Halloween Antics 2012

Halloween has always been a big affair in our house, because it's my son's birthday on the 31st. It's great because I'm never stuck for a theme for the party! Although the party is much less chaotic these days now he's 22 but we still carve our pumpkins, get dressed up, decorate the front of the house and get tons of sweets in to hand out to the kids. The kids love it, they always say "it's propa mint this house!"

We like to make the effort, it's a whole lot of fun. Here's our effort for this year.

Here's the big spider web on the front of the house!

Some of our snacks, hotdog mummies.

We used szechuan pepper corns for eyes.

Me and my ghost

I've been trying to find our pictures from previous years, and I found these two from 2010.

This is when Sack Boy from Little Big Planet was all over the place.

And a blog post wouldn't be the same without some crafting now would it!

Well it's been a very busy week, with two important birthdays and a works night out, now it's time to get back in the craft room and get into the Christmas spirit.

Hope you all had a great week, if you got up to anything spooky this week, tell me about it?

mwahh ahh ahh ahh

Michelle x

Hiding Pumpkin Cats Stampotique card

Well the weather has turned decidedly colder this week and I feel the winter chill fast approaching. It was time to buy the de-icer for the car and fish out my hat and scarf for the cold dark drive to work every morning. The clocks went back last night so the mornings will be lighter, but not for long. I'll be going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark soon, so I'm pleased I have daylight bulbs in the craft room to keep me chirpy through the winter months until Spring arrives.

If I keep making cheeky little cards like this though I'll be a happy bunny until the sunshine is back.

I'm entering this card into the Stampotique challenge this week where you take inspiration from one of their design team members and my inspiration for this card, you guessed it, would be very reminiscent of Kate Crane's style.

I love these Stampotique stamps, the pumpkins just make me smile lots and the cats just look so cheeky.

I love seeing them hiding behind the pumpkins

 I've used Dylusions inks, Stampotique's (pumpkins and cats), TH spider-web, The Stamp Man's spiders and Artistic Outpost's hanging bat stamps. I used Gold Ice Stickles on the spider-web to make it glisten with dew.

This card just makes me feel happy.

Have a great relaxing Sunday.

Michelle x

Fear the Midnight Hour cooked challenge canvas

We've been at it again, challenging each other to make things from the same list of ingredients.

A fab idea we pilfered from the wonderful  Ellen Vargo and Hels Sheridan.

Me & my crafty bud Trace aka inkypinkycraft have been Skyping each other and seeing what we both have in our crafty stash, so we came up with this little list below.  

Here is our list of ingredients

Mini canvas board

Residences Art Parts

Die cuts

Paint

Gesso

Distress Ink

Stamps

Mystery ingredient

Rock Candy

Here is the result of the cooked challenge. A Halloween mini canvas.

The background is mostly a dark blue and when you move it to reflect the light you can see all the interference paint. On these pictures the camera has picked up on all the interference paint, so it looks lighter than it is. I painted Ranger's Rock Candy on the Tree, the pumpkins and the cat!

My cats keep coming in from the garden with those little stickley (seed) balls on them, that I have to pull off every night. Well I used one of those for the door handle! Us crafter's are resourceful if nothing else!

I wonder what delights we come up with next time Trace. 

Can't wait.

Michelle x

Hanging Skulls Halloween Canvas

Over at It's Crafting Time blog the theme this week is orange, black and yellow, which immediately shouts Halloween given that it's October. I thought I would make a dark scary canvas, with the hanging skulls and the all seeing eye on the bottom bit.

I don't have a walkthrough on this post, I got carried away and forgot to take photo's. So I started off by doing a base coat of orange paint and then added layers of yellow paint, black Dylusions spray & orange drips.

I've used Tim Holtz tissue tape, Halloween stamps, and the Sizzix Graveyard die. Dylusions harlequin and number jumble stencil. 

I painted the tree directly onto the canvas. I love the way it goes round the side.

I used the Crafters Workshop number stencil on the bottom half with black Dylusion spray. Then I decided to paint in an eye. It looked like there was one there, so I went with it! The letters are from Studio G little wooden alphabet stamps. I love these little stamps. I have loads of them.

Will you be getting dressed up for Halloween?

Michelle xx

Halloween tag for Try it on Tuesday

The wonderful people at Try it on Tuesday have asked me to be their quest designer for September, and of course I've said yes! 

This fortnight's theme is Anything Goes so I've made this spooky tag, seeing as Halloween is fast approaching, actually Tesco have already got massive displays of Quality Street and Roses! What's all that about?

I've had so much fun making this tag, especially the coffin and the mummy. Making something from scratch hurts the brain cells a bit but the end result is always worth it.

The R.I.P. was wrote with a Versamark pen then I put silver embossing powder on and I was away!

I started off drawing a coffin shape on some cardboard, then drew the sides and the lid and cut them all out. I stuck everything down with a Zig glue pen, it works quick and I like that. I used some Tim Holtz spider web tissue tape to cover the outside of the coffin and the underside of the lid. This was great for securing the lid to the rest of the coffin, it was flexible enough to act as a hinge too.

I painted the coffin with burnt umber acrylic paint and drew black lines on for planks of wood. I made a grain pattern with brown Promarkers (with a fine tip) and some white paint on the end of a cocktail stick.

I started the mummy off by shaping kitchen towel with pva glue into a body like shape.  Then I started to wrap masking tape around the body. I had to tear the masking tape into smaller strips and to do that I stuck a strip down on the craft mat and tore strips off. I found this was the best way to make it look like bandages, i.e. no straight edges.

I wiped over some Walnut Stain distress ink to make the bandages look dirty and old.

He looks great sat in his coffin.

I used black Cosmic Shimmer glue and a white Posca pen for the eyes. OOoooooooooo He looks scary!

I made the tag background from Dylusions inks, Artistic Outpost Halloween stamps (Hanging bat and spider webs). Some black gesso, and distress inks.  I also used some Interference green Golden Paint in places around the tag and on the coffin.

The green twigs are an Alterations Sissix die, pained with a mix of green paints.

Hope you enjoyed my Halloween tag and I'm so pleased to be on the TIOT team for September.

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I have a little Felix Update.

My little rescued Felix is 17 weeks old now and he went out into the big wide world on Friday for the first time......After a good sniff of everything...........

He LOVES IT!

Binks my other cat....(is like Gentle Ben....he's huge...and could be mistaken for the Essex lion if I lived down there!)...showed Felix how to climb trees...tail up and very happy!