No...still not Christmas here!!

The wonderful thing about being a part of the scrapping world, and the enormous pool of creativity that goes with it, is that you can browse through the internet, Pinterest etc for hours and then find inspiration from your closest (cyber) friends.

That happened to me with this project. At the my2angels retreat I saw Tracy's beautiful pink birdcage, and all the gorgeous other coloured ones that the ladies made from her kit and I thought to myself - Wow! That would look awesome for Halloween!!

Mind you, we don't really celebrate Halloween here - a few chocolates in case the local kids drop in and we mostly eat them all ourselves :) BUT I think this cage looks awesome anyway, by day....

....and by night.

Here's what I used on the background...I repeated this on both sides:

Black Soot Distress Stain

Ferro Metal Effect Textured Paint (Graphite) - through a brick stencil

Some of the spider webs were stamped with Emboss-It ink and heat embossed with Zing Clear embossing powder, the others...more visible here, are the result of Emboss-It ink dabbed through a stencil using an Ink Blending Tool and then Perfect Pearls (Pearl) dry-brushed over the top. The Perfect Pearls powder clings to the ink and reflects the light beautifully. Because it's dry brushed you can easily control the amount of shine and can blur and blend the edges.

Finally, around the edges, a few thick blobs of Viva Decor Transparent Crackle Paint with Licorice Twist Sugar Beads pressed in while it's still wet.

There's a battery operated tealight candle in the house...you can turn it on from the back and replace it easily. Here's the back:

The bottom of the cage is covered with some muslin dipped in Black Soot Distress stain and scrunched up to dry. My little prison/house has just about the same treatment as the background...the Viva Decor Transparent Crackle Paint and Licorice Twist Sugar Beads are on the roof. Here are a few close-ups

The poor skeleton is chained to the house using some Antique Bronze Iron Chain and a jumpring, and this chain, along with some Black Iron Chain is also used on the house and on the outside of the cage. Have you noticed that the skeletons eyes (and the raven's and owl's eyes too) are Orange Rhinestones? He has a little Antique Bronze birdcage inside his birdcage with him.

An Antique Bronze Filigree Corner and an Antique Bronze Round Flower Filigree decorate the front of the house. The bat and the 13 on the number plate are from Tim Holtz' Halloween Ideaology Remnant Rubs.

See if you can spot the 5 Black Spider Charms scattered through the cage...and there are 3 Skeleton Charms hanging around as well :)

All my scary chipboards were painted black first with Black Soot Distress Stain, and then I used a combination of Stampendous and Zing Embossing Powders on them. There's some Aged Black, Aged Copper, Metallic Green and Apricot. 

And finally - at the top some pretty (but not too pretty!!) flowers and more spider webby muslin.

Grey and Black Roses, Purple roses and tiny Rosebuds, Tangerine Cherry Blossoms, a black Skeleton Leaf, some large Bronze leaves and some Black Star Flowers. The ribbon is Black Scallop Edged Organza.

Going to hang it out on the 31st just so the kids know they can come here for treats :)

The end of October means Halloween

Even though we are very haphazard about celebrating Halloween here in Australia, I always enjoy the spooky papers, stamps and embellishments Halloween brings and love scrapping with them all too.

We didn't really ''do'' Halloween in a serious way when my kids were little, but one year the local Macca's had a competition going for the spookiest costumes, so my neighbour and I got together to dress up our children. This photo is probably my all time favourite, and I admit that I have scrapped it before, first in black & white, then in colour (my son's face is green and my daughter's is white) but this is the first time I've done it in sepia, so forgive the duplication if you've seen it somewhere before :)

The papers I used for this layout are Carta Bella's All Hallows Eve collection. I used both sides of Midnight Black/Bone Brown for the background, distressing all the edges. Tucked between them are some torn strips of Trendy Tapes - Script and Music (which are both out of stock right now so you all have them! Right?) and some pieces of muslin, which I dyed black using Black Soot Distress Stain.

Before putting the black and brown together though, I did a few things to the brown layer. First I stamped with a spider web pattern around the edges - with Embossing Ink and Zing Clear embossing powder and also with white ink. I figured out where I would be putting my photo and then I stuck a few pieces of torn dictionary paper and some more Trendy Tape where I knew they would poke out from the edge.

I smooched on a bit of white gesso to damp down the blackness of the type and then sprayed, quite heavily in places, with an orange spray I made in a Mini Mister with a mix of  Mustard Seed and Spiced Marmalade Distress Reinker and water. This one has no shimmer, but if you wanted to add it you could use a little bit of Perfect Pearls into the mix.

On top of all that - Ferro Metal Effect Texture Paint through a new stencil from Tim Holtz (Eye Chart).

