Something Spooky (and Purple!) - Guest Designing for Simon Says Stamp

What a wonderful time I had with this week's challenge theme for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.  It's such a thrill to be featured in the Designer Spotlight for the month of October, but to have this much fun into the bargain is a real treat.  Later this week, you can watch a whole YouTube episode on how these eerie moonlit tags came to life, but for now, I hope you'll enjoy these photos and a few details about the ingredients.

As always, the brilliant Monday Challenge team have created some amazing projects to kickstart your creative imagination, so do make sure you hop over to the challenge website to drink it all in.  The theme this week is Spooky/Add Some Purple... I ended up doing both!

I love adding a touch of purple to autumnal projects... for me it has that wonderful echo of both dawn and twilight in it.  Autumn has some of the best sunrises and sunsets, I think - certainly where I live in rural South Bohemia, right in the heart of Europe. 

And those crepuscular times of day have their own inbuilt eerieness, I think - so as soon as the Tim Holtz Moon Masks came out to play, the creepy element became inevitable in the gathering dusk.

My darkening sky is a combination of Shaded Violet and Villainous Potion Distress Inks, with Hickory Smoke, Lost Shadow, Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain and Scorched Timber to provide the neutrals in the landscape, as well as extra shadows.

I added subtle layers of meadow stamping with the grasses from Tim Holtz's Nature Discovery stamps, as well as some of my own PaperArtsy Umbellifer Edition stamps. 

The background layers are stamped in Pebble Beach Ranger Archival Ink, so as to stay put if I'm adding any moisture later.  The Umbellifers are stamped in a secondary imprint of Scorched Timber Distress Ink (oh, how I would love to have Scorched Timber in an Archival formulation!)

(You can see the full process from Saturday onwards, when the A Few (More) Minutes of Fun episode goes live on YouTube - I'll add links here when that happens.)

But hidden away amongst the grasses and wildflower stems are some slightly unnerving objects... the gleaming white bones from the Tim Holtz Anatomy Chart stamp set, embossed in Wow Bright White embossing powder.

As if that weren't creepy enough, there are colonies of bats silhouetted against the moon(s)... courtesy of Tim's The Scarecrow stamp set...

... and more spooky winged things to brush against your face as you cross the meadow... the Idea-ology Halloween Moth Transparencies.  Beautiful, but definitely not pleasant when they're caught in your hair!

My word stickers are from an older edition of the Halloween Clippings Stickers...

... but you'll find similar ones in this year's Idea-ology Halloween Sticker Book.

I love how you always seem to find the exact right phrases (if you look hard enough and don't give up on a compromise option too soon!).

I mounted the tags on some white card, just to give them a bit of framing - and it helps the moon to pop... with slightly raggedy edges done with the blade of my scissors for extra texture.  And some fine twine finishes things off as usual.

Hopefully, that gives you some inspiration to start you off with this week's Something Spooky/Add Some Purple theme... If you still feel the need for a bit more, do hop over to see what the regular team at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge have been creating.  I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

As always, there will be a randomly drawn prize voucher so that one lucky winner can go shopping at Simon Says Stamp... and the Design Team will be featuring projects that catch their eye(s) (how's that for spooky?!) in the spotlight at the end of the week, so do come and play along.

I hope you'll have a grand time getting spooky and/or purple - I certainly did.  Have a great week, and happy crafting, all!

Moonlight is sculpture.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Oscar Wilde

Between our birth and our death we may touch understanding, 

As a moth brushes a window with its wing.

Christopher Fry

Advent Countdown (part 1)

Hello all!  I'm trying to create something daily during December so I'm here to share the first week's worth.  There are definitely some new wintry favourites among them for me...

I haven't always got as far as a finished tag - so some days are background-creating days, and some days have more than one tag.  Hopefully in the end it will all add up to 25!  Here's what we have so far...

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Those silvery blue crackled stencilled backgrounds appearing were actually made back in the summer during one of my first playtime sessions with the (then) new Uncharted Mariner colour.  It's taken until now for them to get their chance to shine!

There are some of my own PaperArtsy EAB28 Juniper Edition berries and text in a couple of the others.  And I think my favourite maybe the layered stamping backgrounds from Day 6.  I'm looking forward to finishing those off. 

I hope you are having a gentle run up to the festive season, and I hope to be back with some more Advent Countdown creativity soon.  Happy crafting, all!

I pray this winter be gentle and kind--

a season of rest from the wheel of the mind.

John Geddes

Bright and Cheerful

Hello all!  I'm thrilled to be the guest designer for June at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge and here's my project for their new Bright and Cheerful theme this week.

It's always such an honour to feature alongside the phenomenal design team there, and I'm really looking forward to the month ahead.

The new challenge theme this week is Bright and Cheerful...  regular followers of mine will know that's not exactly my usual mode, but it's always great to step outside your comfort zone.

In some ways I stayed very much in my current comfort zone.  I've been really enjoying altering these teabag sachets lately, and I figured if I stayed small, I should be able to find at least a little bit of brightness and cheeriness!  

Recycling too... and that's definitely something to be cheerful about.  I should just say that I'm generally pretty bright and cheerful myself - it's just not my usual crafting style!

Let's take a quick look at the process, and then there are plenty of close-ups later on in the post.  Here are the not-very-attractive naked sachets.  (I'm a coffee drinker apart from the occasional spiced chai, but Cestina of Small Worlds, is helpfully a drinker of many kinds of teas - she's on a Rooibos kick just now!)

The first step is to give the sachets a rough coat of gesso to create a blank canvas.

I then used Wow Bright White embossing powder to emboss a fabulous Katzelkraft collage stamp.  (It's not in stock in the Simon Says Stamp shop yet, but they have it on order - and they do have lots of other great Katzelkraft designs.)

You can't really see it from a distance at this point, but if you look a bit more closely you can see the spiralling clock face and distressed harlequins which are just a couple of elements within the stamp.

Next up are the Distress Spray Stains - Broken China and Twisted Citron.  Together, they create lots of interesting shades as they blend and flow, so I stuck to just these two (not sure what went on with the lighting here - the colours in the main photos above are much truer to life).

And now that amazing stamp comes into its own, of course...

Then it's time for one of my favourite parts... working out what's going to go on top of the backgrounds.  I've now folded the flaps back into place which gives me a squarer format to work with.

The teabag sachets are just the right size for the new Paper Dolls Minis... tiny versions of the Paper Dolls, perfect for ATCs, or other tiny crafting like teabag art.

There are old favourites here and new characters to fall in love with, and as always, I had a lovely time listening in to see who really wanted to be part of this teabag alteration.

And I'm deeply in love with the tiny Snippets Ephemera labels.  I picked out the brightest and most colourful ones I possibly could from the pack.  

For the most part, I tend to favour the neutral ones (big surprise!) so all these pink and red tones were still going begging.

I added strips of Design Tape Trim for the dolls to stand on if they needed it.  I also selected some Snippets Number Strips to add an extra element to each collage.

The final layer of the Small Chat stickers has a little bit of pen doodling around it, and I added some more to frame each sachet collage.  It draws the eye in nicely, I think.

I quite often work with bright blues and greens, but the real hop out of kin here is for me to add red/pink.  It's really not a colour you see around here very much, unless I've been painting some berries or some roses.

Over on the reverse, I kept it simple to let that white-embossed stamping and the vivid Distress Sprays continue to take centre stage.

There's just a tiny bit of Trim to add a dark contrast to those bright colours and glossy white embossing.  I think it really adds visual interest, as does the movement and dimension of the flap of the sachet envelope.  There's nothing inside these yet, but I can think of lots of ephemera, gift voucher or cash surprises which could slot right in... 

And that's it! I hope that's given you some inspiration to go and create something Bright and Cheerful for yourselves.  

If you need a bit more of a nudge, you'll find glorious inspiration aplenty from the Design Team over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.

Do come and join in.  As always, there's a $25 gift certificate, generously sponsored by Simon Says Stamp...

... so you could get to go shopping for supplies - always a bright idea; or you might get picked by the team to go in the Spotlight which is guaranteed to make you cheerful.

Have a great week everyone, and even a bright and cheerful one!  Happy crafting, all.

Bright reds - scarlet, pillar-box red, crimson or cherry - are very cheerful and youthful. There is certainly a red for everyone.
Christian Dior

If more of us valued cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
J.R.R. Tolkien