Haunted House Scene

Hi everyone here it is the end of September. Today I have one more Halloween card to share. Originally it was going to be a Shaker card but things don't always turn out like planned. I did have fun making it even though the leaves stuck when I shook the card.

The background was stamped with Just For Fun Bats stamp. I dropped Abandoned Coral and Fossilized Amber re-inkers on plastic and then stamped. I did some ghost stamping where I did not reink the stamp. Originally I was going to use the bats in the water globe scene but realized it would be too much.

The water globe was stamped  with Rusty Bown Stazon ink on white card and on plastic. I then cut the glass part out of the plastic. Where the stamped bubble is I added Dimensional Magic. In person you can see the bubble but it  didn't photograph well.  The base was painted with gouache paint. Yes, I'm a loving using gouache and wonder why it took me so long to purchase a basic set. I discovered that the Sakura Quickie Glue pen was perfect for gluing the plastic to the card. :-)

My haunted house was cut out with my cutting machine. I ended up having to cut off the extended porch to get it to fit. I was afraid if I resized it even smaller it might not cut out well. I airbrushed it with a black and navy blue marker.. It is then backed with scraps of yellow card.

The leaves were cut out of scraps of yellow and orange. It always amazes me at how small I can cut things.

The cat is stamped and heat embossed. I then took a yellow glaze pen to color the eyes.

I'm always intimidated stamping directly on a background. However, these stamps are of such a high quality that even using the rubber unmounted stamps without a mouse pad I've gotten clear stamped images. :-) This time I stamped with Ranger Archival black ink.

Now it is on to creating some Autumn and Winter Cards.As well as an Autumn decorating project.

Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!

Beware It's That Time Of The Year

Hi everyone I hope all is well with you. Can you believe it is already Autumn and Halloween will be here before we know it. Today I have two Halloween cards to share with you. I had so much playing with the mummy and open coffin stamp by Just For Fun as well as the Stamptangle Wicked Spider. If I was mean I would give the spider card to my son. Lol! He is totally freaked out by spiders.

I wish you could see the texture for the mummy. I glued an ironed used dryer sheet to card stock and when it was dried stamped the mummy using Jet Black Stazon ink. I like that the lines are not as crisp as they might have been with other inks. The coffin was painted with gouache. The card base was airbrushed with markers. I also airbrushed the spider web embossed panel with a silver marker.

I tried to stamp the sentiment on cheesecloth which I had applied to card stock covered in gesso but it didn't work out. I ended up stamping on non stick baking parchment and gluing the cheesecloth over. I love the added texture it gives. I also on purpose left it tattered looking. :-)

This was such a fun card to do. I used paint in my airbrush to get blood spatters on my spider web embossed panel. My spider web is cut with my electronic cutting machine since I didn't own a spider web stamp. I painstakingly glued white crochet thread on the spider and then while the glue was still wet sprinkled glitter on it to give it that gossamer look. The sentiment was stamped on a scrap of orange card with black ink and clear embossing powder used. I don't own any black embossing powder and in the past when I've used it I've gotten a  mess so stamping with black ink and embossing with clear works.

The spider is stamped on a scrap of black and copper embossing powder used. I then hand cut the spider out. and pop dotted it on the card.

If you are making Halloween cards you still have time to order stamps from Just For Fun. The spider, mummy and open coffin are from their Summer 2015 collection. They also have a lot of other neat Halloween stamps.

Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!

Angels Among Us

Hi everyone I will just meet the deadline for the Mojo Monday #415 challenge. Tomorrow will be a new sketch challenge. I modified the sketch but here is the sketch.

Here is my original take:

Here is my redo:

I decided to go with the narrow gem trim instead of the wider panel. Also my stamped feather is larger than what the panel used for the sketch is and I didn't want to make a larger card.

The background was done in response to a personal challenge to use a tool you haven't used. I hate to admit it but the square stamping gear had never been opened. It been sitting on a shelf collecting dust for over a year. :-( I just bought some Cut N Dry Felt as well as some re-inkers so wanted to play with that. I mixed three colors on the felt and then had fun stamping away.

I wanted to see how Brusho Colour Crystals would work on Ranger's water color paper. I spritzed sprinkled and spritzed again. Then dried it with a heat gun. For my first embossing try neither the turquoise or white pearl embossing powder showed up. Then I decided to use Ranger Black Archival ink with the Stamptangle Feather 3 stamp by Just For Fun. I then used gold embossing powder.  Alas I accidentally got some gold glitter embossing powder mixed in with my gold embossing powder but I like the resulting look with just a hint of glitter in places.

