Halloween- to die for

Hello everyone and thanks for dropping in! It's time for challenge 17 (can you believe it?) over at A Vintage Journey. The lovely Red Anne has chosen the theme HALLOWEEN TO DIE FOR.
Well, I decided to play with both aspects of the theme. This is what Anne had to say about it:

Halloween is one of my favourite times of year, I love when the children come to the door, in their costumes, to 'trick or treat'. You do not have to make anything scary (but it would be fun if you did!) but you must use at least one die on your creation and it must be strongly influenced by Tim Holtz. It can be a tag, card, canvas or mixed media piece.

And this is what I came up with:

Now, though like Anne I love Halloween, I don't actually own any Halloween themed dies apart from the little Movers and Shakers pumpkin and acorn, and in the end I did not even use that particular pumpkin, so I decided to make my own Halloween themed embellishments, using the dies I had at hand.

But, let's start from the beginning:

I wanted to use a Triptych blank that I have had in my stash like forever.

I coloured it with my new Distress Sprays (love them!!!!), I used Wild Honey and Rusty Hinge and a tiny bit of Vintage Photo, then added a first layer of stenciling using the Halloween Words Layering stencil and Walnut Stain DI.

As the card blank was not very good quality card, it soaked up the colour big time, so it needed more depth and also more stenciling for interest. I used the Shatter stencil and Walnut Stain and Black Soot DI.

Alright, now for to use some dies....

I cut three ovals with one of my Spellbinder dies. 

Ovals? Why you may wonder, - this is Halloween, not Easter. Well all shall be revealed:

Tadah!!

Home made pumpkins!! I had this idea in my head, and I think it actually worked lol. As you can see I cut a further 3 ovals, slightly smaller, so I could make a smaller pumpkin too. I layered them up as shown in the picture, one in the middle and two on either side, glued and then coloured them with the same sprays and added Rock candy Crackle paint. Once the crackles had appeared I gave a quick spritz with the Walnut Stain spray, wiped off the excess and that was it for the basic pumpkins. I then added some bits of greenery from the garden Greenery die, hand drew and cut some little stalks and added some curled raffia covered wire, - all done!

Next came some bottles: I have the Movers and Shapers mini apothecary bottles, and they of course always come in handy for Halloween projects. I cut both bottles, once from plastic packaging and once from card.

The plastic packaging ones were coloured with alcohol inks: Terra Cotta, Butterscotch and a tiny bit of Espresso. I then covered them first with Glossy Accents and then Rock Candy Crackle. When it had dried I added some depth and shadows with a Faber Castell Big Brush pen. The card one was coloured with Pumice Stone and Vintage Photo DI. I then glued the packaging one on top of the card one, to keep the glass effect, but have more depth of colour (forgot to take a photo of that, but you can see it on the project of course). I did the second bottle in exactly the same way. 

Next I had more spritzing fun with various colours of Distress Spray and some thinned gold paint and when dried cut a whole number of leaves with various leave dies that I am lucky to have collected over the years:

Alright, onto the three panels now:

I cut 3 of the large Vintage Cabinet Cards in Black card and three of the small in white.

I had to slightly trim down the sides of the black ones, so they would fit onto my Triptych.

I'll talk you through what I did with the white ones, one by one:

I stamped the witch from the Mini Halloween 4 set by Tim in Black Archival, masked her with Pebeo masking fluid and then stamped with a mix of stamps (Darkroom Door London and Clarity Trees) around the edges. I then inked with Seedless Preserves, Dusty Concord, Faded Jeans and Stormy Sky DI. I used the faux bleach technique (just using a wet brush and blotting with kitchen paper) on the moon and the light around the street lamp. I then removed the masking fluid from the witch and coloured her and the pumpkin with Distress markers.The little stars were added with a gel pen.

On this one the Skeleton from the Mini Halloween 4 was white embossed, the spider from the same set was stamped in a corner and then I did some more stenciling and inking with the same sort of colours.

The last one, which is probably my favourite, uses the same Darkroom Door stamp and the little owl is from Sin City stamps. I used the faux bleach again for the light and shadow effects.

Well, that is pretty much it. I layered it all up, added a few acorns etc still  from the Autumn Gatherings strip die and that was it.

Here you can hopefully see how the bottles turned out. I added some little labels still which were computer generated, as I don't have any of the stamps that include the cool labels.

Well, hope you like my project and sorry for yet another mammoth post, but I think particularly beginners in crafting and blogging like to have some of the detail.

The Day of the Dead sentiment was computer generated and mounted on a piece of black card.

Make sure to check out this latest challenge, my teamies, including two new ones, have made an amazing collection of projects to inspire you, so celebrate Halloween with us and play along!

Almost all product in this project are available from Countryview Crafts, our wonderful sponsors.

Now before I finish, I want to just share a couple of photos with lovely blog friends I met up with this last week. On Saturday The lovely Julie and I, (she  is one of our two newest Creative Guides at a Vintage Journey) met up for a coffee and a chat here in Edinburgh. And just yesterday the wonderful Kath Stewart and I met for a great chat at the Papeterie in Aberdeen. I am always amazed how time seems to fly when meeting with crafting buddies, so much to laugh and chat about. Loved meeting you both!!!

Julie and I outside in our street

Kath and I in front of all the Tim Holtz goodies (of course)

I have decided to add this project to the That's Crafty Challenge, where the theme is Spooky

Thank you for visiting like always