HDH - The Naughty Corner

Of course my first post in a long while is for Haunted Design House; how could it not?

Their theme this month is The Naughty Corner: You can either make a naughty project, or a project about someone or something who's been misbehaving or create something with corners, or decorate the corners.

I went with naughty; well, actually, I went with the rewards that come with taking your punishment well.  So, unless I sorely misinterpreted naughty, please see below....

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!

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 - 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!

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!

HDH - Vile Vintage (see warning!)

Wow, I'm clocking in an entire day early over at Haunted Design House for the latest Monday Macabre - Vile Vintage - take something vile and make it appear vintage, or maybe use something vintage that would be considered vile! 

So, the only thing I could think of that was vile and vintage were post-mortem portraits which, for those innocent souls who follow me, are photos taken of loved ones once they've passed on.  (Please note this warning - there are photos of dead children below.)

I tried to keep everything Victorian era'ish.  I started with a plain brown slide mailer and gave it a quick black wash, then stamped a Victorian pattern using Brilliance ink to give it some background texture and then wrapped it in some beautiful grey satin ribbon.  The flower was made with hand-dyed loose petals from Michael's - they melt and curl nicely when you use a match.  I backed a pre-made frame with some flocked paper and a cross charm, which I added the stone to. 

Here's the inside:

The pictures don't actually belong together, but it seemed serendipitous when I found two different photos with twins.  I framed the photo on the left with black scrap and used it across the bottom on the right along with a small cross between the babies.  I accidentally broke one of the slides with my tea cup, but decided it added to feel of the piece and broke the other one as well. 

It's not really vile to me, but I'm sure someone is horrified on my behalf, so I hope that counts. 

Thanks for looking!

StRaNgE bReW Challenge

This week's challenge over at Haunted Design House is StRaNgE bReW - making something with a recipe. 

Begin with 2 layers (actual card counts as one layer)
Add 1 main image panel
Mix in some metal bits of your choosing
Add some drops of black pearls
Gently fold in 1 punched element
Tie up nicely with some ribbon or trim

Here's my entry:

For my main image, I used my favorite digi, little baby Medusa, hand colored in reds, browns and yellows with pencils (I did her in green before, I'm trying to decide what I like better...) and gel pens.  I gotta say, there is nothing like the harsh camera shot to show you where your coloring still needs work!  Any suggestions out there for some good tutorials?

I fussy cut her and put her on my two layers of paper - one card stock and other a patterned scrap I found in my closet.  My metal bit is a ribbon buckle with some hand dyed ribbon to match her tail and 10 pairs of eyes - how many pairs before it's eyeses??  :) 

Add a punched border at the bottom, lined with black pearls and something you can't see, a matching bit of patterned paper on the inside of the card to show through the punched border.  Ta-dah! All done. 

I am also entering this into the following challanges (because apparently I am the queen of Anything Goes):
Love to Create Challenge Blog - Anything Goes
Fat Pages and Cards with Attitude - Anything Goes
Tammy's Scrapin Corner - Anything Goes with Any Artist
The Paper Makeup Stamps Blog - Anything Goes
Party Time Tuesday's Challenge Blog - Anything Goes

HDH137 - Perplexing Pigment Play

I'm slipping in under the wire (seriously, less than 30 minutes left!) at my favorite spooky blog - Haunted Design House for this week's challenge - Perplexing Pigment Play.  Your piece has to use black, teal, purple and lime green.  It's being sponsored by Bugaboo Digi Stamps and so I purchased an adorable little image to use - Deacon Skull Flower.

Oddly, teal is not a naturally occurring color in my craft room and I have no idea why.  After scouring for almost an hour, I finally found a fabulous little piece of embossed paper in the right color.  I added a green velvet ribbon that I ran through a skull embossing folder and some purple paper.

I used colored pencils to give Deacon a nice lime green zombie color and gave his eyes a little blood ring.  I think zombies give the best skull flowers. Some teal hair and tadah!

A handmade flower that I dyed black and embellished with a green skull from Creepy Glowbugg completed the look.

I'm also going to submit this over at:
Smudger Challenge Blog - Skulls
Forever Night Challenges - Anything Goes
Poisoned Peas - Goth or Emo (I'm pretty sure zombie boys will skull flowers count!)
Fat Pages and Cards with Attitude - Anything Goes
Stamping with the Dragon - Anything Goes


Thanks for looking!

Challenges - Dressy Edward

I've spent a huge amount of time in the craft room this week - I've started drawing again and ugh, it's been so long I feel lost!  But, it can only get better, right??

This week's challenge over at Haunted Design House is a Gothic Make Over - include a cute or non-scary image that has been made over in a Gothic manner.

First off, I am too old to be Goth - I am just the right age, however, to be totally Wave - which is the more colorful bastard daughter of Punk, I think, while Goth is the darker little brother.

Duran Duran was the hottest group around when I was growing up and I spent way too many of my teenaged years with John Taylor's bleached bangs, as well as Adam Ant's eyeliner issues and dating boys who wore more make-up than I did.  I have to admit that even after all these years, a guy in eyeliner and mascara turns my head.  Oh, along with ripped plaid held together by safety pins or the ever popular black fingernail polish.  LOL!

Here's my card:

I used an adorable digi Dressy Edward from the Greeting farm for my main 'cute image'. Yes, he has a bit of eye make-up on - I can't help it!

He looks like he's making a wish to me, so I gave him a thought bubble full of Heads from Stampotique, fussy cut and mounted in a frame to go with his sentiment.  I added a lonely little head behind Edward's leg so his dream of serial killing can come true.   Hey, who are we to stand in the way of ambition?

It's a tad bottom heavy, but whenever I added something extra to the top, it was too busy.  Thoughts? 

I'm entering this little guy in a couple different challenges this week - several of them for the first time:

Haunted Design House (of course) - Gothic Make-Over
Crafty Creation Challenges - Frame It
Forever Night - Anything Goes
Totally Papercrafts - No Pesky Girls Allowed
Southern Girls - All About Boys

Thanks for stopping by! 

Challenge - CASE A Minion

Well, everything in my little corner of the world is getting back to normal - I attended an art retreat last weekend, had a blast, made some new friends, laughed with some old friends, and now it's time get back to crafting, particularly since the last few weeks have been spent designing and prepping two new projects to do at the retreat. Now I get to play for me!

As always, HauntedDesign House is having another challenge - this time we need to CASE a Minion (Copy And Steal Everything or pull inspiration from) one of the supremely talented design team members.

I chose Andrea and her key chain - her version is for those crazy people that hate Vampires; mine belongs to a certain Vamp - hey, everyone has keys, right?  So what if it's to the coffin in the basement...

It's personalized with his name and has a self-portrait, along with some charms of his favorite things - the coffin that he was buried in, a skull, a bat and wolf.  There's even a few labels, because every Vamp has a little diva in him.  A tiny little cemetery scene finishes it off.  

 

Everything was done with StazOn on shrink plastic, helped along with a little Sharpie, the bat was a die and I found the skull in my drawer of evil.

Enjoy!

Macabre Monday - Pirate's Booty

It's time for another Macabre Monday over at Haunted Design House - this week's theme is Pirate's Booty.  I decided to go with a map, said to show the location of a chest of coins owned by infamous pirate, Calico Jackman.  Unfortunately, Captain Jackman was caught and hanged for piracy before he was able to retrieve his treasure.

This is the 2nd map that I made - the first one's ashes lie partially melted into the carpet of my craft room.  Did you know that you should not apply open flame to paper that has hairspray on it?  My left brain knows that, my right brain not so much.

Using Versafine, I stamped the map on a thin piece of stationary and added some script, as well as various nautical designs that I thought a sailor might have on a ledger page.  I marked the treasure with a Stazon X and distressed the entire thing with Walnut Ink and water.  While the page was still wet, I took an embossing stylus and wrote some numbers and words along the edge; the ink darkened them up nicely, and folded the map up to get the nice dark creases and let it sit for about 10 minutes and then opened it up flat.  Once the paper dried, it turned brittle.

I refolded it and got out the matches - let's gloss over the fate of the first map, shall we?  After going outside, I strategically burned the edges and some creases of the map.  I made the seal with wax and an unmounted stamp coated with Stazon.  The blood is Memento ink right out of the refill bottle.  Ta-dah, Calico Jack's treasure map.

  

I had a little time on my hands and decided to play with some clay and came up with some Krakken tentacles.   The base is covered in cloisonne embossing powder and the tentacles were darkened with a black ink wash.  It's a perfect paperweight for the map.   

 Thanks for looking!

Macabre Monday - Off With Their Heads!!

It's time for another Macabre Monday over at Haunted Design House - this week, it's Off with their heads!! - replace the head on an image.

I had a few challenges with this particular assignment - first, I have amazingly few full body stamps and my digi images are mostly profile heads.  What is up with that??

Secondly, Haunted House Design is also having a minion call and I've been caught up in doing new items for my submission post and almost forgot this one.  On a side note, apparently you cannot have a conversation with your spouse that starts with 'does this pus have too much glitter in it?' and expect it go well.  Men!

Anyway, here's my submission:

Everything was stamped with Versafine.  The body is from Stampotique and the eye "head" is unmarked blue rubber.  The eyes in the background are an unknown clear stamp.  I covered the head's pupil with some diamond glaze after I did my pencil coloring. Added a goo border punch and a rather apropos greeting that I found in a pile of unmounted rubber.

Ta-dah, a great card for the stalker (or stalkee) in your life.

This card is also being submitted over at Art With No Boundaries - The Eyes Have It.  (Thank you, Beverly!)
Enjoy!!

Challenge - Grimm's Grimmest

It's time for another Haunted Design House challenge - this week is Grimm's Grimmest, in which we get our inspiration from one of the 200+ tales from the Brothers Grimm.

The one that immediately popped into my mind, was The Goose Girl - where the Princess, who has a talking horse 'Falada', is forced to trade places with the maid and becomes a goose girl.  To keep Falada from telling anyone, the maid has her killed.  The Princess pays the butcher to mount her head on the bridge so that she may see her when she tends to the geese. 

So, here is Falada's head, hanging on the bridge, with the phrase she speaks to the Princess every morning. 

I spent some time fussy cutting an internet image and layered different parts of it three times.  I colored the eyes, nose and neck red for blood and mounted her on a shield die-cut.  I added the three rhinestones at the bottom of the sentiment to signify the three drops of blood that the Queen gave to the Princess when she left.  (That seemed to be a huge thing for the Grimm's - they were a tad strange...)

Here's a close up of Falada's head. 

On a side note, I have to give thanks to hubby for his willingness to decapitate a toy horse (which he did, but I couldn't get it to work) for my art.  SWAK!

Enjoy! Or, you know, whatever it is you do with a severed horse head.

Challenge - Can I Quote You On That?

It's time for another challenge over at Haunted Design House - this time it's Can I quote you on that?  

Of course, I ran through my favorite movies and kept getting stuck on "The Shining".  

I've incorporated two different quotes - although, does it count if a character never says it?  If not, then it's a good thing that Danny screams "redrum" so many times!

I created the "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" phrase with a magnetic letter stamp set that I don't think has ever seen the light of day in my craft room.  "Redrum" was done in crayon and it was all mounted on red cardstock with a little bling and a layered border punch. 

I showed it to a friend and she wanted to know if it was a birthday card... um.  For someone I really don't like, maybe? 

Anyway, enjoy and thanks for looking!

Challenge: Varying Visages of Vincent

So, you may know that I'm a huge horror buff - I love scary movies and scary stories and bats and blood and all the fabulous things that make other people shudder and run.  And I love Vincent Price.  First, his movies are incredible - he had such a incredible presence - and he always managed to make most of his characters, no matter how murderous, somewhat tragic and you (I) ached for them.

This week, Haunted Design House is doing a tribute to the Master of Horror - they have a fantastic blog candy offer:

For a chance to win, pop on over to their blog and check it out.

The rules for entering blog candy drawing:1. Readers shall hop to each of the Macabre Minions blogs to see their take on the challenge...
readers must comment on each of the (6) posts.
2. Spread the word about the candy corn via your blog, Twitter, whatevah. Then just comment on this HDH post with a link to the announcement about it.
3. If you play along with the HDH Macabre Monday 100th challenge, you get TWO extra chances to win... just linky up and then add two more comments.

 

I did a little mini shrine which I hand cut from some paper (I believe it's a retelling of Sleepy Hollow) with some halloween scraps such as a few StazOn colored bat pins, a poison brad and a shrink plastic raven (which is an idea that I absolutely stole from Blackdragon and her fantastic piece - check out her jewelry art as well - so, so beautiful!) and a wicked stamp.

Here's a little better angle of the Wicked sentiment.  

So run, don't walk, to Varying Visages of Vincent and win a bit of macbre candy.  

Thanks, as always, for looking!  

Out! Out, Damn Spot! Challenge

Well, it's been a while! My husband unexpectedly needed hospital care (he's out and recovering) and my crafting had to be put aside.  But now I'm back and ready to stamp!

I decided to jump back in with the fabulous gals over at Haunted Design House because I love their latest challenge: "Out! Out, damn spot!" - something that is covered in splatter, drips or drops.   Of course, it doesn't have to be blood, but what would be the fun in that?

I actually made this for a friend, who is enchanted with the BBC series Sherlock, which is modern day reworking of Sherlock Holmes.  Instead of being a (mostly) proper Victorian gentlemen, he's a high-functioning sociopath.  Aaahh, there's nothing like a little murder to get the blood flowing. Or, in this case, splattering.

My blood is acrylic paint; red ink didn't keep it's beautiful bright color.  I was rather disappointed to find out that I don't have an axe stamp, because I thought the piece would have been perfect with one; I'm not sure what that says about me. LOL!

Enjoy and thank you, as always, for looking!