Gargoyle Luminary

Howdy All! It's that time again - Gruesome Guardians is the theme this time over at Haunted Design House and you have to create a dark, Gothic or Hallowe'en based art piece using gargoyles, gryphons, dragons, leprechauns, fairies, etc.

I love gargoyles, so I had to go with them and after 3 other failed attempts, I have a beautiful antiquish luminary. 

 

I have some really cool gargoyle collage sheets on CD from Collage Stuff and I knew I wanted to use them on a transparency.  I dinked around until I had formed a box from a sheet of  plain black paper.  I ended up cutting the top with a fancy schmancy edging die and then using an embossing folder.  I went over the entire thing with some silver Brilliance Ink and buffed it with a towel to give it an antiquish look and then cut out the windows with a die. I added a different image to each window and sealed it up.  

 

Of course, I had to add my favorite burnt flower thingies that I can't stop making.  At some point I'm either going to set myself on fire or pass out from the burning polyester fumes.  LOL!  Too keep the candle hidden, I dropped a rolled tube of heavy weight white vellum inside. And ta-dah!!

 

Here's a fabulously blurry photo of it lit.  (Sorry, my dark photography skills are not up to par.)

 

 

 Here's a view of the other sides.  

I will also be entering this into the following blogs:

...Joyful Stamper - Inspire Me Fridays - Anything Goes
Hotshot Craft - Anything but a card!

Thanks for looking!

HDH - Famous Last Words

I'm back.... I was actually back two weeks ago, I was just too scattered after the holidays to post.

Of course, I'm jumping right in with a new Macabre Monday from Haunted Design House.  This time we need to use a famous last line from a favourite book, poem, or movie.  Go even one better, and use a death bed confession or last utterance.

I decided on Emily Dickenson; her last spoken words were "I must go in, the fog is rising" which is kinda creepy.   I wasn't sure what to do, so I went with a memorial type photo that someone might have on their wall of a deceased loved one.

The frame was originally white, which I antiqued with some brown stain.  But then I dropped it and it broke. <sigh>  When I put it back together, you could see the seams, so I painted the entire thing matte black.  UGH.  Sadly, I didn't have anything to make it shiny again, so I rubbed an old chapstick all over it.  Gross but it works.  I added a little bit of gold burnish to the edges and the  flower, which I made with some extremely flammable material and a candle. Yay me for not burning down the house!  Done!  And.... wow, kinda boring. 

So, back to the drawing board.  I decided to go to my favorite movies for inspiration.  One of my Top 10 Things Chriss Loves to Watch Over & Over is The Omen.  Who doesn't enjoy a little antichrist now and then??  And inspiration struck - remember this little piece?  It's my scrapbook page of Damien - so I made another.  I may have to put together a book...

I love it! I used the Nanny's last line "It's all for you!" which she says right before she hangs herself as Damien's birthday present. 

I made the background in Word, using the prophecy that Bugenhagen recites and is used on one of the film posters, added the biblical quote, 666 and printed it on a lightly stamped background paper.   I love my graveyard die cut and the sparkly ribbon added just the right amount of fun for me. 

A friend saw it, said, "Oh, that's really pretty" and then "Wait, what the hell is going on?"  That's my favorite sort of creepy - the kind that slips in under the radar.

Enjoy and thanks for looking!

Spam Misery

So, unfortunately, I have received 147 spam emails in the past three days from my blog. Ugh! Do they really think I need that much Viagra??

Anyway, since I'm not sure how to stop it, I've turned on word verification - hopefully, I'll be able to turn it off in a week or so.  Does anyone have any tips on how to stop the massive spam attacks?

And, with that last forlorne note, I'm off for the Holidays - see you next year!

Thanks!

HDH - Nosferatu

This week's challenge over at Haunted Design House is Nosferatu Ad nauseam - which means vampires!   I wasn't sure I would have time to play (I totally missed last week because, ugh, life is busy) but I remembered the creepy Nosferatu stamp that I picked up in Vegas and I had to play with it.

So, here's my tribute to the original blood-sucker:

I used watercolor pencils to color him a rather disgusting yellow/brown and then sponged red on top with plastic wrap.  Something I find disgusting is milky eyes - the best monsters have them, so I colored his eyes green and added glossy accents on top.  Yuck!

