October Art Journal-A Strange Feeling

Hello friends! **THIS IS A PRE-SCHEDULED POST AS I’M AWAY AT A STAMP RETREAT!!**

The weather is finally starting to cool down now and we’ve finished cleaning the yard to prepare for winter months to follow soon. Halloween will also be here in a few days, so I thought it would be fun to make my page today with that in mind!

Today is 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 “ODD/Oddities” (anything unusual or strange):

I don’t know if this is considered odd to anyone else, but I certainly do! This weird scientist looking guy has a strange facial expression as he’s holding up a head in the bottle! I’ve put so many details in this page that I thought you’d need to see close-up photos below.

For my background: Starting with a 5.5″ x 8.5″ heavy watercolor paper with pre-punched holes at the top for binding later, I sprayed the background with mica sprays in Hocus Pocus, Jack-O-Lantern and Flickering Candle. I sprayed some extra water over top to get them to blend together as they seem very concentrated and they didn’t move much over the watercolor paper after spraying a few times. I took a leaves stencil inked over places with light brown ink. I then ink blended the edges with black ink and stamped some lettering stamped randomly. Lastly, I splattered with black and gold watercolor.

Upon a closer look at the bottom: I needed an area for shelves to hold the potion bottles, so I took some Tim Holtz Halloween collage paper and attached it with matte medium. It crinkled a bit, but I sort of liked that look. I then found some decorative strips in my stash and added those for the “shelves”. The crow and “curious” ephemera was also found with all of my Tim Holtz Halloween stash….along with the paper doll “guy”. I cut off a head from one of them to place inside the jar. I added some thin metal wire around the jar and cut a slit in the guy’s hand to make it look like he’s holding it. I also added a bit of color to the guy’s flower and bow tie on his jacket outfit with markers. BEFORE popping up the paper doll guy to the page, I ripped some black cardstock for the ground underneath him and tucked in the bones.

For the Bottles: I used a Taylored Expressions “If You Dare” Stamp & Stencil set to make all of the bottles. I also used the TE “If You Dare Halloween Labels” to foil and cut out to place over each jar. To die cut some extra “strange things” to put inside a few of the jars and the bones at the bottom, I die cut pieces from the TE “Little Bits Cauldron Confetti” dies. (The die cut bats from this were also used on the top of the page.) For more finishing details, I doodled in some of the jars and then added some colored glitter/sparkle and pearl drops for the inside contents. If you look closely at the crow’s eye, you can see I’ve added a tiny dot of yellow sparkle. Some of the details were popped up and some were just glued down.

A closer look at the top: Mostly die cut pieces were used at the top and the first I put down was the spider web and spider from Whimsy Stamps called Spiders and Webs…they’re huge! (this store is so good at spooky things!) I drew a line with a black marker from the spider to the web. For the window, I die cut it out from a really old Mama Elephant die I’ve had in my stash…not sure if it’s still available. BEFORE I placed the window down, I die cut the moon from the Lawn Fawn Shadow Box Halloween Add-On die set. I blended in some yellow and gray and covered it with a glitter sparkle pen. I added the die cut bats and placed the window over top.

Lastly, I took some Tim Holtz Halloween clippings word strips and added to the page. I took a black marker and went around the strips above the paper doll “guy”.

I know there are people that are not Halloween fans or care for the spooky things, but I really enjoy the weirdness of it all and have fun making things with it! In the words of Lydia from Beetlejuice: “I myself am strange and unusual“.

Winona Ryder in a hat as Lydia in Beetlejuice

I do hope you’ve enjoyed my page today and I really appreciate you stopping by! I will be back later with things we’re doing at the retreat! See you soon!

Challenges:

Art Journal Journey – Autumn Colors & Inspiration (Purple, orange, yellow and black!)

WARNING: Spooky post with Monsters/Ghouls for {Cupcake Inspirations}

Hello there friends! Halloween is very quickly approaching us at the end of this week and it’s one of my favorite Holidays ever since I can remember and it was such a fun memory of things I passed onto my own children to have fun with as well. We have lots of fun memories together. I know there are some people that don’t like it…or maybe the “scary” things that come from it, but for me, the more scary, the better! (With the exception of the little ones, I don’t like to scare people that don’t like a good scare…but for me, it’s all in fun and make believe.) This is the reason for my warning post title…just in case you happen to not like it. It’s totally fine if you don’t!😉 – OR clowns!! LOL!

