Haunted Churchyard

Hello all!  I realise I've fallen behind in sharing the details of my PaperArtsy samples from the launch of my latest sets of word stamps, so I'm back with another today.

It's using EAB04 The Autumn Edition and, since Halloween creations seem to have taken over around Craftyblogland, the time is probably right to share my spooky Haunted Churchyard.

This is one of the larger quotes on the plate.  If you want to use it on a tag or card, you'll have to snip it up, but I wanted to use it on a bigger page - as though it were in an art journal (though since it had to be sent away to go up on the PaperArtsy display boards, it couldn't really be in an actual book).

I don't have it any longer to measure it for you, but it's about 6x9 inches, so a pretty standard medium-sized journal size.










The words are from Hamlet, and definitely counts as one of the eerie quotes on the Autumn Edition plate, intended for the Halloween fans... but Hamlet himself is not referring specifically to Halloween, only to midnight.  So you can use it any time of year you like!












I still can't believe it's taken until my fourth set of words to get a Shakespeare quote involved but, as I said on launch night, there are two of them on this plate - both of them pretty creepy.  (You can see the other in action in my wingman Nikki's launch post.)













This sample took a bit of a shortcut, to be honest.  The background is formed from a couple of pieces of cardstock which I used for experiments when I first got my Distress Oxides.

They've been hanging around ever since.  I simply stuck them together to make my "page".  I'd worked out that the quote could go at just the right height so that it would disguise most of the join.












I added some gnarled tree branches, courtesy of the fabulous twisty roots image from Scrapcosy 06.  In fact, most of the stamping here is from that plate, apart from the tombstones... but more of that later.













All the gravestones were cut from kraft card which I'd sponged very roughly with Fresco chalk paint in Stone, and then inked over with Walnut Stain in places.

The small ones in the background are cut with one of the newer Tim Holtz Thinlits dies - the Village Graveyard.












I've got large gravestones in the foreground, and those have had a bit of extra spooky attention.  The hovering images, stamped in Watering Can Archival, are from the Hot Picks Halloween 05 plate.















I used a Movers and Shapers arch die for these, but then trimmed a couple to different shapes for variation.













Positioning was key.  Obviously I needed the quote to disguise the background join, and then I wanted my skeleton to stand with his hand on top of the quote, in a nice debonair way.












He's stamped in Versamark and embossed with Vanilla White Wow powder to give a nice ivory look to the bones.














I used some Walnut Stain DI to add extra shading at the foot of the page and under the gravestones, so that the churchyard has a more solid earthiness, and mounted the whole thing on some contrasting card, just so it has a nice framing effect when it's displayed.










On all these samples, I added a layer of Micro Glaze at the very end.  It seals the inks to protect them as they go off into the world.  DIs remain vulnerable to moisture otherwise... if they were to get wet, everything would shift!  It also helps to prevent the colours from fading over time, as well as giving them a slight boost in intensity because of the gentle sheen it has.

That's your spooky lot for now - happy crafting all, and make sure to avoid the witching hour!

Midnight hags,
By force of potent spells, of bloody characters,
And conjurations horrible to hear,
Call fiends and spectres from the yawning deep,
And set the ministers of hell at work.
From The Tragedy of Jane Shore by Nicholas Rowe, 1714

I'd like to play along at Try It On Tuesday where It's Halloween Time