Tis Halloween Time - Yikes!!!

Hi there friends x
Tis my Birthday today and I'm spending it crafting all day long - blissful.....
So a little light blogging is a must lol

Now with Halloween just around the corner I've created a little orange 'n' purple- ness to celebrate this fabulous spooky fun time.

They are my ATC swaps for the Stampotique 'Halloween ATC swap' - you can join the fb group HERE and I'm also entering them into the Stampotique designers challenge SDC168: BOOK TEXT - Corrie one of the DT has set a fabulous brief this week 'BOOK TEXT' which I adore and just couldn't resist.

I started by creating a tiny wreath with wire - The whole ATC measures 3.5" x 2.5" - so you can imagine just how small my wreath ring was!

Tie various strands of fabrics/ribbons/threads in knots around your ring.

Crop off all inner/outer loose ends.

Voilà

How cute is Agatha - Stampotique have a whole selection of Agatha's HERE by the designer Magda Polakow - I adore them all lol.

I've coloured her in with Derwent water colour pencils and hi-lighted with Tim Holtz Distress Markers. 

I created quite a few layers to build up this background.

1. Gesso (white) your ATC - let it dry.
2. Use Tim Holtz Distress Markers (oranges, reds, purples, yellows, greens respectively - apply with the Tim Holtz Distress Marker Spritzer - dry between colour applications - only a little of the white gesso shows thro' don't worry about the white as the next step sorts this out)
3. let dry fully, then carefully/gently wipe off excess ink with baby wipe - leaves smudged/smoky/dreamy/ ghostly effect, all perfectly blended.
4. Spritz your ATC lightly with water and drop tiny clumps of LuminArte Primary Elements powders (purples, oranges, pinks, golds, and a spot or 2 of green) - If your powders don't disperse just spritz again with the water, blot off to dry ( I did this with my 2nd ATC, meaning I only used my Primary Elements the once for 2 ATC,s)
5. Now using black gesso/paint and a small bottle top add the rings - dry. Now turn the top upside down and using white gesso/paint add the white spots in the middle of the black rings - this works best with flat bottomed tops - lol you'll understand what this means if you start looking/using bottle tops in your art. Whilst the black /white paint is still out swipe the edges of a credit card in the paint and print/swipe it onto your ATC.
6. Montana Acrylic florescent/neon pens are juicy enough to add splats with and are cool tools for the odd swipe around the edges - add black 'n' white hi-lights 'n' scribbles (Signo uni-ball are fabulous white pens)

1. The old Singer sewing machine came out next.
2. Sew random lines up alongside the gesso'd credit card lines
3. Sew circles punched/cut from 'book pages' - I placed mine within the gesso'd circles (I punched slightly smaller circles than the gesso'd ring circles.  Sew them from side to side so there is a little movement and the underside of the circles can peep thro'
4. I also stamped Roc Nicholas's fabulous and oh sooo versatile scalloped lace border onto 'book page', cut out and sewed onto my ATC.
5. To get the balance just right, in the top Right I added a scrap of the 'book page' with some scraps of the textiles leftover from the wreath - fixed down with the sewing machine again.

Agatha was oh so slightly and lovingly bent into a sitting position and glued (hot glue gun) onto the wreath ring.  When dry attach the wreath to the ATC with black twine and again I stitched this onto the ATC with my Singer sewing machine!

 The best bit about swaps is waiting to see where in the world and who has created your return swaps - tis indeed happy post when they safely arrive ( my 2 are well packed and on there way to there new homes - one in Austraila!)

Hope you have enjoyed my fun and colourful Halloween ATC's today.

Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs

Kassa xoxo