Caught in a Cobweb at Simon Says Stamp

Hello all!  I'm absolutely thrilled to be guest designing for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge for the month of October.  It's always an honour and a pleasure to create alongside the extraordinary team of creative geniuses (genii?) there, and I'm so happy to be back (even if I am squeezing it in amidst moving house to a new country!).

We've got a great theme to kick of the month... Dry Embossing, with a focus on Tim Holtz products.  I have a lot of Tim's Texture Fades (his name for embossing folders), but I often forget to use them.  I need to make sure they are stored more accessibly when I set up my new craft space since I had so much creating fun with them for this XL tag.

Yes, I'm in the throes of packing up my life and my craft supplies ready to move across Europe, so these projects for Simon Says Stamp will probably amongst the last things I make in the old space.  (I do plan to keep some inks/tags/stamps accessible throughout the process... I can't be without the option to craft in between sorting, clearing and packing!)  And here's today's tag...

There's quite a lot of dry embossing going on here, but also plenty of crackle, plenty of ink, crayon, paint and shimmering wax, along with some autumnal gatherings and of course that tiny spider... nothing to be afraid of, right?

There was no doubt about my first choice given the time of year... it had to be the glorious Layered Leaf.  It comes as a set with a coordinating die and folder.  I created a background with Distress Inks and Oxides and cut and embossed the large leaf.

From the same background, I cut some of the smaller leaves from the Fall Foliage Thinlits, and then ran them through the Layered Leaf's embossing folder.  Of course the folder isn't sized for them, but I think it adds a nice bit of extra texture.

You can see I was already trying them out on the jumbo MDF tag (8.5 x 4.25 inches).

And with another subtler background I cut the Impresslits Leaf in both sizes several times.  This does the cutting and embossing all in one go as well as creating a 3D curve to the leaves.  Layered up together, I think they all look pretty good.

The other embossing folder getting in on the action is an oldie but a goodie... Tim Holtz's Cobwebs Texture Fade.  (A similar one is here.) I ran it through with some plain card and then scraped DecoArt Crackle Paint into the depressions and let it do its thing.

 

I realised too late that if I wanted it to blend into the background as though the cobweb were just hanging there in a crackled sky, then I should have glued it down to the MDF tag before putting on the crackle paint!

So I had to draw round it and then try and apply crackle paint to my background so that it would just slot in.

I thought you'd like to know that it's not always all plain sailing around here!  There's more trouble to come...

I'm not going to take you through the entire chapter of difficulties (with a functional Blogger I would, but with New Blogger I just haven't got the time to mess around #newbloggersucks).  Suffice to say that I ended up having to peel away my glued down cobweb, to find it left a slightly less dimensional version of itself, which I then re-added crackle to and started applying colour with Distress Sprays.

Trouble is because it wasn't as deep there's less of a crackle compared with on the MDF.  I'm also a bit disappointed at how no matter what colour medium I put on it seemed to fade to almost nothing... even the paint - what's that about?  It doesn't usually happen...

In any case, with all the layers of paint and ink and Treasure Gold which eventually got added, you can hardly see the crackle in the cobweb at all now!

Ah well, it looks pretty darn cool around the outside of the cobweb at least... highlighted with Walnut Stain Distress Crayon, amongst others.

Yes, that crackle definitely makes me happy!  You can also see here the fine wire I silvered up to create a web for my Idea-ology spider to dangle from (again there's a similar one here) ...

... and here he is, right at the centre of the cobweb, waiting for his prey (or for you to walk through the trees and get the whole web caught in your hair - ugh!).

I used the pad of my fingertip to swipe on some Treasure Gold wax in Silver and in pewter to give the cobweb that lovely shimmer you sometimes see the fragile fibres get when the sunlight catches them.

At this time of year, I can rarely resist adding some pinecones and acorns when I get the chance, and since this is an MDF tag it can handle both the weight and the dimension.

I also tucked some moss in and around the leaves as I felt the tag needed a bit of green going on.

I'm sure you spotted the Idea-ology Word Band with some shredded Mummy Cloth adding some extra cobwebby texture behind it.  There's more of the cloth and more of the rusty wire at the top of the tag to finish it off.

So, overall, despite all the frustrations along the way, I ended up very happy with my autumnal tag - with the dry-embossed leaves and the spider at the heart of it, glistening on his silvery web. 

I hope you'll be inspired to come and play along at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.  If this isn't enough, there is of course phenomenal inspiration from the full-time Design Team there.

As ever, the team will be spotlighting some of their favourite entries at the end of the week, and of course there's that $25 voucher to spend at Simon Says Stamp for one lucky randomly drawn winner.

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I'll see you again soon.  Happy crafting all!

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.  Hah!
Jonathan Swift 

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.  Double hah!
Mahatma Gandhi

I'd like to share this tag at Try It On Tuesday where the theme is Autumn Colours
And at the Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog they are looking for Fall Foliage

#newbloggersucks