing along in the challenges to keep motivated, so I was thrilled! For THIS challenge, the theme is “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” which inspired me to pull out this fun Santa stamp for a chuckle:

So, this is Santa’s excuse for being late! Like me, he’s NOT hiding…just delayed!😆

The stamps and die cuts came from an older My Favorite Things card kit I had called “Stuffed Santa“. I had fun putting this one together and was the beginning of the cards made to send out this year. (It was my plan to be early, but you know how THAT goes!)

For the background: I ink blended in a couple of blue oxide colors with the center panel fading to the lightest color. I sprayed the panel with some shimmer spray for that cold frosty shimmer sky. I then splattered some white opaque Copic mixed with water for the snowfall.

The Santa, hands, sentiment bubble, and lights around the chimney were all stamped and colored with Copic markers. I die cut them out along with the chimney, snow and rooftop pieces. I die cut the pieces with white and used my Copic markers to color in the chimney, roof, window and lights around the roof line. For the sentiment panel on the house at the bottom, I cut it to size and used my Copic markers to color the same as the roof peek. I added the sentiment to it, and made this the “base” for the house.

To finish it off, I added some chunky glitter to the die cut snow on the chimney and roof. I also used a glitter pen to add some sparkle to the inside window panels and the Christmas lights. I also used some foam squares to pop up the sentiment bubble and Santa’s mittens.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my card today and that you’ll play along with this fun challenge over at Try it on Tuesday as well! Thanks so much for dropping by!

Challenges:

Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – 2349 Anything Goes
Ally’s Angels – Anything Goes
Crafty Catz – #662 Anything Goes
Daring Cardmakers – One Word Prompt: LIGHT (Christmas lights and window light)
Gem of a Challenge – Anything Goes
Inkspirational – Designer’s Choice: Add Glitter
Krafty Chicks – Stamp Act

Grateful & Encouraged

Hello friends! It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow for us in the United States and I’d like to send a heartfelt Thanksgiving greeting to you all! I would also like to say a huge thank you to everyone for your kindness and friendship. I’m very grateful for you and encouraged by your support!

I’ve been working on several things and haven’t spent the time to photograph and share everything yet, but I will be sharing soon. In the meantime, I’d like to share a few projects that I’ve made in lieu of the Thanksgiving holiday:

I don’t normally send Thanksgiving cards, but it’s a great way to say thank you to someone that hosted a dinner or brought something to share or just spend time with you! That is the ONLY turkey stamp I own! The stamp set is called “Sassy Thanksgiving” by CZ Designs at Simon Says Stamp. I thought the sentiments in it were too cute and funny. You certainly could make this any type of thank you as well.

This is also a fancy/fun fold card called a “Swing Easel Card”. I found a tutorial using a vertical style on You Tube here – SWING EASEL TUTORIAL (I also used the same detail of embossing an additional panel with leaves and went over the texture with some gold paste.)

I made another panel for the center area and ink blended some blue that faded out and then splattered some gold paint over it. I then layered it over a piece of gold that fits in the center panel of the easel. I gold heat embossed the large sentiment and cut it out with the die. It was popped up over the leaves. I also cut an additional strip with the gold for the “catcher” of the front panel of the easel card. I added the turkey and leaves along with the stamped sentiment on the inside bottom.

Autumn is my favorite time of the year and I enjoy using the colors and images in the cards I make, so here’s more that I’ve made:

I’ve made a couple of encouragement cards to send out to some people and I’ve used a favorite card kit from my stash by Taylored Expressions. The images come from the stamp set Wheatfield Dreams. I’ve used an oval die and oval mask to do some ink blending and just cut out the colored image to pop them over top. Both sentiments were copper heat embossed.

I kept the backgrounds simple with the one on the left stamped with a background stamp from TE and the other was cut out with a wonky stitch die and layered over a green card base.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my creations, and I am so grateful you’ve chosen to stop by!❤️

Challenges:

Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
Lil Patch of Crafty Friends – Anything Goes
Pammie’s Inky Pinkies – Anything Goes
Crafting Happiness – Thanksgiving/Harvest #148
Four Seasons – Fall Season
The Crafty Addicts – Anything Goes
Crafts Galore Encore – Anything Goes

Mixing It Up with a New DT!

Hello friends! Happy November! The time is getting closer and closer for Christmas to arrive and so the Christmas cardmaking ramps up! Have you started on yours or have them done?

I’m very excited to announce that I’ve joined up as design team member over at the MIX IT UP CHALLENGE BLOG! Woot! 🎉 Really happy to be supporting a fellow blog friend Leslie with one of the many challenges she runs! Thanks for having me along! So, I hope you’ll go check it out and play along with us! The challenges run for 6 weeks which is plenty of time to enter and these challenges are always “Anything Goes” with an optional twist involving a technique of some sorts. Sounds fun to me! And I can use any products I like! Count me in!

For the November challenge this month, we have “Anything Goes with optional stamping (use clear or rubber – no digis)” This is my first creation with the team, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with for the challenges too, so I hope you can join!

Of course, I love to stamp! I have SO many and why not use them?! I was lucky enough to have gotten the STAMPtember Trinity Stamps set called: “Sledding Gnomes” (no longer available) and it was so fun to play with for this card. I also decided to make it a slimline card which I haven’t made in quite a while.

