Happy Halloween

                                              Happy Halloween, or Blessed Samhain to everyone.
Been playing with tags this weekend, inspired partly by my Tim Holtz stamps ( I'll post those later), partly by the tags I saw on BetteK's blog, Tattered Rocks, and partly by what I discovered I could do with my Silhouette cutting machine.
The thing is, this tag uses one stamp- the cobwebs.That comes from a background set by Tanda Stamps- Background Set No.2.

Everything else, the witch, bats, negative webs and Biohazard sign are masks cut from acetate on my Silhouette, using 'Dingbat' True-type fonts.You know when you get one of those 'lightbulb' moments, and think ' I wonder if....'. Seeing the flourish type masks that Tim uses on some of his tags, and remembering that I had some fonts with flourishes in I thought it was worth a try. As soon as I realised it would work, I was off hunting down more Dingbat fonts.
Now I've got all sorts- Clocks, keys, Halloween,Birds- you name it, theres a font containing it. Good sites are: Dafont,  1001 fonts, Urbanfonts,   Dingbat depot, and   Pickafont.   

There are probably loads more, but these sites are definitely ok, as far as spyware/malware are concerned.
 

I almost never got round to making any tags, I got so carried away cutting masks, lol.

This is another tag in progress I will post later, but you can see the mask I cut out next to the tag. The best bit is, I get a positive & negative mask! I bought my acetate from Staples, its actually called  Transparency Film for inkjet printers, or for copiers. I have used both, and they both work fine.They cost about a tenner for a box of 100 sheets, which is only 10p a sheet! I also use it for stamping on, glittering etc.

WOYWW #91

This is a semi- finished project on my desk this week, using the Butterfly panel I have used before, but this time done entirely with Angelina fusible fibres. The panel was matted onto black card to give it a little stability. I also wanted to create a shoji screen type panel, and had had in my mind for a while now to do this with mulberry paper and heat embossing. I didn't take into account the fibrous nature of the paper, which attracted, and held on to, all the embossing powder! So I had to resort to peel-off lines, as I wanted the shiny look of embossing. I then decided the panel looked too plain, so added some flowers in black peel-off in, and spreading over, some of the squares. To add colour I used ordinary pencil crayons, as anything wet, like Promarkers/inks etc, spreads in the fibres. I think I shall try this again, next time using giftwrap type tissue paper- I should be able to emboss that without difficulty.
The various textures give a lovely tactile element to this card.

I also made myself a handful of extra butterflys using the fusible fibres.










Last thing on my desk for this week is a few Inchie
squares, punched from spare pieces of the panel I used in the Birthday card below, covered in Anitas 3D Clear Gloss, with a few Accent beads scattered into the wet medium. I found using an old document pocket to work on made the squares easy to remove - the gel doesn't stick to it.

Oriental Butterflies

Two versions of the same stamp,which is available as part of a sheet from a couple of suppliers: Tanda Stamps,Far East set 1,where it is also available as a single stamp,and in both rubber or clear polymer, or from Non Sequiteur, Plate 67, Samurai Plate. Apart from the Butterfly block, both plates have different stamps on them. For both cards, the butterfly block was stamped in black ink, then heat embossed, onto alcohol ink backgrounds. The butterflies, flowers and leaves were all painted with H2O's.For the black & red card, the design was then cut into 8 tiles then remounted onto black card, trimmed then matted onto a second sheet of inked card. The sentiment was stamped onto a scrap, matted onto black card and fixed with foam pads.The butterfly embellishment was made using fusible fibres over the butterflies on the block, then cut out and mounted with silicone glue. An Oriental coin had a length of black/gold mizhuiki cord threaded through it, and was attached with silicone glue in the opposite corner.
This card is an example of how a card can change as you are constructing it, and of the benefits of putting it aside if you aren't happy- coming back to it later often helps. This one was originally cut into 4 horizontal panels, then re-matted onto black card. I wasn't sure about it, so left it and completed the blue one.When I looked at it again, I thought the 8 squares would work better, maybe because it seems to mimic the oriental Shoji panels?
For the blue card, the background is printed from a Joanna Sheen cd,Tales of the Orient.The kanji strip on the left was done in triple embossing, using black ink as the base. The sentiment was stamped onto a scrap of inked card, and small black brads added in the corners.

Let Sleeping Dragons Lie...

This is from a Tanda Stamps themeplate, Dragons & Fantasy plate 4.  The dragon was stamped with clear embossing ink onto black card, then an assortment of Moonglow embossing powders was sprinkled over it and heat embossed. Trimmed and matted onto gold then purple card, three dull gold brads added to bottom right corner. The backing paper is from Robert Adams Celtic CD. This was cut down and matted onto purple card. Everything mounted onto a black landscape card. If you click to enlarge the image, you will be able to see it clearly- doesn't show up well in a small image, lol.