The photo is matted on three different papers - all distressed, and tucked in underneath and between the layers are a tiny rectangle I cut from Curiosity Cards and a skeleton tag. The hole in the tag is embellished with Black Velvet Ric Rac and some fuzzy fibre left over from a scarf my mum knitted. This very cool fibre is also wound into and around my flower clusters. A strip of black cats from Borders and some die cut gravestones from Kraft cardstock, then a random stamping with Black Soot and a script stamp finished it off.

If you bought the my2angels Halloween Embellishment kit you have these awesome gravestones in your kit, along with the cute Silver Owl I used in my flower cluster. His red eyes are just a small squeeze of Ruby Red Liquid Pearls. 

My clusters are made up of Tangerine and White Cherry Blossoms, small Tangerine, White and Black roses and Black rose buds. I have tucked in a few die cut flowers and leaves as well, and three larger flowers which I made by wetting and scrunching up various coloured mulberry flowers. When they dried I unravelled them - but not too carefully, stacked them up and threaded them onto a Black Brad. There are around 6 or 7 single flowers in each stack.

For the drops of blood I have scattered around I used some of my Glass Cabochons in various sizes (shhh...I have more than Tracy does..lol!).

I haven't seen anything in the my2angels gallery lately - except my own stuff!  

So I'm throwing out a challenge here.....scrap your spooky Halloween kids (or pets....or husbands...or even your decorated house or your favourite scary book) and put your layout into the gallery by midnight on Sunday 17th November. That gives you two weeks and a weekend after Halloween to make something awesome.

The DT Angels will choose the spookiest layout and the winner will receive a $30 Gift Certificate to spend at my2angels.

I hope I see you in the Gallery! 

Michele xxx

2013 Halloween Kit and scary ATC's

"Darkness falls across the land, The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood, To terrorize your neighbourhood
And whosoever shall be found, Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell, And rot inside a corpse's shell
The foulest stench is in the air, The funk of forty thousand years
And grisly ghouls from every tomb, Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive, Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist, The evil of the thriller

Halloween and "trick or treating" are enjoying a resurgence of popularity and what better way to scrap your wicked witches, grisly ghouls, and living dead photos than with this limited edition kit.
With only 13 available - it'll be "lucky for some"!

Bone Halloween Kit

Black Halloween Kit

 

Inside your kit you will receive:

5 x1.5cm Black Red and White Bat Buttons

2 x 3cm Green and Black Skull and Crossbow Buttons

4 Goggle Eyes

1 Black and Red "Bite Me" Cabochon

2 x Tim Holtz Black Cardstock Gravestone diecuts

1 large Skeleton

 3 Pumpkin charms

1 witch on broom charm

1 owl charm

1 black skeleton charm

2 black spider charms
and 1 Black Rhinestone Skull and Crossbow

all for $8.99

available in the new arrivals section
in 2 colour kits - black and bone

Don't you just love Halloween? Spooky decorations, dressing up, scary stories...and sweets. Mmmmm sweets!!

ATC's are ideal for Halloween. You can add them to the front of a paper bag for Trick or Treating, you can make them into Gift cards or you can add them to your spooky layouts as larger unique embellishments. Or of course you can swap them with friends and enjoy just looking at them in an album. 

They are simple and quick to make, and also lots of fun. 

All five of mine have the same basic ingredients, which are re-arranged to make each one different in a very small way.

I started with a packet of Inkssentials ATC Black Surfaces for my background. I stamped using Kaisercraft's Textured Clear Stamp - Graffiti and an Embossing Ink Pad, and coloured with Zing! Apricot Embossing Enamel.

Next, a piece of Black and White Baker's Twine wraps around the card and is tied with a knot and a my2angels Halloween Charm. I've used Black and Red Copper Skeleton Charms, and a Silver Pumpkin Charm on my cards, but you could also add Skulls with Cross Bones or Black Spiders. If you are lucky enough to get your hands on a special Halloween Kit you can also choose a cute Witch or Owl charm.

For the middle of each ATC I stamped a Skull and Crossbones onto cream cardstock, cut it out, inked the edges with Black Soot Distress Ink and added some sparkling Orange Rhinestone eyes. The eyes on each skull are looking a different way, just for fun. 

Mount it on Foam Mounting Tape for extra height.

At the bottom are some bottles with something nasty inside. I grabbed some Diamond Dust (not just great for Christmas!) and coloured it with a teeny tiny bit of alcohol ink then spooned it into a little glass vial. 

To colour the Diamond Dust without mess put it in a small plastic bag with a few drops of colour, seal it up and shake. I used a tiny amount, not even close to a whole drop. This also works using Distress Stain, Distress Re-Inkers or even Distress Ink pads. 

