Greetings from Regions Beyond

Hi Everyone,

I am up on the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts Blog today with a wicked little vignette box.
Start by taking a wooden vignette box and layering it on top of your Mini Botanical Journaling Block.  The blocks come in a set of three, so you can play with different sizes.

Cut the house out of the Haunted House Oval.  Trim it down so it fits inside the vignette box.  Emboss the piece with Emerald Creek's Mercury Rising embossing powder.

Treat the outside of the box using Distress Oxide inks in Forest Moss, Hickory Smoke, and Ground Espresso. 

Add a crackle medium.  I really glopped it on so it looks chunky. Mixed with the Forest Moss Oxide ink the box looks a bit moldy.  Moldy is good at Halloween time!

Add paper to the back of the box and glue it in place.  Glue the house to the background.  Add fabric tape all around the edges of the shadowbox and set it aside. 

Use the largest of the Mini Botanical Journaling Blocks and cover the entire piece with gesso.

Add your sentiment cut from the Tim Holtz Halloween script, Christmas Script, and Holiday Words.  

Time to start adding Distress Crayon.     

Add crayon and move it around using your fingers.  

Cover the front using the same technique.  Add more saturated colors on the flowers and leaves. A bit of Distress Paint in Tarnished Brass gets smudged all around the edge of the block. 

Cut the bats and moon out of the Haunted House Oval.  Emboss the bats using the mercury rising powder.  Emboss the moon using Charred Gold.  

Glue the shadowbox to the center of the journaling block.  Add the bats to the front of the box.  Glue in a Tim Holtz tombstone with rub ons added.  Glue on the paperdoll.  Don't forget to give her a bouquet of dead flowers wrapped in mummy cloth. Cut a small slit around her hand and she appears to actually be holding the bouquet.

Make a bunch of tiny tattered florals and glue them in a cascade on the top of the vignette box.  A bit of leftover mummy cloth from the bouquet was put to good use up here.  A tiny skull bead aged with mushroom alcohol ink adds an element of surprise. 

Add a wooden finial that has been painted with Black Soot Distress Paint and a bit of Tarnished Brass. A bit of fabric tape that is around the edge of the box is wrapped around the finial.  Mummy cloth and a few more flowers complete the base. 

Here's the back of the Mini Botanical Journaling block all done up.

Happy Haunting!

Jess

Haunted Halloween  Challenge Frilly and Funkie

Spooky Bookmarks

Hi Everyone,
I'm up on the Blank Page Muse blog today with a little something to keep your page when your book gets too scary to read at night!

Stamp your bookmark(the bookmark is a Ken Oliver Watercolor bookmark) with your Ashes of Ex-Lovers Bottle, Mummy Ribs Bottle, and Powdered Cobwebs Pot.  Using your permanent inks, stamp each bottle in a different color and at various angles to create interest. 

Once the inks are dry use Distress ink in Carved Pumpkin and Black Soot to cover the entire bookmark.

 Layer your bookmark onto various colors of cardstock. 

Punch a hole in the top of the bookmark.  Add your die cut Halloween Side Order skeleton images, Halloween Script Words, and your sari ribbon.

For the second bookmark the paper layering will be the same.  Using the permanent ink stamp your Oct. 31 and Spider from the Halloween Bingo Set.  Add in the tiny 31 to fill in the gaps.

  Once your ink is dry create your background.  Cover the entire bookmark using Shaded Lilac Distress Ink.  On your craft mat smoosh on the other two purple shades (Dusty Concord and Wilted Violet)  and spritz with water.  After your have sprayed your water tap your bookmark in the color.  Be sure you only tap it in a couple times.  If you just rub it around you won't get speckles and splats.  Look at your bookmark and see if you like the patterns that are appearing.  If you do, stop and dry your layer.  Once the layer is dry then you can go back and tap into the ink again.  Drying between layers makes a huge difference.

Add on your Frankenstein die cut image.   

Spray your sari ribbon, with Dylusions Lime and Distress Walnut Stain, and dry it.  Add the ribbon to the top of the bookmark.

I hope you're inspired to create some on your own.  They are easy and fun to make!

Happy Crafting,

Jess

Halloween Surprise Box

Hi everyone,

I am up on the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts blog today with a tiny Matchbox Theater.  I absolutely love how this turned out and I hope you do too.

The theater has two pieces, start with the exterior piece first (the box).
Paint all of the outside seams with Black Soot Distress Paint.  Cover the box with paper from the new Halloween Paper Pad from Tim Holtz.  Watch your cuts so you can line up the pattern.  Using your Xyron Sticker maker adhere all the paper to the box and glue it together.

Emboss two pieces from the Circle Doily Set.  The outer circle was embossed using Emerald Creek's Mercury Rising.  The inner circle used Candy Orange.  The candy orange is super bright, almost fluorescent, so I toned it down using Mushroom Alcohol ink.  

Cut out the kitty from the Halloween side order and attach her to the doily.  Attach the doily to the top of the matchbox. 

Now it's time to work on the interior. 

Paint the interior piece of the theater except for the back panel.  Cover the back panel with Halloween Paper.  

The rest of the interior box was stamped using the Web stamp from an older Tim set(CMS093) and emboss using Emerald Creeks Hammered Metal.  At this time you can glue your box together.

Stamp, color, and die cut your witch from the Michael's exclusive set.  