I'm going to enter this into a few different challenges this week:
Crafting for All Seasons - Spooky
Fussy and Fancy - Anything Goes
4 Crafty Chicks - Spooktacular
Tuesday Throwdown - Halloween

Thanks for looking!

HDH - Bats, Bats, Bats!

Happy Weekend!  Of course, it's time for another Haunted Design House post.  This week, they've chosen Bats in the Belfry - anything to do with bats.  Which, if you know me at all, means that I'm over the moon!

This is how much I love bats: 

I spent a week in Cairns, Australia volunteering at a bat hospital. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I have bat jewelry, clothes, tattoos, decor - my friends all know I love them.

 

The worse part of this week's challenge is the fact that I couldn't really make anything creepy and I made a gazillion things because hey, bats!

 

So, without further ado: 

 

I love this card - the moon is embossed and the bats are actually pieces of confetti that I folded and glued to a hand-drawn line.   It was inspired by a stamp that has birds sitting on a wire.  I think this might be my Halloween card this year.

Below, I went with an embossed background and a simple die-cut 'BOO'.  I stacked some bats  to give a little bit of dimension and added a black pearl.  Simple but pretty.

 

These guys are ridiculous - I don't even know what I was thinking.

 

Below is my version of a sampler that I've seen on the internet in a gazillion places.  I'm not sure I like the color scheme; I may redo it in grey tones.  

 

And finally, here's a quick card that uses tiny little bat punches as a frame.  I planned on putting little pearls on all the bats, but I ran out, so I tried to improvise with gel pen.  Eh.

 

 

There are more, of course, but I think I'll pace myself. 

 

As always, thanks so much for looking!



HDH - Release the Kracken...

I'm back from my travels - it was too hot in Vegas and way to cold in Alaska.  I prefer the dark moist climate of my studio for sure. 

I was extremely excited by this week's Haunted Design House challenge - Creepy Cryptids.   We needed to make something to do with a creature or plant whose existence has been suggested but is unrecognized by scientific consensus and often regarded as highly unlikely! Think Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, even Faeries.

Whoot! I love monsters!  So, of course, the first thing I did was a make a unicorn horn which isn't a monster or creepy, because obviously the two halves of my brain do not work well together.  So I moved to hypocamps - half horse/half fish.   Still not creepy, but I made a cool ATC. 

 



Most of my stamps aren't really monsters, so I went looking for images online.  The beauty below comes up when you google 'Kraken Coloring Pages' - the image is from Monsters by Mail and I love him. 

 

I colored him with pencils and used a marker to color the background black (semi-successfully now that I see it under the sunlight), made my own frame with die cut waves and accented it with some water droplet ribbon and a small rosette that I made (probably the hardest bit of this card - good lord, those folds were a pain!) and sentiment.  Green pearls were the final touch.   

Thanks for stopping by!

HDH Bad Moon Rising

Time for another Haunted Design House challenge.  This week it's "Bad Moon Rising".

You are to create a dark, Gothic, or Halloween-based art piece that depicts a BIG BAD MOON.  Make it full, waxing, waning or crescent. Just make it big and the main focus of your wonderfully wicked project.  Cute will get you in the door, but the Dungeon prefers things creepy and dark.

Well, I can definitely say that my moon is really big and is the main focus.   It's kinda light on the dark and creepy.

I started out with a template (see below) - hmm, the moon is boring, stars are way to big and owl is too small.  So, I used an embossing folder on the moon and highlighted the embossed bits with Pearlescent Yellow Brilliance, just to give it some dimension and then did a little dtp on the edge of the black card as well.  

Next, I ran some brown paper through my Big Shot with a wood grain impression plate and highlighted the entire thing with distress ink.  My adorable little punched owl stayed the same but I stamped him with some scratches and gave him some red eyes and ended up mounting both the tree and owl with foam tape.  The cemetery punch and broken fence at the bottom along with the tiny little silver stars rounded out my scene.  Ta-dah!

Template (am I the only one who does this?)

Sadly, this is most likely going to be it for me for the rest of the month - August was packed and now September is crazy - I have a bunch of work related travel!  Ugh. 

Thanks for looking and I'll see you in October!



HDH Challenge or Dance, Percy, Dance

Hey there, I'm back from having fun in the summer sun for a few weeks (okay, fun in the dark movie theatre, because it's too damn hot outside!) and I'm ready to play.