Today starts a fun new challenge over at the {Cupcake Inspirations} Challenge Blog with the theme of “Monsters/Ghouls“. Looking at the photo, you can opt to make a cute little colorful monster/alien type of birthday card if you’re not into the Halloween or scary, so just another way you could interpret the challenge idea if you wanted to.

But here’s my scary “monster/ghoul” creation I made for the challenge:

He is a bit on the spooky/scary side, isn’t he?! I have been looking for a creepy clown image like this for a couple of years and finally Whimsy Stamps came out with this “Creepy Clown Sleep Tight” rubber stamp set and I knew I had to grab it up and specifically in reference to the movie “It” by Stephen King who’s a favorite author of mine. My younger son is really into these type of things too, so this one’s going to him!

I started out the background with a piece of watercolor cardstock that I used some Black Soot Distress ink to sponge in some clouds with using a cloud stencil from my stash. I then took some Wilted Violet Distress Oxide Spray and water and let the color run into the background with the sprayed water. I also watered down some more Black Soot ink and made some splatters with a brush over it. I then black heat embossed the Whimsy Stamps Spider Web Frame over top of it, cut it out with the WS Zig Zag Stitched Rectangle die and then added some more Black Soot ink around the edges. I layered it over an A2 sized top folding black card base.

For the creepy clown image, I black heat embossed it twice over a piece of Bristol Smooth Watercolor panel and then used my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers and a water brush to color it with. I fussy cut it out and then just cut out the hands only of the second image, and used some foam tape to pop the hands over the image and then the entire clown image over the frame background. I white heat embossed the sentiment from the “Creepy Clown Sleep Tight” set over a piece of black cardstock and then die cut it out using the WS Quick Strips die set. (Note: I used a partial die cut method to lengthen the die so that it would fit the sentiment.) I sponged around it with white ink and then glued in place under the clown image.

If you “dare” to take a closer look at mister creepy clown here, you see how I’ve colored him and cut him out.

I did use some brighter colors as he’s a clown and I really wanted him to pop from the design. I used a silver metallic gel pen to color in the bells on his hat and then I’ve used some glossy accents over his yellow colored eyeballs to make them pop out a bit more as well. The teeth were left white, but I used a white gel pen to color them in a bit for more prominent whiteness. It is such a detailed image so it was fairly easy to color.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my good Monday morning scare for you today!😱🤡😂

Other Challenges I’d like to enter “Creepy Clown” for:

Double D – October: What does it mean to you? (spooky Fall fun Halloween!)
Mod Squad – Spooky Halloween
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Layer it Up (popped up layers over clown)
Creative Moments – #201 Anything Goes
Cute Card Thursday – Stamping
Creative Knockouts – #373 Halloween (black, green, purple, orange)
Crafty Catz – #524 Anything Goes optional: hats
Daring Cardmakers – Spooktacular Makes
Two Old Bats – Halloween Jump Start *NEW CHALLENGE BLOG

Spooky Undertaker Tag for {Cupcake INspirations} Color Challenge

Hello there friends! I’ve been a bit MIA lately but that’s because I’ve actually been having fun attending a virtual stamp event which I will be sharing some things I’ve done with you later and I’ll be doing it all over again this weekend as well!🥳 Although it doesn’t replace an in-person live event, it was lots of fun! I’ve also been enjoying time visiting with my son who stopped by for the weekend!

Today I’m stopping in to share my creation with you for the brand new challenge over at {Cupcake Inspirations} using this unique color combo: OLIVE, RED and LAVENDER The first thing I had thought of was the inspirational photo to go along with it and it reminded me of this cool Tim Holtz stamps/stencil set I bought a few years ago:

I thought it would be fun to play around a bit with my Distress Spray Stains over one of those Distress Tags. So I sprayed a few of the colors over it and then also sprayed water over it as well to get the colors moving and blending together. I think it turned out pretty cool. I used the Distress Sprays I used were Crushed Olive, Fired Brick and Seedless Preserves.

