Trick or Treat art journal page

As I haven’t made an art journal page in my IndigoBlu Junk and Disorderly journal for a while I thought I would have some fun with a Halloween page for the Fruit Pixie online shop who I design for.

To start I chose one of the white pages in the album and used some of the Cosmic Shimmer paints to build up my background. I like to use a baby wipe to paint with as it blends the paint automatically and of course there is no brush to wash after!

 

I wanted a large bright moon so I cut a circle out of a piece of scrap card and used it as a stencil using the paints through the hole.

 

The haunted house is a Tim Holtz die cut out of black card.

 

For my witch I took the Creative Expressions butterfly girl stamp set and adapted her slightly.

First I stamped her body and cut her out, cutting off her wings and pony tail.

Then I stamped her again for her dress which I cut out and stamped the swirly pattern over the top using IndigoBlu Tiny backgrounds.

I cut out a witches hat and bat wings on my Silhouette Cameo.

All that was left to do for her was to dress her up!

 

Now that the background was dry I stamped some of the pattern stamps in the Creative Expressions Butterfly girl stamp set onto the background.

 

I also stamped the tree from Visible image.

 

I then built up the page making a hanging sign with the sign stamp from Butterfly Girl and the Halloween strip stamps from Stampendous for the house. I also added some washi tape and some bats.

 

The lettering was hand drawn using a black pen.

 

If you would like to make an art journal the Junk and Disorderly journal is great for beginners. You can find it in the Fruit Pixie shop here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/indigoblu-junk-and-disorderly-art-journal-26811-p.asp

 

The paints here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/cosmic-shimmer-paints-644-c.asp

 

Butterfly girl stamp set for the witch -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/u-mount-butterfly-girl-a5-stamp-plate-16787-p.asp

 

IndigoBlu Stamps-

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/indigoblu-rubber-stamp-tiny-backgrounds-26158-p.asp

 

Stampendous stamps -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/stampendous-perfectly-clear-stamp-26328-p.asp

 

Washi tape -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/washi-tape-polka-dot-blueblack-22085-p.asp

 

Happy Halloween! 

 

 

Spooky Halloween House hanging decoration

 Halloween is growing near and I have made a Spooky Halloween house decoration for the Fruit Pixie, who I design for.

The inspiration for this Halloween decoration was the Crafty Individuals chipboard houses and trees. I really love playing with these and I have made a couple of different things with them, I will add links below but I have never made a Halloween House before.

 

I used two of the chipboard houses to make my halloween house. I glued together after I had finished the surface decoration on them I also used a piece of the fencing and one of the tree trunks. 

 

I wanted to use lots of different mediums on my house but to begin with I painted the house using the Cosmic Shimmer chalk paints. I used black for the roof and the tree trunk then a purple for the house and white for the fence. For the windows I used a light yellow so they glowed!

 

To make the roof more roof like I used the midnight glitter texture past through a stencil. Its very easy to do, just lay your template down and scrape your texture paste through the stencil using a pallet knife. Then lift the stencil off gently and wash the paste off your stencil and pallet knife immediately before it dries.

 

I used the same method for the house but this time I mixed some of the Cosmic Shimmer silk glitter into some of the clear texture paste to make my own colour.

 

For the fence I just smoothed on some of the crystal texture paste over the shape to make it sparkle.

 

Once Everything was dry I could build up my scene.

 

The windows just needed a little something more, so I used one of the IndigoBlu tiny background stamps with a grey ink to add a pattern then put them into the windows.

 

The little die cuts are from one of my own dies from Cuttlebug. I have had it for ages but there are plenty of dies and embellishments you can add to your house.

 

I also added some of the Cosmic Shimmer glitter jewels ebony ice to the bottom of my house to finish it off.

 

Now of course you could leave it there, put your house onto a card or box but I decided to set it on the moon!

 

I cut a moon shape and using the gold glitter paste added some stars from a star template. Then stuck my house to the moon and went around the edge with some black ink.

 

So, you can find the chipboard houses and trees in the Fruit Pixie shop here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/crafty-individuals-chipboard-399-c.asp

 

The paints here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/cosmic-shimmer-paints-644-c.asp

 

The texture pastes here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/cosmic-shimmer-texture-paste-622-c.asp

 

Glitter -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/cosmic-shimmer-polished-silk-glitter-600-c.asp

 

Glitter jewels -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/cosmic-shimmer-glitter-jewels-603-c.asp

 

I did mention that I had used these chipboard houses before. You can find my projects links below

 

My little street -

http://thefruitpixie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/my-little-street.html

 

Sunshine plaque -

http://thefruitpixie.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/sunshine-hanging-plaque.html

 

 

 

Halloween Witch

Each month I write a blog post for Tangie Baxter's Art Journal emporium. Being October it has to be a Halloween project!   So here she is, a Hanging Halloween Witch made from scratch using Tangie Baxter's digital papers that I print out and use as normal paper.     

 

 For the Emporium blog I have created a step by step photo tutorial with a template sheet for all the pieces you will need for your Witch as well as instructions on how to make her broomstick.

 

You can learn more about the Art Journal Emporium and Tangie Baxter's products here-

https://shoptangiebaxter.com/pages/art-journal-emporium

 

The blog here -

https://shoptangiebaxter.com/blogs/news/halloween-hanging-witch-decoration

   

Nightmare before Christmas button brooches

The Fruit Pixie sells some of the Dress-it up Disney character button sets. One of my favourite films is “ The Nightmare Before Christmas “  so when I spotted the Nightmare before Christmas Dress-it up button set I had to have a play with them. You get lots of buttons in the set, Jack Skeleton and two of his heads, as well as Sally and Zero the ghost dog.    I have chosen to use one of Jack Skeleton’s heads and Zero the ghost dog to make these cute rosette style brooches.

These are so easy to make.

 

All you need is some black felt and orange ribbon. 

 

To make the Zero the ghost dog’s brooch I cut a strip of the black felt using pinking sheers. I then stitched a running stitch along the bottom of the felt strip. This doesn’t have to be neat, so you don’t have to be a good seamstress to do this.

 

Gather your felt up into a tight circle by pulling on your thread and then stitch the two ends together to form your first rosette.

 

Do the same for the ribbon piece.

 

Layer the felt rosette on top of the ribbon one and put your button on the top with the shank of the button poking through the hole in the middle of the two rosettes.

 

Stitch the button to the sides of the rosettes to secure. You won’t see this so make sure its nice and secure.

 

Cut another small piece of felt and stitch that as neatly as you can on the back of your rosette to cover the hole. You can then add a brooch back to the back too to make a sweet brooch for your bag or coat.

 

The smaller brooch made using the Jack Skeleton head button was made in the same way but I used a thiner ribbon and thinner strip  of black felt.

 

Of course you don’t have to stop at two rosettes, you can build them up using different ribbons, lace and fabric strips as you wish

 

I hope you like my brooches and will give them a go. If you have any questions or need help then you can contact me here or over on our Facebook page.

 

These and other Disney Dress-it up buttons can be found in the shop here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/disney-buttons-701-c.asp

Ribbons and lace here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/fibres-ribbons--trims-54-c.asp

Brooch backs -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/30mm-gilt-brooch-pin-back-516-p.asp

 

I have a couple of other projects for the Dress-it up Disney buttons coming up so pop back again very soon to see what else you can do with these buttons.

 

           

Have a batty Halloween card

 October sees the start of the busiest time of my crafting year. Starting with Halloween and then on to Christmas.    Halloween is not really celebrated here in the UK, even if all the shops try their best to convince us we do in order to sell us even more things. I love it though. We have a pumpkin lantern that hubby carves and then we sit and watch old halloween films and eat pumpkin soup. As I have been crafting for a very,very long time I have lots of homemade Halloween projects that come out each year to decorate our home.     So my project today is a sweet little card for Halloween I made for The Fruit Pixie.

This is a stepper card using the backing papers from Craftwork cards. The main stamped image is by Stampendous called Halloween magic.

 

I painted the image using Indigoblu luscious pigment powders. These are beautiful powders that can be used in many ways. I just added a spot of water to a minute amount of the powder and mixed it into a wonderful pearlescent paint. 

 

I then added some cogs, to match her hat and some bat die cuts and finally stamped another of the Stampendous stamps to finish it off.

 

You can find the stamps I used here in the Fruit Pixie shop here - 

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/stampendous-699-c.asp

 

The beautiful luscious powders here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/indigoblu-luscious-pigment-powders-708-c.asp

 

Craft Consortium Tell the Bees decoupage paper covered box

  Here is my new box I have covered with the beautiful Craft Consortium decoupage papers that I have made for The Fruit Pixie. These are not just normal papers, these are tissue thin but strong enough to be worked with then they are wet. They are very easy to use and very forgiving. I have used these sort of papers before on other projects, I will leave you the links of the other blog posts I have written at the bottom of the page. The papers I have used this time are the Tell the Bees papers.    The box I used I bought from The Works and is a wooden box. I prepared the box before I began by rubbing down the wood with sandpaper and then painting it with white gesso. I painted it white so the pattern and colour of the paper came through more.

The way I work with the decoupage paper is to cut it to size and then apply a runny PVA glue, I water the PVA glue down till it is like single cream, I paint the glue mixture on to the surface and also the back of the paper. Apply the paper to your surface, gently rubbing out the air bubbles if there are any and then paint another layer of the watered down PVA over the top. 

 

Once the box is covered with the decoupage papers and then left to dry. I then painted the sides and edges of the box with Cosmic shimmer paint.

 

 

For inside the box I painted it with Cosmic Shimmer chalk paint in a colour that matched the paper.

 

I wanted to add some interest to the lid of the box and the inside. I had made this box to keep my little bits of hand quilting and sewing in, so I used hexagons cut from the Tell the Bees paper pad. I inked their edges with a brown ink and when I had decided on the pattern I glued them into place. The hexies on the top are 1 inch hexies and the ones inside are 1.5 inch hexies.

 

Before I use the box I will add another layer of the PVA mixture to seal in the paper hexagons as it will get a lot of handling.

 

You can find the Tell the Bees decoupage papers in the Fruit Pixie shop here -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/craft-consortium-tell-the-bees-collection-715-c.asp

 

Cosmic Shimmer paint-

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/cosmic-shimmer-paints-644-c.asp

 

As I said I have worked with this type of paper before. Here is a post I did a few years ago using another of the Craft Consortium decoupage paper and a different shaped box

http://thefruitpixie.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/craft-consortium-decoupage-paper.html

 

This post is showing my candle holder jars I made with the wood design Craft Consortium decoupage papers -

http://thefruitpixie.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/craft-consortium-candle-jars.html

 

   

The Haunting journal pages

I design for a very talented digital kit designer Kyrsty Scrapbook Designs. As part of the halloween collaboration of all the designers at Mischief Circus, a wonderful online shop where you can buy her digital kits, Kyrsty has just released this spooky halloween                                    kit - http://www.mischiefcircus.com/shop/product.php?productid=24771&cat=&page=      Here is the first of the two pages I made for the release of her kit - 

I had great fun playing with this kit. I loved the cat and rat skeletons!

 

Please don't dismiss digital kits, they can easily be resized to what ever size you need and printed out on a normal home printer for your craft. The huge advantage, apart from having as many of any one paper or element you want, you have no storage at all!!