Halloween 2010: A Brief Encounter

Shocking. I LOVE Halloween. And how much time have I had to craftily spend on it? Not much. Not much at all. Certainly not enough.

I'm so grateful, then, that one of my friends, whose surprise birthday party it was last night, is a punky-metally kinda girl. I used my new skull stamp to make her a card, and a bit of halloweeny inspiration to make her a photo frame. And then I liked the frame so much that I made one for us too. And put the skull in it. So OK, maybe I had a teeny bit of time to make one small Halloween decoration. Ahhhh - that's better.

For the card, I added a small blue heart gem to one of the eyes. I love that. Looks a bit piratey, a bit evil, and a bit lovely too. I also used a very noisy embossing technique - which I'll show you on Tuesday.

I did the same for the skull I put in the frame. 

For the frame, I sprayed some Cosmic Shimmer Mist over some star masks and then stamped a couple of images on in grey ink. And I stamped a couple of other images in glue and covered them with flock.

And of course, I made cookies. I couldn't resist. They went into the spidery bowl for the trick or treaters who have just left - and left me with nothing but crumbs.

And finally, I found a first use for the birdcage...

 I hope everyone had a very happy halloween!

 

I've Become a Lipstick Chick

Thanks a lot to Lynette for seeking me out, I've become a Lipstick Chick for the True XOXO Girls blog! This blog is a scraplifting inspiration blog, where a design team works to come up with many different creations each month, in many different styles, to inspire their many followers.
My new blinkie on the left confirms that as of November, I'll be coming up with a monthly layout, card, ATC, or anything else that I think will inspire followers.  And if that's not enough, there's a prize for the lifter who gets voted the winner, which is donated by different sponsors each month.
So, be sure to check out the blog and look out here on my blog for the first challenge, to be posted soon!

Oh, and just because I can't keep it to myself, here's a little something I found at a reclamation warehouse the other day:

...by the Layers on my Tinny-Tin-Tin

Over at Scrap, Laugh, Love there is a challenge going on to alter a tin.

I got my tin from the flea market around the corner a few weeks ago, but I had to make sure I didn't like it too much as I was going to have to alter it. It's the little round one at the front:

Here's what I did:

 And here's how I did it:

After covering the tin with a dark layer of acrylic paint, I used masking tape to section off stripes and decopatched bits of a magazine on in two colours.

I cut a wine cork (actually, a beer cork) into 3 to use as feet. And then got to decorating. The challenge required that we use at least one butterfly on the project... I used lots, in an upward spiral pattern around the tin:

And used a big journalling shape and lots of embies to round it all off.

Art for Art's Sake

I love the circular nature of art.

In December we visited the Magritte museum here in Brussels, and I gained a lot of insight into this man's mind, whom I had only known previously for a hat, an apple and a pipe (or not a pipe, if you prefer).

In July, during the National Day celebrations, we witnessed a group of drama students interpreting Magritte and his work. My talented fiance took a photograph which subsequently inspired me to make this album (during the super-rainy August we had). But I knew there was more. I just had to wait for it to come out.

And this is what came out:

A tribute to Magritte, to Brussels, to Belgium, to art. Here are the 'don't be afraid' splodges:

 

 I used bubble wrap and a plastic cup to imprint the patterns on the canvas. And added some French newspaper and raindrops.

 I cut out the words with the Cricut, purely because I got to choose my exact font that way.

And there you go. That's my homage to Magritte. 

Texturally Speaking...

A lot of what I'm doing lately in my scrap runs deeper than paper. Most recently, it's been about getting over fears. No change today. Inspired by the 'child's style' used by Chocodeline in this project we did together, I've been playing around with acrylic paint - and lots of it.

Gone is the fear of just slapping it on. Worry about a finger smudge? - Gone. Concern over the thick blobs that will take ages to dry? - Gone. Hesitation over using 'different' methods? - Gone.

Here's a little peek at what I've been doing:

I'll show you the finished article on Thursday. Thanks for looking!