This week's challenge over at Haunted Design House is Hiding in the Corners - something that is obviously adorned in the corners. 

I have a friend's birthday coming up and I know she's going to love this adorable Unicorn digi from Andrea over at Smudgetastic Digis.   I hand colored him (for my purposes, his name is Percy) with pencils and gave his horn and hooves a little glossy accent because Percy needs to look his best.    He also needed a little rump tattoo so I made him a moon and bat because my friends always expect at least one bat from me.  

Andrea also has some cool skulls (Skullie and Norman) - I fussy cut a dozen or so of these little beasts and made a little skull pile for Percy to stand on.

Dance, Percy, Dance!!  

I mounted Percy and a few skulls with foam tape to give them a little dimension. The unmounted sentiment "happy, happy, happy" goes with the "birthday" on the inside.  I decided to do something cheery on the corners and made little red polka dot ribbon banners.  (Ignore the odd ribbon shadow on the left, I couldn't get rid of it, no matter how I turned my project into the sun.)  Each layer is foam mounted - for a grand total of 5 layers.

I'm also entering Percy in the following challenges:
Make It Monday - Anything Goes
Paper Crafting Journey - Anything Goes
Paper Crafting Journey - Happy Birthday - Celebration
Papelitos Stamps - Celebration
Just Some Lines - Layer It Up
Whoopsie Daisy - Anything Goes

Thanks so much for looking!

Challenge - Music Mayhem

Good Morning! It's time for Macabre Monday with Haunted Design House.  But first, there were some requests for the stamp maker of last week's image and I'm sorry, but I have no idea who it is.  It's an unmounted stamp, made of thin blue rubber.  If anyone knows, I will happily give credit.

No, on to the challenge - this week's theme is Music Mayhem and needs to use a song or song title as your muse. 

I immediately went to "Animal I Have Become" by Three Day's Grace.  The chorus is:

"So what if you can see the dark inside of me
No one will ever change this animal I have become
Help me believe it's not the real me
Somebody help me tame this animal I have become"

which totally screams Werewolf to me. 

I found an extremely cool werewolf photo on the web - my view of werewolves came from The Howling so they always look like this in my head - and this guy was so beautiful.  I thought about doing something ripped and tattered and torn, but I like the counterpoints of being human and in control vs. the wildness in being an werewolf and decided to go with something classy to offset the animal.

I don't have any good framing dies, so I made my own - I gathered some punched fleur de lis' and glued them upside down (sideways, bottom out?) to the back of my photo. 

The flowers were white and boring, so I splashed them with some black ink and added the leaves in the same color red as the card.  I printed out the line from the song (because for some reason, I thought it had to be on the card.  Apparently, I like to make up my own special rules for the challenges) and added it to the bottom of my pic. 

I used an embossing folder from Stampin' Up on the left and a die from Papertrey Ink for the cool cut out on the right.  It's one of my favs.  The leaves are from Sizzix.

I'm also entering this into the following challenges:
Joanna Sheen Challenge Blog - Animal Crackers (werewolves count, right?)
...Joyful Stamper - Anything Goes
Bloggers Challenge - Die Cuts
Divas by Design - Anything Goes
LEJ Designs Challenge Blog - Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp & Show - No Rules!

Thanks for stopping by!

Challenge - Butchered Blueprint

As always, the weekend brings us my Haunted Design House submission.  This week we're working from a Butchered Blueprint. 

I have to admit, this is my first time doing a blueprint and I set to work creating.  Surprisingly, it came together fairly quickly and wow, it was frightening and not in a good way.  Hubby looked at it and went 'huh'.  So, for future reference, when the person who loves you most in the world can't think of a single thing to say about your art, perhaps it's time to sleep on it.

And I did - and below is what I came up with. 

I rubber stamped my broken doll (unmounted blue rubber) with Memento and colored it with pencils - ugh, brown and blue is the atrocious color combo on the jacket.  I mounted him on a bit of doily that I had thrown away because it didn't go through the die machine correctly.  Some felt, embroidery floss and a few more buttons and I was set.  

The final step was the stick pin in the heart.  Sad little thing. 

As a bonus for sticking with me this long - here's a close up of the best part of my first attempt - I made the 'blood drop' on the pin with embossing powder.  So cool!

Thanks for stopping by!