Encore Post - Thrice Blasted, Thrice Infected

Encore Posts

Projects which made their first appearances elsewhere for Design Team duties or Guest Designer opportunities, but which only had a sneak peek here, are being gathered together in the pages of my virtual scrapbook while I'm away.

As always, the Encore Posts are formatted differently from the regular ones, so that you can easily spot them.  Please don't feel that you have to comment all over again!

Hello all!  I'm not going to apologise again for the ongoing silence here at Words and Pictures... you'll be getting bored!  I've finally managed to put together a few Encore Posts, at least, over the next ten days or so, before something new turns up next Friday.

I'm aware I'm a bit late for all the Halloween spookiness, but with the nights drawing in, I think it's still worth sharing this particular eerie project now.  It's not specifically intended for Halloween, just for those dark nights around the fire telling stories.  It was created back in October 2015 for PaperArtsy, and here's what I wrote back then....

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I've got a triptych of frosted glass bottles for you today, together with the plants from which their contents have been distilled.  I very often seem to end up working in triplicate, sometimes by accident, but also sometimes by design.  I like panels that have an element or two in common, and then variations on a theme as the eye moves across them.  This one all started from an idea of trying to recreate those lovely vintage chemist's bottles you find, with embossed writing; so each panel has a bottle, but then the labels and flowers vary.

I wanted to use the HPHW05 Halloween labels, and I knew I wanted the flowers in the background, as a reminder of where so many potions and poisons come from.  The perfect quote popped in to my head from Hamlet: "thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected" -  all about potions made from plants collected at midnight, and then - get this for a triptych - "thrice blasted, thrice infected"!

I created a brayered background rather than a crackled one for once - layering up Purple Rain, Lavender, Wisteria, Mud Splat, Taupe, Stone and Chalk - and then used Distress Inks with the Clocks stencil to deepen the midnight blues.

I used leftover acetate packaging for my bottles.  I used the DANGER stamp from the fantastic recent HPHW05 release, stamping it in Versamark and then clear embossing it.  I draped the bottles over shallow oval bottle as I heated them (some hair stuff, don't ask me what!) so that I could get the same curvature on all of them.

Once the embossing was done, I gave the bottles two coats of Frosted Glaze, allowing them to dry in between.  To make the bottles tall enough to make the most of the Hot Picks Halloween labels, I had to hand cut them, based on the Tim Holtz Apothecary Bottles die - but I made sure I left the necks of the bottles the same width, so that I could use the die for the stoppers at least!  I painted the labels very simply with washes of Stone and Brown Shed, and I shaded the edges of the bottle with some Cobalt Archival to give them even more dimension.

I stamped flowers from HP1505, HP1507 and HP1009 and used Purple Rain, Stone and Chalk to shade them.  The Brown Shed made its way onto the bluesy backgrounds too, giving some colour to the foliage, and I added misty book page clouds drifting across the moonlit sky, as well as some lid-stamping for accents and highlights.  Of course there's another clock telling the time in the gorgeous tulip stamp, making sure it's midnight so that the plants are at full potency when they're collected.

I've created some rusty, leathery hinges to hold the whole thing together at the back (Brown Shed with shadings of Purple Rain straight on to Grungeboard so they're flexible, and then some Distress Embossing Powders in Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain), but I'm guessing nobody will really be looking at that side, so I didn't do much else...

I'm really pleased with my frosted embossed wording - it's got real dimension... though it's nigh on impossible to get a good photo of!  A slight shame that the central bottle covers the butterflies, but they wouldn't be out and about at midnight anyway.  And if you peer very closely in the right lighting, maybe you can see them inside, their essence captured and distilled as an extra ingredient in the poison!

Oh, and speaking of the right lighting, this is another triptych which responds rather well to candlelight.  Now you might catch a glimpse of the butterflies in the bottle...

And the shadows finally allow that embossed writing to pop a little more.

I hope you like my poison triptych, and that you'll be inspired to come up with some three-parters of your own!  Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I'll see you again soon.

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So there you go... I hope you enjoyed this little post-Halloween poison pick-me-up - it's always worth a trip down memory lane for a little candlelight!  Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I'll be back with another Encore soon.

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;
Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property,
On wholesome life usurp immediately.
From Hamlet by William Shakespeare