I don't know if I like the green tag but I can always redo and use a different color. The sentiment was printed using a Brother Label maker.  When trying to come up with something for on the tag I remembered being told as a child when I found a feather that it was a reminder that angels are among us watching over us.

Do you like my redo better or the first one? What color would you do the tag?

I have been busy organizing and re-organizing in my apartment. Right now I'm working on a bedroom makeover. I will be getting rid of a bulky dresser and replacing with a wire affair which can be closed when I don't need access. With the bulky dresser out of the way and the bed placed in a different position I'll have the illusion of the room being bigger than it actually is. As well as actually have more storage for my clothes and accessories. Lol! I'm sure my son will be happy to know that when it comes time to help me move he won't have the dresser to move. In the meantime I have a lot of sorting and purging to do so if you don't hear from me you will know why.

Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!

Down By The Seashore

Hi everyone school is back in session and my thoughts turn to going down by the seashore. I really miss not living as close but there are always trade offs. My recourse was to create a seashore card. Although where I've gone in the past I've never seen dolphins I just couldn't resist this Stamptangle Dolphin by Just For Fun Stamps.

Details of how I did this card and what stamps I used can be found here on this

 Just For Fun Blog Post

It was fun to do my first blog post for Just For Fun team and I get to post again on the 26th with two Halloween cards which are now not so patiently waiting in the wings. ;-) I think the hardest thing for me is to not be able to show you my projects right away.

This card uses two common household items can you guess what they are? My personal challenge if you are up for a challenge is to see what you might have around your place which you can incorporate in a project. If you decide to accept the challenge do come back and leave me a comment as I would love to know what you found to use.

Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!

Autumn Is On My Mind

Hi everyone I'm so excited. You may have noticed there is a new badge on the left hand side. Yeah! I'm officially part of the design team for Just For Fun stamps and my stamps are suppose to be here tomorrow. In the meantime I've been creating backgrounds as well as making embellishments.  I decided to take a break and do a card for Mojo Monday. This week is now challenge 414. Clicking on the Mojo image on the left will take you the site where you can find details.

Today was a beautiful Indian Summer day with the temperature being not too hot and not too cold. The nights are cooling down more and trees are beginning to drop their leaves. Thoughts turn to packing away shorts and sleeveless tops for another year and to unpack thermal underwear and wool socks. So it isn't really surprising that the card I made today is another Autumn one.

Here is this week's sketch:

Here is my take on it:

As you can see lots of layers. The background and top smaller panel is a paper towel which I used Brusho Colour Crystals and floor wax on. The band across was leftover from making my skinny tall card base. On top of that is a panel which I sprayed with a mixture of dissolved in water Brusho Colour Crystals and iridescence paint. Then I used my airbrush with markers and a stencil. The pennant was cut out of leftover dryer sheet/wax paper from the previous card. 

The leaf is stamped on foil using Bold Aspen by Hero Arts and Jet Black Stazon ink . After stamping I took a blunt pencil and went over the lines. Then I airbrushed with three different Sharpie markers.To get the speckles I held the airbrush up high. Then I cut it out by hand and pop dotted it onto my card. I love how it turned out.

Thank you for stopping by and do come back. Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again.

Tall And Skinny 413

Hi everyone the last couple of days I've been playing in my playroom working on this week's Mojo Monday card challenge. The last Monday of the month is tall and skinny.  The one advantage to creating tall and skinny cards is that you can use a business envelope to mail them if you make a card three and a half by six inches.

Here is this week's sketch:

This is what I came up with:

I started out by cutting my base 6" x 7" and scoring at 3 and a half inches. My green background is from the video in my last post. I realized after I cut it that I had cut it a little too narrow. Eventually I will get the proportion correct. On top of the background is a panel embossed using a Paper Studio embossing folder. Then I applied transfer adhesive to the raised areas and used gold and rose gold deco  foil. The brown ribbon was a Dollar Tree find a few years back. I decided to not go with circles like what is in the sketch.

For my sunflowers I used a Hero Arts stamp from a set from 1994, I stamped using Timber Brown StazOn ink on plastic. Then turned the stamped image over and painted glue in one section at a time and sprinkled glitter.  Then I cut my glittered images out. By having the glitter on the back of the image you can see the stamped details. I need to buy a glue pen if I'm going to be doing more glitter painting but I was not happy with a Tombow one I bought. Perhaps I bought a bad one but it didn't last long and I had to keep scribbling to even get the glue to come out.

There you have my take on the tall and skinny challenge. It was fun to play with the foil and with glitter. Although I must confess that both my dogs and I are wearing glitter now.

Thank you for stopping by and do come back. Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!