HALLOWEEN CARDS by Fran

Hi everyone! Today I made a couple of cards for Halloween.  I'm not really a great fan of Halloween but seeing the great spooky work that others were doing, I was inspired!

 For the first card, I put a small moon mask on the top right of my piece of card and smooshed distress inks in Wilted Violet, Seedless Preserves and Chipped Sapphire with water.

I went round the moon mask with the darkest colour, then added more colour with blending brushes.

I stamped the cemetary stamp a little way up from the bottom in black.

For a bit of added interest I stamped branches across the moon and round the top and sides of the card using the top of a tree stamp.

After stamping the skeleton, I darkened the ground in front of the gravestones with black distress ink then used a white gel pen to highlight the skelly's bones, and the tops of the graves where I thought the moonlight would hit them.

And where there is light, there are shadows, so I coloured in some shadows with a black charcoal pencil.

To finish off this card, I mounted it on a white mat before putting onto a black card.

For the second card, I started by stamping the main image on white card, and also cut out a mask so that I could use Wilted Violet and Chipped Sapphire distress inks over it.

After removing the mask, I inked around the edge of the card with Carved Pumpkin distress ink, making the corners darker.

With a small brush, I infilled the bits that the mask covered that needed to be purple.

I then coloured the main image with Polychromos pencils

To finish the card off, I mounted it on a black card and drew round the edges with a black fine liner pen. I don't have any Halloween sentiments, so I had drew a spider hanging down (and actually wished I hadn't afterwards, haha!)

Hope you like these cards!  See you next time :)

Stamps Used:

Card 1:

Skeleton Dancing 10373 Plate 970

Cemetery 18907 Plates 1433 and 1004

Weathered Tree 19467 Plate 1444

Card 2:

Victorian Witch Costume Girl 20132 Plate 1492

Other items used:

Distress inks Wilted Violet, Seedless Preserves, Chipped Sapphire, Carved Pumpkin, Black Soot

Versafine Clair ink in Nocturn

White Gel Pen

Black fine liner pen

Moon mask

Polychromos pencils

Black Charcoal pencil

Art journal page - Halloween witch

Hi everyone,

here's a new art journal page inspiration for you. Halloween isn't that far away anymore and I have a few projects in mind. 

I'm working in an old book filled with Halloween pages and started my page with a light layer of gesso. On top I added a little spray ink in blue and black and created some greyish layers. For some color accents, I added orange and purple splatters of ink over the page.

As my main image I did some fussy-cutting and gave the little witch some wings. Even if she has now her broom and wings to fly, I didn't want her to float on the page. So I stamped some kind of background with parts of the tree background stamp and added a washi tape collage on top before I glued down the witch.

To finish the page, I stamped the quote, cut it into strips, inked the edges in black and glued it onto the page, too. And that's it. :)

Stamps used:
Witch Holding Broom (19705)
Bat Wings Set (14339)
Tree Background (18902) 
When Witches Go Riding (19907)

Other material:
- art journal / old book
- Canson watercolor paper
- Versafine Claire Ink (nocturne)
- white gesso
- Dylusions Ink (black marble, crushed grape, tangerine dream)
- Distress Spray Stain (speckled egg)
- washi tape

See you soon!

Halloween tags with witch and death moth

Hey everyone,

just two days until Halloween, so of course I have another inspiration project for this. Today I want to share these two tags. I know, it might be a bit hard to see on the photo, but guess which material I used as a base?

... it's foil! Windmill foil to be exact.

I cut my two tags from the foil and colored them with alcohol inks and some blending solution. I worked on them as long as I was happy with the look.

 While they were drying, I stamped and cut two focal points - the witch with her broom and the death moth - on watercolor paper. I left a white boarder around both images. I usually don't do that, but I thought they needed a little more contrast to stand out against my colorful tags. Bonus: it made the cutting much easier. ;-)

To add more interest I chose a chipboard element for each tag and heatembossed it - my favorite thing to do with chipboard.

As my backgrounds have dried in the meantime, I could work a little more on them. I decided to turn the tag around and stamp on the smoother side without the alcohol ink. For stamping I used a white Stazeon ink which works really well on foil. I stamped the row of chakras as well as part of the tree stamp on the red tag and two different skulls and the branch antlers on the blue one. The tree and the antlers both create a similar look when you just stamp parts of it, but I wanted to give you double the inspiration. 

I finished the tags by glueing the chipboard pieces, the cutout images and a lot of thread on them and added one of the Tim Holtz stickers on each.

I haven't had my alcohol inks for a while now, but it was fun playing with them on the foil. And of course there are some cool possibilities of using foil tags for decoration such as placing them in front of an electric candle.

Stamps used:
Witch Holding Broom (19705)
Death Moth (20056)
Weathered Tree (19467)
Realistic Skull (19724)
Branch Antlers Set of 2 by Cat Kerr (20147)
The Head Figure by Cat Kerr (20138)
Chakras (20246)

Other material:
- windmill foil
- watercolor paper
- Versaclaire Ink (nocturne)
- Stazon ink (opaque cotton white)
- Ranger alcohol inks + blending solution
    red tag: sunset orange, purple twilight, wild plum
    blue tag: denim, turquoise, raspberry
    on both: pitch black
- Scrapiniec chipboard elements (spiderweb 4967, boarder 4614)
- Embossing powder (Lindy's Gang - chalk it up)
- black and white thread

See you soon & happy Halloween!

Not every witch lives in Salem

Hey everyone,

it's my favorite crafting time of the year: Halloween! Well, I don't limit the use of all my monstrous, spooky and weird stamps to that one season. But however, here's a little Halloween based inspiration for you.

For this art journal page I'm working in an old book from the 50's. Two tips for you: As the pages are quite fragile, it's better to glue two or three together. And to avoid the book becoming too bulky, just seperate a few pages from time to time. Keep those pages for future projects.
I primed my spread with some heavy gesso and a brayer, leaving enogh "white space" for some of the text to shine through.

Then I tried to figure out how to place my chosen images and stamped them directly on the page. While I got a good impression from the moon in the background, the spooky house didn't look as good as expected and the details got totally lost. Guess my ink pad got a little too dry. But I wasn't too worried about that. I simply stamped the image on a plain white napkin and cut it out (not too neatly). I kept that piece aside and glued it on top of the unsuccessfully stamped image after I added color to the background. 

And coloring the background is already the next step. I used two Lindy's Gang sprays: moonshadow mist in buccaneer bay blue (a brown with a blue touch) and a blazing black flat fabio spray which gets a greyish blue tone when it's dyluted with water. I tried to get as little color as possible onto my stamped images which worked pretty well even if I had been to lazy to mask them.

After that I adhered my napkin piece and added a stamped tree next to the house and some texture to the background. The new mark making stamps do work well, don't you agree?

I staped a witch hat on watercolor paper, colored it with ZIG brush pens and cut it out. As I wasn't sure about which color of the hat would work best, I just did two versions and kept the other one (which is green) for a future project. Then I added some washi tape to the lower right corner, placed the witch hat on top and stamped a quote: Not every witch lives in Salem.

Here are some more photos of my finished project. Hope you like it.

 

 

Stamps used:
Haunted Mansion/Bridge (17883)
The Moon (20157)
Striped Witch Hat (19204)
Assemic Stripes (20576)
Plus Sign Background (20571) 
Fir Trees Silhouette (19723)

Other material:
- old book
- watercolor paper
- heavy gesso
- brayer
- Archival Ink (jet black, watering can, seafarer)
- Versafine Ink (onyx black
- Lindy's Gang sprays (moon shadow mist "buccaneer bay blue"; flat fabio "blazing black")
- ZIG real brush watercolor marker
- washi tape


See you soon!

 

VLVS! Swaps

Did You Know?

Viva Las VegaStamps! hosts swaps in a sweet little facebook group dedicated solely to VLVS! projects. We sure do! In today's post we have the results from our last swap for your viewing pleasure. The last theme was a Fall Harvest Postcard and my oh my the results are GREAT! 

We have also started a brand new swap -- Art themed ATCs. If you are interested please join our group and or read this file to learn more. It's easy to sign up, and we keep the rules pretty basic to accommodate most! Now - onto the postcards:

Skull | She was a Freaky Little Thing | Cemetery | Bell Jar

Mesh Texture | Numbers Set | Have Students Will Scream

Invoice Waybill Background | Numbers Set

Witch Holding Broom

Be Afraid | Lady In Curlers

Bubble Wrap Texture | Gnome in Hammock 
Dream Big | Stitching

Old House | Redwood Trees | Flock of Geese

Futuristic Circuit Board | Weeping Statue of Liberty

Two Gnomes with Grasshopper | Free the Garden Gnomes

Skeleton Family | Flock of Bats | All Day Sucker | Raven

In The Pale Moonlight | Mesh Texture | Witch Holding Broom

Moon Circle | Jack o' Lanterns Along Fence

Witch Postcard {Monthly Inspiration} by DeeDee

Whoop! DeeDee here today to inspire you for our monthly challenge. Have you seen the beautiful entries already linked up??? Hopefully I can inspire you to link up yourself!

I was drawn not only to the color combo, but also the sort of whispyness of the tree branches and the big bold circles in the background. So I got out some of my favorite supplies and set to work on this beauty:

Witching Holding Broom

Numbers Set

Waybill/Invoice Background

I created big bold circles with some distress ink and a stencil. I mimicked the tree branches with some background stamping and used all my elements to create the same color combo. There's a bit of stitching, layering, fussy cutting, inking, chipboard use, splattering, misting, and more. I invite you to visit my blog for more details. 

For those of you who have signed up for our Fall Harvest themed Postcard swap you may be interested to know that this will be my postcard! Do you like to swap? Join our facebook group to keep an eye out for our next swap. And don't forget to stop by and enter to win some rubber, too!