For the background: I white heat embossed some snowflakes from the Simon Says Stamp “Frozen Fractals” stamp set (no longer available). Then I took some Oxide Inks in Mermaid Lagoon, Blueprint Sketch and Chipped Sapphire to ink blend over the embossed snowflakes for an embossed resist technique. Lastly, I’ve splattered some Copic Opaque white with water and a fan brush. This panel was cut out from the Trinity Stamps Stitched Card Panels & Window Slimline dies.

I stamped, colored and die cut the characters and cut out some white cardstock using a Lawn Fawn Stitched Hillside Borders die set. I arranged the slopes and tucked in the trees behind each layer and popped up the characters with foam tape. I also white heat embossed the sentiment with red cardstock and die cut it out, which was popped with foam tape.

Here’s a closer look at the coloring: (using Copic markers)

Before attaching the stitched slopes to the bottom of the heat resist snowflake panel, I sprayed some shimmer spray to give it a snow look. I attached this panel to a red piece that was cut from the Trinity Stamps Scalloped Card Panels & Banners Slimline die set. I then layered both of these panels to a white side folding slimline card base measuring 8.5″ x 3.5″.

Lastly, I’ve added some Stickles Stardust glitter to the gnome hat ends and the hat on the reindeer. You can see where I’ve added some white highlights with a gel pen and then I took some gold glitter gems and attached randomly.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my project today and will stop by the Mix It Up challenge blog to check out the rest of the inspiration and play along with us this month! Remember you have 6 weeks!

Thanks for stopping in today!

Challenges:

Crafty Catz – Anything Goes optional: 4-legged critter (reindeer)
Daring Cardmakers – A Bit of Bling (shimmer spray, Stardust Stickles, and gold glitter gems)
Allsorts – Embossing Heat/Dry (heat embossed snowflakes & sentiment)
ABC Christmas – ‘U’ is for “Use it Up” & ‘V’ is for “Vertical” (I made a vertical slimline card and I used up my supplies of sprays, glitters and gems!)

It’s Halloween!

Hello friends! Tomorrow is Halloween and so I thought I’d share some cards that I’ve made that were sent out to people.

The dog and cat ghosts are too cute from Newton’s Nook! I love their “howling”! Not much to color and I’ve used the dies to cut them out and pop over the background with the paper pad from NN as well. I heat embossed the sentiment over a die cut banner and then added a frame around the edges with some holographic paper.

I made this for someone who loves Halloween almost as much as I do and also has both a dog and cat. The cat’s name is Spooky! LOL

And here’s another card I’ve made using some Taylored Expressions products. I first ink blended the background in a couple of blue tones with dark blue around the edges and then splattered some silver watercolor for the stars. I used a layered moon stencil to the moon effect and then die cut the witch in glitter black cardstock. The sentiment was white heat embossed and cut out with a banner die. I’ve also used another frame of the holographic cardstock.

And last but not least, I’ve made this card and not necessarily for Halloween, but this was made for my husband’s anniversary card. We’ve been married 24 years and we both feel the same about Halloween/spooky things! LOL I found these fun digital images from Etsy to print out and then I fussy cut part of one to add to another. I stamped the background with a background stamp I had covered with roses and blended some inks around the heart. I also added some black gems around it and covered the rose “Jack” is holding with a glitter pen.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my post today! Thanks for dropping in and I hope you all have a wonderfully fun and spooky Halloween!👻

Challenges:

Little Red Wagon – Trick or Treat
Papercraft – Happy Halloween
Creative Crafting Uncles – Halloween
Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes using paper
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Anything Goes
Krafty Chicks – All Occasions (bottom card anniversary)
Sweet Stampin’ – All Hallow’s Eve

October AJ Page-Thriller Mix

Hello friends! Halloween is very near! 💀 I have been working on a few Halloween cards and will be posting those as soon as I know they’ve been received. But today’s project is about Halloween in mixed media art journal form! I do enjoy crafting Halloween!

Very excited to be doing the monthly Art Journal Page collaboration with my crafty friend, Carol (from Crafty-Stamper)! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” October prompt of “MIX” (mix colors together from any media):

For this month’s prompt, MIX, I have to say that I love to mix up colors to see what they look like. I have SO many bottles of watercolor and of course watercolor is fun to mix up…so I went with that for my background.

For the background: Hard to tell, but I’ve used eight different colors of watercolor that was applied to a pre-punched 6″ x 9″ Canson 140# cold press paper. I also used a circle stencil to apply some white ink over it for a bokeh effect. I also stamped some random words and gears. (Stamperia and Tim Holtz) I also took some of the green watercolor used in the background for a few splatters.

Showing my age here but does anyone remember the Micheal Jackson “Thriller”?! It’s perfect for Halloween! I thought I needed to add a title to my page to represent the Halloween theme and this song came to my mind! 😆

I found some cool lettering that I used my Cricut machine to cut them out with in both gold metallic (also cut gears with) and some dark grey cardstock. I glued them together with a slight off-set so the gold shows through. I also used some Nuvo Glow in the Dark liquid drops around the edges of the letters. I wanted to make it really “goopy” so I heated it up with my heat gun so that it bubbled.

The bottom of the page has the really cool Steampunk skull image that came from an Etsy store. I used another image of it to fussy cut the hat and then popped it up over the image on the paper. If you look at the center bottom of his hat, I added a gear with a clear drop in the center of it.

I’ve also added a talk sticker and rub-on from Tim Holtz. I added a couple more metal gears from my stash to go with the gold cut out ones. Lastly, I’ve taken some silver metallic wax and went around the edges of the page and slightly over top of the skull’s hat.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my art journal page today! I sure had fun putting it together! Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Challenges: