Underneath the Undertaker's

Hello all!

Well, this is a post I didn't expect to be posting, but when I saw Tim's spooktacular October tag, inspiration struck and I had to act... immediately!

In fact, I made it on day one, in a fever of activity, as soon as I saw the post.  I delayed sharing this by a couple of days just to let my Vintage Journey journalling pages have a fair crack of the whip!

I don't have the 3D Halloween monsters which Tim used as the centrepiece for his tag, but my brain went straight to work on what I have that could be deployed three-dimensionally.  The answer it came up with even had a Halloween slant - the Rickety House of course.















And you can see where that got me... to a tag which even slightly spooked me out as I was creating it, when I discovered what the undertaker keeps under his floorboards!

It appears to be full of gloom, but also has a metallic shimmer, so in the sunlight it's slightly ghostly - definitely one to avoid when you're trick or treating.  But we'll get to the macabre secrets of the undertaker's house soon enough. 









I started, as Tim does (you'll find all the making-of details over at his blog) with some wrinkle-free distress technique.  My colours include Hickory Smoke, Blueprint Sketch, Wilted Violet, Stormy Sky and Black Soot, as well as some Brushed Pewter and a couple of spritzes of Pewter Perfect Pearls into the bargain.









I cut the Rickety House out of the paler inky sheet (it's done on Mixed Media cardstock) and then drew around it onto the dark inky sheet and handcut a solid version of the house, with no windows and doors.

I made a dimensional fold to form the corner of the house, and the reverse fold in the background house.











Before gluing the edges together, I thought the house needed some inhabitants...

Meet James Fallon, undertaker (a.k.a. Edgar Allan Poe) - a stern and sinister looking type, particularly when he catches you peering in through the window at him.











Upstairs is a rather sad and lonely looking woman.  His wife?  Is she imprisoned up there?  Or merely a prisoner of her marriage?  I have to say, I rather fear for her future, as will you when you've explored further.











I used some paper from the French Industrial stash which had gloomy clouds flitting across its surface.  I've added quite a lot of stamping as well as the inky blottings from the stencil.

There are the Deaths notices providing textured detail.













The spiders loom large, whether dangling on threads of gossamer...
















... or waiting in ominous stillness on their cobwebs.














Oh, and I forgot to warn you - don't try sneaking around the back of the house either.













It's not only that the skull is keeping a beady eye on you from on top of his crossbones... 

... but you might just bump into something big and hairy round there!













Obviously I needed a floor for my little 3D house, so I cut up two wooden coffee stirrers, glued them together and stained them with Black Soot Distress Stain.













You may be thinking that the boards are a little uneven... small wonder when you realise that they must have been taken up and nailed down again more than once.










Just look what's buried underneath them!

I can only imagine that those jumbled bones are the relics of previous marriages...













Or perhaps Mr Fallon likes to keep a SOUVENIR of each burial he undertakes.  Either way, I think you would do best to steer well clear of this particular Rickety House, especially after dark.

A spidery jumble of black paper string winds its way around the crinkle ribbon, and we're done.













Another fantastic couple of hours of fun inspired by Tim Holtz - thank you for that, Tim.

And thank you to all of you for your company and your wonderful comments.  It's a joy reading them.  I'm off on my travels again this week - workshops in Norway which should be fun - but I hope I'll have some time to come visiting nonetheless.

Let us endeavour so to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain (not this one Mark, I don't think so, no)

Houses are not haunted.  We are haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves, our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts.
From Velocity by Dean Koontz






I'd like to enter this as my October tag in Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of 2015
There's stamping and stencilling and a 3D version of the Rickety House, so I'd also like to play along at Stamps and Stencils in their Make It 3D challenge