Halloween Projects and More!

   Before I post my latest projects I just have to share these two photos I took a half hour ago. I was fascinated watching the house finches having so much fun in my flowers! I had never seen anything like it. Sorry the pictures aren't the greatest but it's a very dark ,rainy day. Also I had to zoom in a bit and take the photos from my back door as the birds never would've stayed if I had to open the door-they were so close.

  You can see two of the four of them that have been munching away at what, I don't know, but it must be pretty good as  they were so enjoying it!

  A closer view. There were several more in the flowers but I scared them away. I just checked and they're still in the flowers-too funny!

  Halloween! Yes the time is approaching and I was inspired by a challenge being offered on Retro Café Art's Facebook page. This is the second time I'm participating. The first time I took the challenge I was inspired by a Parisian themed collage sheet- a free download from the Retro Café Art website.  You can see the projects I created on this post. The first one on the post was chosen as a winner and for it I received 6 awesome collage sheets of my choice from their shop! They are now offering a free downpload of a Halloween themed collage sheet. The challenge is to create up to 3 projects using images from the sheet and post it to their FB page for two chances to win prizes.

  These are my  projects:

  For the first one I  started with a wood window, painted the base black, painted over the top with several acrylic paints, then applied a coat of one step crackling medium by Plaid. Once that dried I added a coat of black acrylic paint and watched the crackles appear.

  And this is the finished window project:

 

  I placed images from the collage sheet to the back of the windows then covered it with a piece of cardstock for stability. I added two little sparkly spider stickers and black pearl stickers.

 

  For the second project I decided to make a paper doll. Meet "Peter, the Pumpkin Eater"! (it's all I kept thinking while putting him together:)

 

 

 

  I cut out all the images I wanted to use and backed them with cardstock (I know, I should've just printed it out onto the cardstock in the first place). Each piece was sponged with black dye ink before connecting. The copper hand charms are from ARTchix Studio.  The witch shoes are stickers by Jolee's.  Tiny black brads were used to attach the limbs and I finished him off with a big dimensional spider sticker on the hat and a little spider sticker on his cheek.

 

  One more project I recently completed was two more stamp carvings just for fun and practice. The inspiration actually came from Dina Wakley who mentioned using a motif and adding it to your art in different ways each day. I thought that was such a great prompt! You can read her post about it  here. I had already had my drawings of the stamps I wanted to carve so I finished carving them and made a tag for Lenna and I just playing with the patterns. I made stencils out of these stamps too and as soon as my Gelli Arts Printing Plate (thanks to all the many inspirations lately by a number of fellow bloggers who have been creating fascinating prints with this plate including Dina)  arrives I plan on playing with these motifs in a variety of ways. It's a gift I bought myself for our upcoming anniversary. Now hubby doesn't need to buy me flowers-I'd SO rather have another "much needed" art supply :).

 

 

  I've been wanting to carve out a pea pod like stamp and that other thing, well, not sure what it is exactly but it was good carving practice and I thought it might be fun for backgrounds . I put a coat of gesso on the tag then stamped on a script stamp from Papertrey Ink. I then repeatedly stamped my carvings using Jet Black Staz-On ink and Festive Berries Distress ink.

 

  Off to get more 'puter work done before the storms come but as Dolly Parton said "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."

 

  Thanks to you all for your comments and for all the inspiration you provide me with!