Make it Spooky at A Vintage Journey

Hello Friends

I am pleased to say it is my turn to host the challenge at A Vintage Journey this month and I have chosen the theme - 'Make it Spooky'

As we approach All Hallows Eve we want you to create a vintage, shabby, industrial, steampunk or mixed media project to celebrate the spookiness of Halloween!  Don't limit yourself to black, orange and purple - just 'Make it Spooky'!

Some of you may remember that I recently made a Haunted House for a dear friend - well I love this die by Tim Holtz so much I just had to make one for myself too!

I love Halloween and could not wait to use my new  Tim Holtz Village Manor and Lost Zombie dies to create a 3D scene to fit inside my beautiful glass dome (you can see that below).

I gathered together the dies for the Manor, along with Tim's Regions Beyond paper pad and the Halloween Deco Sheets which I used for the roof parts.

I started off making the base from foam board which I cut into an 8" diameter circle.  I used a stone texture embossing folder to create a stone look base and painted this with various Tim Holtz Distress Paints.

I cut several pieces of Tim's new Gothic Gate and pieced them together to go all around the base.

I put the Manor together following the instructions, I added the piece over the door which was an offcut and I decorated the door with offcuts too.

I wanted to add some lights and needed somewhere to hide the battery pack, so I added some steps up to the Manor, a tip I picked up from Annette Green's gorgeous creation here.  The lights are intended for a model railway but the scale was perfect for my Manor House.

I love this fabulous Lost Zombie!  He was out of scale for the Manor so I cut him from shrink plastic and coloured him in with alcohol markers.  The charm pumpkins he is holding are from Tim's Idea-ology range and these have been coloured with alcohol ink.  I added some tombstones from Tim's Graveyard On the Edge die and some of Tim's trees (a very early die), some autumn leaves and a couple of die cut pumpkins.

 To finish off I die cut some bats, (an old Memory Box die) added some twisted wire and secured them to the chimney pots.

And here is the finished Haunted Manor, which I have displayed in this beautiful glass dome.  I bought this dome after seeing Jan Hobbins use one for a Christmas scene last year.  Now my spooky manor is ready to go in my window on Halloween.  Not too scary but a little spooky I hope!  It does light up too but I could not get a decent photo of that - sorry!

I do hope you have the time to visit A Vintage Journey, my team mates have excelled themselves with the most fabulous spooky makes!  I also hope you will join us this month, we all love seeing what you create - and as always, there is a prize on offer for one randomly selected individual!

I so rarely get to join in challenges, I would like to enter into Simon Says Monday Challenge where the challenge theme is Halloween, I hope my spooky scene with the zombie and pumpkin counts!

I have been so busy with family visits I missed seeing the challenge at Country View Challenges where the theme is All Things Spooky, so I would like to join in the challenge.

Thanks so much for your visit, it really means a lot.  Hope to see you soon!  Anne xxx

Firendship at Anything But Cute

Hello Friends!

At Anything But Cute this month our Challenge #17 is hosted by the fabulous Branka who has chosen Friendship as her theme. Here is what Branka had to say...

'Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between two or more people.  We want you to show us a mixed media creation that's inspired by friendship.  You can create anything, from tags to art journal pages but make sure it's a mixed media piece.  Let's celebrate friendship together!'

Hmm, what has this project got to do with friendship?  

My lovely friend Sandy (of Simply Sandy) in the USA and I have been blog friends for a few years now and we love to send cards/projects/gifts to each other.  Sandy very kindly sent me the new Tim Holtz Village Manor die (how lucky am I!) and since we share a love of all things Halloween, I have made this little scene to send back to her, as a special thank you for sending me this wonderful die... I do hope she likes it!

I got a bit carried away making the haunted Village Manor but I do have a few step by steps to share with you.

I used three dies to complete the Manor, the Village Dwelling (660992), Village Rooftops (661197) and the Village Manor (661591).

I die cut all the pieces I needed, from heavy black cardstock (480 gsm) and applied Tim Holtz Grit Paste, (through a brick stencil) to the bottom part of the house only and left this to dry.

After applying the Grit Paste to the lower part of the Manor I decided I would like to 'render' the top half and I wanted it to have a grey, aged appearance so I added some Distress Paint and Distress Re-Inker in grey tones.

The coloured Grit Paste was dabbed on with a sponge to give an uneven appearance.  This is where I got a bit carried away and forgot to take photos but here you can see that I built the little 'attic' part, added the windows, front door and roof to the bottom part and also constructed the two chimneys (adding some Industrious Stickers to finish them off).  The attic part was painted with IndigoBlu Raven Black Metallic Paint, which gives a lovely sheen.

The roof was cut from Tim Holtz patterned paper, using the Rooftop die.  Once constructed I roughed up the edges and wiped over them with Hickory Smoke Distress Ink.

To create the base for the house to stand on I used a piece of thick foam board that I embossed with a stone wall type embossing folder.  This was painted in various tones of Distress Paint  to give the appearance of 'aged stone'.

To create the front 'path' I used pieces that were left over from the fence and glued these to a piece of white card.  Once dry I applied a watered down coat of Hickory Smoke Distress Paint.

To finish off I used Tim's Ghosts die, cut with Shrink Plastic and shrunk down to go in the chimney and in the graveyard.  The graveyard was filled with tombstones cut from Tim's On the Edge Graveyard die.  The tree is Tim's Scary Tree die and the pumpkin, bats, cat and children are from Tim's Halloween Shadows strip die.  The greenery is florist moss.

 I added some Fantasy Film to the windows and used some offcuts from the fence to decorate the front door.  The door knobs are seed beads. The piece at the front of the roof over the porch is an offcut from the Manor die, I thought it looked good over the porch and it fitted perfectly - a happy accident!

A close-up of the finished house.  To give you a sense of the scale, it measures 6" tall and 3" across at the widest point, so it is quite dinky!  

One final overhead shot.

It is very easy to construct and I can already imagine many different ways to use the dies - I am already constructing more, which you will no doubt see in due course!  This one is winging its way to Florida to my lovely friend Sandy!

It would be lovely to see you join in with us at Anything But Cute, we would love to see how you interpret and celebrate Friendship!  You can see what my talented teamies have made HERE.

I am adding this to my dear friend Darnell's NBUS challenge HERE.  My NBUS is my Manor House die and also the stone embossing folder.

As always, thanks so much for your visit!  Anne xx