Create a wobbler for the witch head.  Using a 1/2 inch circle punch cut out two circles.  Wrap a thin gauge wire around a marker a few times and snip it so you have a tiny spring.  Tape the edge of the spring to one of the circles and repeat for the other side.   

Using strong adhesive attach your witch to the wobbler. Make sure the depth of the wobbler works.  You don't want the witch to get caught when you're trying to open the box.  I added some halloween rub ons to the front of the interior box. 

Check it out! 

She's so fun.

The interior box just slides inside the wrap and you're done!

Enjoy!! 

Jess

Collector of Curiosities

Hi Everyone,

I'm up on the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts blog with a little Halloween decor piece.

 

Here's how you can make your own. 

Cover the Miniature Clipboard with a bit of Tim Holtz paper.  Cover the entire piece of paper with Distress collage medium.  I like the finish it gives and how it takes the various inks and crayons.  Ink the edges using walnut stain Distress Ink and add some splats(using your Tim Holtz Splatter stencil) to look like coffee and possibly slime.  The slimy green is actually Emerald Creek's Apple Martini embossing powder so it's raised up a bit off the paper.  I did emboss the clip part of the clipboard, but decided not to use it in my final design. 

Emboss the edge of your Small Canning Jar.  I made a jar similar to this back in February.  If you'd like to check out the tutorial I have linked it here for you.  With this jar, I wanted it to look a bit grungy and murky.  Pounce mushroom alcohol ink onto the acetate and it will muddy up the "liquid" inside the jar.  A piece of cheesecloth stained with blood(kidding, it's alcohol ink) gets tied to the lid. 

Cut a piece of background paper to go behind your canning jar and add your images.  These guys from the Tim Holtz Scared Silly set were stamped and fussy cut.  The images were stamped on a heavy watercolor paper and colored using Distress Markers.   Make sure you play with your placement before gluing anything down.  

You can see here at this point I was still playing with the idea of leaving it as a clipboard.  I also hadn't added the eyeballs.  It's always good to play with your composition before you glue!

 I decided that the jar on the clipboard wasn't enough and I wanted to beef up my project.  A small Tim Holtz framed panel was the answer.  Cover the panel with a piece of worn wallpaper and add Distress Oxides(walnut stain, ground espresso, forrest moss) so the paper looks water damaged.   

On the frame, randomly paint on Distress Rock Candy Crackle Medium. Once it starts to crackle you can heat it up to speed up the drying process.  Paint the frame using Prima Art Alchemy paint in Metallique Blackberry.  Once the metallic paint is dry use a thin layer of Distress Paint in Black Soot on the entire frame and wipe most of it away. You just want it to sink into the recesses.  In random areas add metallic waxes in opal colors.  This adds another layer of dimension, but doesn't add a ton of color.  The final step on the frame is to use a fine brush and Dina Wakley Gilt paint to go around the edges.  Perfection is not the goal here.  The frame is supposed to look funky and old.  

Glue the frame to the back. 

Add your clipboard to the frame and add a chip quote to the top. 

A Halloween story stick, clipping sticker, and eyeball brad round out the finishing touches. 

I hope you enjoyed this little project.  It was fun to make! I can't wait to pull out all of Halloween decor now.

Jess

I'm entering this into the  Simon Says Stamp- That's a Wrap! challenge.  The beast is lovingly packaged in a jar and wrapped up tight!

Double, double toil and trouble

Hi Everyone,
I'm up on the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts blog today.  I have an award for your best witch.

Start by embossing your Small Swirl Medallion using Oil Rubbed Bronze embossing powder from Emerald Creek.

For the base of the ribbon I took a bright green ribbon and sprayed it with Distress Spray stain in Picket Fence to give it a good base coat.  Once the Stain was dry I used various Distress Stains stains( Fossilized Amber, Tea Dye, Walnut Stain) and paints( Distress Paint In Mowed Lawn, Black Soot,, Hickory Smoke; and Prima Art Alchemy in Blackberry and Brass Hardware)  to get the color I wanted.  This is the center of the ribbon that I popped off, but you can see the base colors.  I added a lot more flicks an splatters before I called it complete.

 I added a lot more flicks and splatters before I called it complete.

Assemble your Tiny Shadowbox House.  I always paint and paper my house before gluing it together.  I painted all of the edges black and stippled on Prima Art Alchemy in Brass Hardware, Dina Wakley Paint  in Gilt, and Mowed Lawn Distress paint.  The inside of the house has patterned paper from Authentique that I inked up a bit using Pumice Stone Distress Ink.  

The roof of the house was made using the Tim Holtz mini provincial 3d impresslit  and some gold paper.  Once the paper was embossed I colored it using alcohol inks(latte, mushroom, meadow, and caramel). 

I added a teeny bit of moss to the floor. 

To make the ribbon tails I used muslin. 

Using archival inks I stamped the muslin(Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous stamps sets(CMS198, CMS306, CMS275, and CMS311) and added color using spray stains.  The edges got a bit of Distress Crayon(Walnut Stain and Black Soot) and bit more Prima Art Alchemy metallic paint.  Once they were dry I just glued them to the back of the ribbon. 

Glue the Small Swirl Medallion to the center of the ribbon.   Then glue the Tiny Shadowbox House to the center of the medallion.  Add in your teeny paper doll witches( I tinted one green) and add a Halloween Quote Token. I used a teeny brad and pushed it right into the base of the house to hold the quote token in place.

Your ribbon is finished and ready to wear.  

Happy crafting,

Jess

Frilly and Funkie Haberdashery Challenge