I then took the stencil from the Tim Holt “Halloween 2 Stamps/Stencil” set and used some Black Soot distress ink to sponge the bats in the center of the tag. I then used the coordinating distress ink colors and used the other portion of the stencil to sponge the colors with. I took a thin strip of black cardstock to attach above and below the stenciled bat areas.

I took the skull image from the Tim Holtz “Halloween 2” stamp set and stamped it with black pigment ink over a piece of vanilla style cardstock and heat set it with clear embossing powder. I fussy cut him out and added a piece of purple metallic ribbon around his hat and then glued on a purple flower along the side before popping him with foam tape in the center of the oval die cut piece from silver foil cardstock.

I stamped the “undertaker” sentiment from the stamp set with black permanent ink along with some scripty words in random places over the tag. I also had some Tim Holtz Halloween rub-ons that I used for the spider and the “31” numbers. I finished the tag with some more of that purple metallic ribbon and the key charm at the top.

Here’s a closer view of the skull with the embossed details along with the shine from the foil cardstock and ribbons.

Really had fun putting this tag together and I think it will make a fun spooky treat to share with someone I love because I have several family members that are really into the spooky Halloween theme besides myself! Yay!

Thanks for stopping by and leaving your kind support! It’s very much appreciated and I’ll be seeing you again soon my friends!!

Challenges:

Unicorn – Spooky and/or Cute
Arty Divas – #30 Anything Goes
Creative Craft Cottage – #134 Spooky and/or Cute
The Paper Funday – #22 Anything Goes optional: Halloween/All Hallows Eve
Creative Moments – #200 Anything Goes
As You Like It – Fave non-card project and why? (I love making tags because I feel like you can “experiment” with different media on it and I like that I can use it for putting on gifts or even add to a card later.)
This is Halloween – #2 Anything Halloween
The Divas That Cut Paper – Autumn-Thoughts of Halloween + die cut/punch
Crafty Cardmakers – Create a Tag
Two Old Bats Halloween – Anything Halloween Goes *new challenge blog*

Happy Halloween – All Treats & No Tricks! :)

Hello friends! I want to thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart for everyone of you that has left such sweet comments full of birthday wishes and lots of kindness that you’ve shared through something we have in common which is creating and sharing smiles! I so enjoyed the stories that you’ve left about how you share your handmade creations with others. PLEASE continue to create doing what you love and share those smiles with as many people as you can! It really makes the world a much better place when we can serve one another in kindness.

I have always loved Halloween as a child and have so many fond memories dressing up each year and thinking about what I would be. I tried to pass that tradition onto my children, and I dressed up right along with them! For me, Halloween is full of lots of fun things besides just treats! I wanted to celebrate those memories with a card today:

Vicki-BM-HalloweenBox

I’ve stamped the trick-or-treaters and bat and then colored them up with my Copic markers and fussy cut them all out and put them aside while I worked on the rest of the card.

For the background of the card, that “tree branch” panel came in the kit, so I ran it through my laminator to foil it…it turned out awesome! (See photo below!) I then took my distress inks and blended in a night sky over it. I spritzed it with water and dried it off with a towel to get the water drop look.

I took this awesome border silhouette die from Impression Obsession and attached to the bottom of the scene for the trick-or-treaters to stand on. I sponged the bottom edge with white ink. Speaking of white ink, this is what I used to stamp the sentiment on a piece of black cardstock as well as sponge around the edges with it. I used the glow-in-the-dark embossing powder over top of it. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a good photo of it glowing in the dark…. but it does, and it looks cool!) I made a banner with that strip and attached it to the left side of the card and then popped the bat up over it with foam tape.

Vicki-BM-HalloweenBox-foiled

Here you can capture a better look at the foiled tree branch in the background as well as the heat embossed sentiment. I glued down the mummy girl and then I took foam tape to pop up the Frankenstein for dimension and depth. I also added some yellow Stickles to the eyes and mouths on the pumpkins.

This card was so fun to do! Hope you’ve enjoyed it as well!

Wishing you all a very fun Halloween however you choose to spend it! I think I will be watching some scary movies and eating some popcorn which is something I enjoy doing with hubby!

Challenges I’d like to enter: