Last items for raffle

They say she's a little, hmmm, batty

Another fun image from Alpha Stamps.

More bats in unlikely places

This one is yours for the taking...leave me a comment and I'll do a random draw on Friday.

Where is my mind?

Never mind that, where is my head? Poor Poe lost his head. Wonder what's inside? Hint: it's appropriately themed jewelry....

Skellies in the closet

Oh, Marjorie, one does admire your pluck. I had too much fun putting this together, and this is for the raffle as well.

Bats in her, um...

A Victorian bat costume, courtesy of Alpha Stamps. She's a little unrealistically proportioned (just a tad) but the costume was too cool to not play with. I made a frame out of recycled foam core board and some black acrylic paint, and also painted some expanded paper (very cool packing material) for the curtains.

Time for a Halloween raffle

I'm coordinating an annual Halloween raffle for our Soroptimist Club tomorrow. Here's a set of tags that will be door prizes.

Embossed foil

As I was casting about for a technique for an embossing enamel swap, my friend Carol reminded me of the following: scrunch up some heavy-duty aluminum foil. Carefully unfold and brayer. Color with alcohol inks and let dry. Cover evenly with Versmark and clear, thick embossing powder (I used Franklin Opals). Heat until set.

What you get is colorful foil that has some stability (meaning it doesn't tear as easily) and is very flexible. It's also very colorful, and quite fun.

I used it for the background on this ATC, for a swap, and with one extra I made this card as a thank you for a friend.

F is for Floating leaf poem with fern fragment on Fossil Stone

A swap for Art-Ventures. I'd forgotten about this super easy technique. Here's how it's done:

1. Cut open a plastic page protector, so it opens like a book.

2. Ink each side of the "book" with dye-based inks. I just applied them DTP style and mixed up my colors. The main colors here were Adirondack Wild Plum & Red Pepper, with some random orange ink.

3. Close the "book" and gently walk your fingers across the whole page protector. You'll see lots of interesting bubbles develop. This is what you want.

4. Carefully open the "book" back up. Insert two 8.5 x 11-inch pieces of white, glossy cardstock, placed back to back and with glossy side out.

5. Close the page protector once more. Walk your fingers over once again and you'll see the ink transfer, bubbles, fissures and all. Et voila, Fossil Stone.

TP Tube book

Ah, the uses of recycled materials. This Halloween swap was created using TP tubes, flattened to make little pockets for tags. Little pockets, big fun to make.

I sprayed the tubes with Lysol first (just bein' careful), let dry and then flattened them in my Big Shot. Measured some patterned paper to wrap each, and embellished, with stamps, clip art, fibers dye cuts, etc.

I drew a coffin shape freehand on a cereal box and cut two, painting them grey. The book is four tubes with tags, layered between coffins, bound with two rings and tied off with fibers.

I will use the tubes idea again for cards and such, though I'm thinking of just cutting up paper towel or wrapping paper rolls.

Tempest, in a Teacup

This is Tempest. She's in a teacup, not a teapot, so perhaps she's a mini tempest. :) I miss my black cat and am hoping to get another one soon.

The ABCs of an ATC Swap

As I wrote earlier, one of my groups is having a lot of fun trying out various background techniques and surface treatments on Artist Trading Cards, working our way through the alphabet a month at a time.

We're up to E now, but for A, B and C, I did a mini running theme of 'I Want to Go to Le Cirque." I'd been having repeated dreams about cirques and these Stampsmith stamps -- a sheet called "Balancing Act"--just spoke to me. Although I've posted some of these before, I thought I would show them as a group.

So: A is for "Acrobat on Acrylic Scraped Background"; B is for "Babs Balances on Blended Batik,"" and C is for "Canine Juggles on Cosmos Paper."

Though I've moved on from the theme, my heart still yearns for a good cirque.