If you are using Distress Inks, smear some onto your craft sheet, spritz with water and pick up the colour on a paint brush. Start with a small amount of colour - you can always add more, but you can't take it away again. If you use a watery mix open the bag and let the crystals dry well before you use them. The beetles on my vials are from an old pack of rub-ons I had in my stash and the corks are sealed with Glossy Accents. 

A small, roughly cut square of muslin behind the vial adds texture and looks a bit like cobwebs. My ''BOO" letters, from Bo Bunny's Enchanted Cardstock Stickers (on Special right now!) are also popped onto Foam Mounting Tape.

A fun project for Halloween...why not get the kids involved :) 

Do you think those eyes are following you around the room??

Michele xxx

All Hallows Eve Layout

So I've been absent for a bit now - a combination of holidays and some strange bug I picked up a few weeks ago - but I am feeling a little better at last and managed to finish off this layout using some Twiddleybitz chippy and the new All Hallows Eve range from Carta Bella. Although it is a themed range, you can use it to produce non-halloween layouts - such as this one of DS2 and his love of a strange, online comic called 'Cyanide & Happiness'. It's a very snarky, dark-humoured style of comic and not always funny (to me) and often very rude (uhm - ok - it's almost always rude) - but it is sooooo DS2 that I am not surprised he likes it.

The base for the layout is a piece of the Burnt Orange/Chocolate cardstock, that forms one of the three cardstocks in the All Hallows Eve range. Knowing I had some large embellishment elements I wanted to display against this dark cardstock - I kept the patterned paper to the middle section - relying on the layering to produce interest. The bottom layer is the dotted reverse side of Spooky Damask and over this is one of the web pattern reverse side of Scary Stripe. For the top layer, providing a lighter contrast to these darker colours, is a section of the newsprint pattern from Skeleton. Just above the layered papers I added a left-over strip from a scalloped punched edge of the striped side of Scary Stripe. All those straight edges put my teeth on edge (oops - pardon the pun), so I needed something curvy to shake them all up a little. :)  I've inked all the paper edges with Black Soot Distress Ink too, just to emphasise the grungey feel to it all.

So that's the bare bones of the layout (sorry - pun intended) - the rest is all embellishment.

I fell in love with the skeleton as soon as I saw the Skeleton patterned paper - I knew I had to cut it out (ONLY 1 PIECE LEFT IN STOCK). Love the flourish that goes with it. So that got popped down at the bottom of the layout in the right-hand corner, using some pop-dots to give it dimension.

Down in the left-hand bottom corner I filled in some 'white' space with a skull and crossbones sticker strip from the Element Stickers pack, a pennant strip of Scary Stripe and a cute little Black Spider Charm from Tracy. The spider charm has a length of leftover string from the tag tied through it - I was going to tie it through an eyelet, but ended up not putting one in.

Moving up the left side of the layout, there is a combination of several stickers from the Element Stickers pack - 3 potion bottles and a die cut tag. Both sections of sticker are adhered to the layout on pop dots - so this also has some dimension.

Love the Twiddleybitz spider web (HAL001) - it fits into the corner perfectly. I've given it a thick coat of Gesso, which I've deliberately made lumpy and bumpy. Although it might not look it from the image, it does have a fair bit of texture to it - it's not like a thin coat of paint, it's more blobby and thick. To make it less 'bright and white,' I lightly inked over it with an old black catseye inkpad - and that gorgeous spider? That's all due to Stampendous Black Aged Embossing Enamel (ETA 30th Oct). It's blotchy because I must not have properly covered it with embossing ink first - but I liked the patchy look to it and left it that way deliberately, rather than fix it up.

Just a close-up of my gorgeous spider.

The title was rather a pain to do. I've cut out single letters from the Words sheet and organised them together to spell out what I wanted. I did have to modify several of them to get the letter I wanted - but you have to look closely to see which ones they are (I hope). The smaller chipboard letters in the 'and' are from the Itty Bitty Alphabet (ALPHA005B) from Twiddleybitz. They were black originally, but I painted them with some Kaiser Mocha paint. Again I 'blobbed' it on - so the alphas have a heap of texture to them in real life that doesn't show up well in the images. 

REMEMBER IF YOU WANT my2angels TO STOCK TWIDDLEYBITZ YOU NEED TO TELL THEM

The final part of the layout is a tag. I've made it from a cut-down standard luggage/shipping tag and popped it into a kraft bag . Both of these to start with were too pale and too yellow for the colours on the layout - so I inked them both with a mix of Tea Dye (ETa 30th Oct) and Vintage Photo Distress Ink, before edging them with Black Soot Distress Ink. 

The blotchy pattern on the tag is from spraying it with some water droplets after inking and then drying it with a heat gun. When the tag was fully dry, I stamped the skull image onto it with some Jet Black Archival Ink (ETA 30th Oct), added the quote and finished it all off with a Black Skeleton Charm. (and yes - that is one of the new Tim Holtz Halloween Blue-print stamps which Tracy can order in, you know she can get just about anything you want.)

The quote was printed on with my computer/printer.  The phrase is part of the 'official' description of the Cyanide & Happiness comic style  - but it describes the nature of my second son just as aptly. On the back of the tag will be my computer printed journalling.

I was also going to print out some of his favourite strips of the comic - but DS2 has just informed me he is disappointed that they are to be hidden away in the tag pocket - he wants me to make the layout a double, so that his favourites can be emblazoned across the page for all to see. Hmmmm - I think I need some convincing for that to occur. Teenagers - it's a good thing we start with them as babies first, otherwise no-one would have more than one child.

So pop into my2angels and check out Carta Bella's All Hallows Eve. The toffee/caramel, black and dirty white colour combination is very appealing and it totally rocks for teenage boy layouts.

NGAIRE

Black and Orange Projects from the Design Team

Check out these orange and black combo projects created by the Design Team ...

First up Corrina ...
Book Week 2008 and my darling gorgeous little precious baby son, my little sweet 5 yr old, wanted to dress up like a spider. Yep. A spider. And not just any spider - a redback spider. And yes, I had to design him a costume. He was sooo interested in bugs and spiders and anything that crawled (although heaven forbid if one of these creepies had the audacity to crawl near him!!!!)


For this layout I have used a great Rusty Pickle paper (Eight legged Web), and I hand-stitched cream wool over the top of the web designs to really make them stand out. I stitched these great little spider charms on the webs - and gosh they look so real when you get them out of the packet - ewwww! (LOL!). The photo mount is recycled pizza box (yep...I recycle the boxes Tracy sends our stuff in!) sprayed with Heidi Swapp black magic glimmer mist. This glimmer mist is awesome - it's black with a gold shimmer in it - just glorious! On the photo mount I have cut pieces of my2angels design Explore Loud Messy Rough n Tumble 100% Boy ribbon and mounted them onto pieces of chipboard to raise them up a bit.





Materials Used:
Rusty Pickle Paper - Eight Legged Web (Costume Party Range)
Jenni Bowlin Studio - Chalkboard Alpha Vintage
Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist - black magic
my2angels design ribbon - Explore Messy Loud Rough and Tumble 100% Boy ribbon
spider charms
misc cardboard (I used an old pizza box), wool, needle.

From Wendy ...

This month Tracy asked us to use some of her ribbons and other my2angels goodies. So for my first share for the month I have used some of the Extreme Play Hard Boys Ribbon on this LO I did of my sons year 5 camp trip last year.



I have used (again) some Sassfras Lass Apple Jack My Type, together with some of their Glitter Alpha Stickers, which are a great sized alpha. The other alphas I used are American Crafts Foam Thickers Daiquiri Black and Carolees Creations Tiny Black Alpha Stickers. The grass is Scrapware Chipboard Mini Grass, however the tree is not but the scrapware chipboard love fern tree in the shop is very similar.





And from Tracey ...

I had a clean out on the long weekend. I hoard absolutely everything. Nothing gets thrown out it my house, especially if it can be re-used, re-designed, recycled, re-homed!!!
So I found this empty box ...



I had been hoarding and decided to make a cubie, dice decoration thing for the boys room. They can actually use it if they want to decide who gets to clean their room up.....lol.




SHOP PRODUCTS
Extreme Cool Play Hard Chill Out Awesome Mates Boys Ribbon
Making Memories Spellbound Brocade Orange
Thickers - Daiquiri White
Kindy Glitz - Black
Jones Tones Puff Paint - Black

OTHER STUFF
Mod Podge
Recycled Box

and from me Tracy (without the E) my first layout in a while ... adding blue to black using the new Scrapware Vintage Luggage Chipboard which arrived in store late Friday ....



Mark's First Passport Photos



The Bo Bunny Mama Razzi pattern paper was an easy choice for this layout. And the new Scrapware Vintage Luggage Chipboard was a perfect embellishment - since they are so generous in size I separated each suitcase and just used one which I inked and heat embossed silver on the buckles, hinges etc.

And more scrapware their cute mini aeroplanes which I inked and covered with Inkssentials



Also used the Tattered Angels Travel Bingo Cards - they are in a gorgeous vintage beige colour but because it wouldn't match my page I scanned them and printed out in black and white.

Of course any travel layout is not complete without our camera charms. Also added our buggy car charm.



Also from Scrapware is the clock hands which I was inked and heat embossed with clear embossing powder.

Wrapped around the clock hands is a piece of string holding our Eiffel Tower Charms and underneath a small piece of white cotton ric rac

Also used black painted corrugated cardboard and the negative film strips are from the original layout. The original was crying out to be redone!

And lastly a piece of our 100% boys ribbon down the bottom of the layout.

TFL

Hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend