Just a bit of doodle fun

Just a quick post today, Firstly, thank you all for stopping by and leaving comments. you guys rock.
Secondly a quick mention that over at Haunted Design House I have just put up the swap partners list, so if you are taking part please head over and see who you are swapping with.
 And finally, this tag. I bought my first craft mag (craft stamper)  last week and the first article was about doodling,It was written by Lisa Mason, I have seen a lot of zentangle and doodle pages/cards whilst hopping  so I thought it was about time I had a play.
This was great fun as the bulk of the work is not messy, both the better half and myself grabbed some card an image and a black pen, we then spent a couple of hours doodling whilst watching tv one eve.
I cut a big oversized tag and used one of my Octopode Factory rubber stamps (the scarecrow from Oz) Isn't he cute ;) I basically followed the instructions from the mag (November edition)
Once the dooling was done I decided to add some colour, for some reason I have only seen black and white, not sure if I am breaking any carnal cardinal (thanks Neil) rules adding red but hey ho ;)
Using a red Copic I filled in some of the areas and  I painted Scarecrow with distress ink pads.
The quote is a Dyan Reaveley Stamp.
I think this will find a home on my sisters Xmas present.


Thanks for stopping by.
I would like to enter this into a couple of challenges.

The Octopode Factory challenge is 'Words'

Over at The Corrosive Challenge Blog they are having an Anything Goes challenge.

WOYWW 181

Well it's that time of the week again the WOYWW blog hop where you get to have a good nose around other crafter's work desks.
No idea what I am talking about? head over to Julias Stamping Ground to find out.

My work bench is quite tidy at the mo as the house is on the market and I need to keep the place tidy ;)

The last couple of weeks have been manic although not a lot to show so far. I have been lucky enough to have been asked to join a couple of DT's.As some of you know I have just startted with Fun With ATC's, I have also been asked to joing the amazing team over at Anything But A Card, I feel very lucky and am looking forward to stepping out of my comfort zone with the up and coming challenges. What I have on my desk is the start of my first piece for Anything But A Card, its the start of a wooden picture frame.
The second desk is looking a little less orderly, I popped over and spent Monday crafting with Neil of Neelz Expresionz we both recently picked up one of the larger Tim Holtz printer trays and decided to get started with them.I will do a propper post when the tray is finished but may share little bits as I get it finished. So far I have the tray covered and coloured and have finished my first two boxes, there may be some tweaking but I am happy so far.
The edges of the tray were taped with Tim tape and coloured with Dylusion sprays, the little box holds my little Tim angel, the back ground was made with Deco art crackle paste and paited and dry brushed with acrylic paint. black then grey and a little translucent red.
The stamped image is from Stampotique, painted with distress ink pads, the bg is also distress inks and the back ground has also been stamped with Dyan stamps and distress inks. I will be keeping this tray with a darker non cute theme Surprise Surprise ;)  more Stampotique images to be added.

Thank you for stopping by, I will try to visit as many people as I can, definitely the people that leave comments for me and all the people who share the same last number as mine.
Happy hopping.

Fun With ATC's Faces challenge

Hello and welcome, thank you everyone for stopping by, I really appreciate your time and comments.

This fortnight over at Fun With ATC's our challenge is faces stop on by to see what the rest of the awesome DT have been up to and of course I would love for you to join us.

I kind of knew what I wanted to do straight away with this challenge,  I love this skull stamp from Paper Artsy but the face I wanted to go with to start with was from a painting by Mark Ryden called Rose but I could not get her face to fit the skull so I had a quick think and this popped up. Personally I don't think she has ever looked so good ;)
I started by cutting my ATC from some mount board with my Tim Holtz die, I stamped the skull and heat embossed with black powder, the skull and red back ground were coloured by using old paper and red berries distress ink pads. I dabbed them on to my craft mat added a little spray of water and painted the areas. Thanks to Paul and my fellow DT member Butterfly for reminding me they can be used this way. You can get so many different shades/intensity of colour from the one ink pad just by adding more or less water.
After It was coloured I tore the image of the Queen in half, fussy cut around her face (image was from the net and sized to fit) and stuck her down, I made a mask for the skull and stamped the edge in black with a Tim Holtz stamp. I finished by colouring behind the Queen in black and then adding the two jems, Well it is the queen ;)

Again thank you for stopping by and hopefully I will see you over at Fun With ATC's

I would like to enter this into a couple of challenges.

Over at Smudgy Antics their challenge is Time Stands Still.. Ok I may be stretching but I am thinking that this is what happens when time stands still, you occupy all states of being ;)

At Quirky Crafts Challenges they are having a Come To The Darkside challenge, no cute images.

The Octapode Factory are having a Skulls or skellies challenge.

Poisoned Peas Please are having a Walking dead theme.I am sure the queen must be dead but some how she is still walking around ;)

The Artistic Stamper has an Anything Goes challenge this month, A great blog and a shop with some amazing stamps to choose from.

Woyww 179

Well its that time of the week and I know it has been a been a while since I have made it over to blog hop with the rest of the WOYWW'ers but it's great to be back and I look forward to looking at as many blogs as I can.
For those of you who are asking what the Hell, follow the link to Julia's page and all will be revealed (ok its a nosey mid week blog hop).

Im going to combine this post with another atc I have made as I want to enter it into a challenge as well, you can see it on the desk, bigger pic coming up at the bottom of the page.
 You can also see in the pic a wonderful stash of stuff i was sent from my blog friend Mel, The Yorkshire Fox she kindly sent me a very cool Xmas tag and some goodies to go with. I am looking forward to having a play with them. there is also another atc left over from me playing around with some gold leaf.
In the other zoomed out pic you can see my pin board where I keep all the goodies I have been sent so I have some good inspiration right infront of me, the board on the side is my semi useful bits board and has some old tags that I made but don't want to throw out.

Ok so here is the atc I made for the challenge over at Smudgy Antics  they are having a 'Tic Tac Toe' theme where you have to pic three ingredients that are in a row, I have picked Paint, Distress and Hardware/Metal.
 The back ground has been painted with Deco Art translucent paint, the little dude has been painted with Distress ink pads and my Hardware is the two Brads.'s

Stay tuned for even more Atc's over the next few weeks as I am working on several for a couple of swaps, (sorry guys, running slow) but catching up.
And as some of  you may have seen yesterday I am now a proud member of the new DT over at Fun With ATC's  so every couple of weeks we will be setting new challenges, this fortnight the theme is Fashion.

That's not all I am also gearing up for our first ATC swap over at Haunted Design House so if you want to let your dark side out on an atc and feel like taking part follow the link and put your name down. I would love to see as many of you as poss over there.

ok I have rambled enough and I shall let you get on with the hop. enjoy and happy crafting,  Mark xx

Fun With ATC's Fashion

I was lucky enough recently to have been asked to be part of the new design team over at the 'Fun With ATC's' challenge blog.
It's a great team and I am sure some of you will already know the other members.
 The theme this fortnight is 'Fashion' so we would love to see all your takes on fashion. Head over to see what the DT have been up to and of course we would love to see you there.

Now, I love making Atc's, since I found out what they were earlier this year I have had loads of fun making them, they are a great way to try out new ideas/techniques on a small scale before going big and they are great things to swap with fellow crafters.

Making this Atc was great fun, I got to step outside of my comfort zone with the theme but could still go all shabby which always makes me happy. although you should have seen the discarded pile I had at the end ;)
I started by cutting the atc out of mount board using the Tim Holtz die.Mount board is greeat, nice and thick and strong, I will be using it for all of my atc's from now on I think.( i have the vagabon machine not sure how mount board will cut with the other machines) for the background colour I dabbed the distress ink pads onto my craft mat, paper,corduroy and a little pumice stone, sprayed with some water and swiped the card through it, I dried it of with an iron and kept going till I got the right colour. The background was stamped with the paris word stamp from the Papilion set from Tim and the corset is a new buy from Katzelcraft  they were stamped in archival in sepia and coffee.
The dress form is one of the movers and shapers mini die's from Tim Holtz this was again cut from mount board, I used the Frantage embossing enamel in aged teal. Its the first time I have used these powders and I love the way the gold and silver pigment melts into the blue. I think it gives it a Japanese feel to the dress. I finished it off with a pair of scissors to help balance the silver of the dress.
 It would be great to see as many of you as possible over at Fun With ATC's

As always a great big thank you to all of you who follow and comment on my blog, new friends and older friends, it always means a lot to me to see you here.

I would like to enter this into the challenge over at Victorine Stamps  they are having a Bingo challenge, the line I have chosen is Embossing, Colouring and brads/pearls. the dress form is embossed the back ground has been coloured with distress inks and my brad is the scissors.

Haunted design house part 2

Just a quick post today, as promised here is the finished secret book I started to show on Monday, it is now finished.
 Over at Haunted Design House the challenge this week is Hammer Horror, we want to see all your Hammer Horror inspired makes, weather it is tributes to the classic actors or making your own version of their iconic movie posters we would love to see them. If you head over to Hdh you will also see what the DT have been busy creating.

So after Mondays post I needed to do the back cover and line the secret draw.
I used the same technique for the back as I did for the front,Here is a LINK if you want to read a little more detail of what's been done.  I selected another Hammer Horror movie still to use for an image transfer, a little more black on this image so the back ground colours are a little more subtle, As the colours were more muted I wanted to add more in the way of the cracks so I made sure I had a good base coat of matt medium down first as you need a non porous surface to get the best results.

For the draw I used some of my Graphic 45 Paper and cut the paper out in one piece, scored along the folds and glued it into place. I gave it a quick coat of translucent yellow oxide acrylic paint and then a watered down wash of a brownie red.
 I did try to add some gold leaf to the spine of the book, the Hammer Horror logo and some script but for some reason I could not get a clear adhesion to the modelling paste so I have re painted it for now, need to experiment a little more.

For the pages of the book I used Tim tape and again painted with translucent yellow oxide paint and then a little brown dry brushing.
I'm going to group Mondays pics here as well as I would like to enter this into a few challenges and want all the pics in one place.

I would like to enter this in to the challenge over at Anything But A Card  their challenge is Incorporate Black into your project.

Over at The Sisterhood Of Crafters they have a Halloween challenge. I think Hammer Horror and Vampires fits the bill.

Haunted Design House, Hammer Horror

 Well another week has rushed past and I have no idea where all the time is going at the moment.SO sorry if I have not been leaving as many comments as usual but I am getting around to see all your works.
 Anyway on to this weeks challenge at Haunted Design House, the theme this week is 'Hammer House Of Horror'.  We want to see all your Hammer Horror inspired pieces of art. They have produced so many films over the years with legendary actors like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and they are still going strong today making movies like 'Let me in' and 'Lady in black'
Why not head over and have a peak at what the DT have been inspired to make and then jump in and have a play.This is the last main challenge before the DT takes a little break so don't miss out on all the fun ;)
 My project this week is still a work in progress, so consider this post part one so to speak, I will be posting the rest later in the week.
 I started off with one of those secret draw wooden books, it gives you a nice canvas to work off of and scope for several ideas. I started with the spine of the book (the draw) I wanted to make this look like an old leather bound journal, I used some string and modelling paste to get the texture and used one of Andy Skinners Time Worn acrylic paint techniques to get the colour I was after, I am quite pleased with how this has turned out so far, I have a few ideas on how to add to it, Hopefully they will work and you will be able to see it later in the week.
For the main image I trolled through the internet to find a suitable image that would work for what was in mind, I found this great image of Peter Cushing and printed it off so I could do an image transfer.
The background/front cover of the book was painted with an acrylic paint base of white and then the colour was added in places, I tried to add colour so the red and blue would be outside the main image and shades of cream and green would give some colour to Peter. These dabs of colour have been applied rather hap hazard to give a rough feel rather than pristine painting. They were then painted over with another coat of white and when dry sanded back to reveal the distressed back ground.When it was all dry I could add my image, So far so good, I am really happy with how he looks on the front cover.

The Cross was added, It was made from one of those wooden coffee stirrers you get at places like costa coffee etc. It was cut and glued, painted with acrylic paint and then wrapped with wire, the little bat charm is from the bead shop in Brighton and again he was just stuck down on top of the cross.
 So far so good, lets hope I do not ruin it with part two. ;)

Thanks as always for stopping by, and again so sorry for not being as active in blog land as I want to be, life is getting in the way at the mo as am currently house hunting and sorting all the faff you need that goes along with it.

Hopefully I will see you over at Haunted Design House and latter in the week for part two. x

Haunted Design House 'Nosferatu'

Welcome back and thanks for stopping by, Hi to anyone new and a big thanks to those of you who have stopped by before x.       This week over at Haunted Design House we are challenging you with the theme 'Nosferatu Ad Nauseam'  basically we want to see your vampire inspired makes.head over to see what the DT have been getting up too. This week we are being sponsored by Rick St Dennis he is a great digi designer with a wide range of characters to choose from, he has a lot of lovely designs ready for Halloween as well as loads of your more cutsie designs.He is offering up 3 designs of choice each for our top two. It would be great to see as many of you over there as poss giving in to your darker sides ;)                                                                                    I have made another fat page for my 'little book of dark arts'  As some of you know I have a real struggle when it comes to using digi stamps, my copic's mastery is not up there yet and I don't have any colouring pencils either so what I can do with a digi is unfortunately limited, add to that the theme of vampires and using one of Ricks fab images and I am out of my element lol.

In the end I decided to just have a play and see where it took me, I really like this demon character called Op Art Monster and wanted him to be in the foreground.To add the vampire element I thought I would have some fun and use the classic Nosferatu shadow from the movie.                                                        I started by drawing in a horizon line and sketching my shadow so it would look cast upon a wall and then just coloured it in with a black copic, the monster was printed onto the card stock you use for alcohol inks and was fussy cut out, i then blended yellow,orange and red alcohol inks onto my craft mat and swiped the monster through mixing the colours up, I love the vibrantness of the alcohol inks, I then dabbed some red in for the eyes.He was placed where I wanted him and  drew the shadow lines from him to the main nosferatu image.

To play around trying to get some sort of perspective I used some of the Tim Holtz text tissue tape, this was stuck down at an angle to give the effect of floor boards and hopefully some sort of 3d effect, The tissue tape has the word 'dream' fortuitously printed on it so I ringed around the word to hi light it. For the wall paper I used the butterfly tape and cust around my shadow. I used distress pads to colour the tapes, for the floor boards I started with the yellows and blended into the browns to try and make it look like the monster was in a light source, for the wall I started with the blue shades and went through to purple and then black all around the edges.I think I just about got the lighting effect I was after? ;) lolThe finishing touches were the sentiment tag which comes from Tim Holtz, I wanted to go with the dreams and fears theme

 with this and the sentiment fits brilliantly, the tag was distressed with ink pads, given a flick of water and stapled to the page, on the other side I used one of Tims tickets again used distress inks, this time using the bright persimon colour and browns to age it, I think it picks up with the monster. Finally I used one of Tims Keys, I brushed over the top with a gold guilding paste to bring out the word and details on the key.All in all this page was just a bit of fun letting me mess around with perspective, I think it almost looks like a pop up card.

I would like to enter this into a few challenges, 

Over at Anything But A Card they are having a Halloween or Halloween colours challenge. They are a fairly new challenge blog with a fantastic DT, head over for some awesome inspiration.

At Smudgy Antics they are having a Monster Mash theme. For my monster mash I have Nosferatu and the Op monster .

                

A Rusty Frame.

2nd post of the week for me this week.And this little picture frame has been a pain in the butt, I started last week for the rust challenge over at Simon says stamp and show but was just not happy with it and ran out of time.
 I find this whole crafting thing a very funny mistress, you have highs and lows, days where the mojo is just not working. That's how I felt last week. I had the idea of what I wanted to do with the frame and thought the rest would flow, It did not ;) I was left with a painted frame and nothing to go inside, also new the rust needed adornments but again mind went blank.

I started with another one of these little frames, about 6 inches square. I added some grunge board to the corner and a strip to one side to make it look as though there were some plates riveted over the top. the rivets are sticky pearls and the large ones are upholstery nails (the things used on the big leather chairs)  The little pic above shows it after a base coat of acrylic, It was then given an Andy Skinner rust technique (my fave finish) and sorry for anyone who stops by often as Its a finish I use a fair bit.I did actually paint and stamp inside the frame but really hated it so I cut some card to fit, painted it with fresco finish acrylic paints from paper artsy. I love their acrylic paints. first coat was an olive green type colour and the second was one of their translucent greens, pesto I think, it sort of gives some depth to the colour. I used my clown in a straight jacket stamp from viva las vegas stamps, link on the left side of my blog page. and the Carnival is from one of Andy Skinners stamp sets. The cracked finish was achieved by miss using the 2 step crackle glaze from deco art, I have found that if you do not seal the surface properly and you rush the dryig time of step one you dont get much of the way of cracking but get a nice glaze that has a little texture and a few cracks. To be honest I am not sure what one of my miss steps led to this but I quite like it, playing around lets you get cracks in some places and clear in others all in one coat.When it was dry I rubbed in some raw umber paint to make the cracks stand out.
 The finishing touches were added, the glass squares are from the bead shop in Brighton, the tap and number plate are from Tim Holtz, the tap was quickly painted with red acrylic and when it was touch dry rubbed with a kitchen towl/wet wipe to distress it back to the metal underneath. the number was coated with alcohol inks.
The little copper piping thing was made from some copper right angle joins bought in homebase, I glued them together and painted them with acrylic paints. Again another Andy Skinner technique from his Time Worn workshop.
All in all I think I like it now, not sure if the image fits the frame but I like how the colours work and am much happier with it this week than I was last week.

Thank you every one for stopping by and reading all my ramblings. And I have just seen I have Hit 100 followers,  Wow is all I can say, never thought I would enjoy looking at blogs and people would enjoy looking at mine this much. I really can not welcome and thank you all enough.  Mark xx

I would like to enter this into a few challenges,

Simon Says Stamp And Show have a 'Your Favourite' challenge, I just love industrial grunge and altering 3d objects.

The No Matter Which Challenge is Halloween or Halloween colours,  I goofed up with Mondays entry as I did not use a stamped image, Doh. Hopefully clowns in straight jackets are scary enough, I know I hate clowns ;)

Anything But A Card are having their 4th challenge, 'Autumn/Fall or Halloween colours'  This is a great new challenge blog and if you are like me, someone who hates making cards go check them out.

Haunted design house challenge, 'Graves'

Hello again everyone and thanks a lot for stopping by, It's always good to have you here.
 This week over at Haunted Design House we are challenging you with the chilling theme of 'R.I.P'  all you have to do is make something grave related.
 This is my little Grave shrine. It was made in a class given by Andy Skinner at The Craft Barn
 We started of with a wooden plaque (actually it was a thermometer) turned it over and painted the plaque with a few layers of acrylic paint.We then used an image transfer technique involving Matte medium, when it was all dry I used the 2 stage crackle glaze from deco art to age it up.
The metal strip across the bottom was added and given one of Andy's rust techniques from his online workshop 'Time worn' I also used the same technique for the top. The photo was aged up with distress inks and added to the cut out section. I used alcohol inks on a pair of Tim Holtz Wings. I also added the book plate with the name Jane (no idea why i chose that name) Finally I screwed an eyelet into the bottom and attached the little memory tag saying 'cherish' along with a feather.




Head over to Haunted Design House to see plenty of Fab inspiration from the awesome design team and of course we would love to see you.


I would like to enter this into the challenge over at Simon Says Stamp And Show, their challenge this week is 'Your favorite'
This has so many of my faves in it, I love the rusty tech and making anything shabby/vintage. It also appeals to my dark side.
so all in all this make was right up there for me.

I would also like to enter this in to the Art With No Boundaries challenge.They have a Halloween theme running this month. Hopefully a Grave shrine is Halloween enough ;)

Over at No Matter Which Challenge their challenge is Halloween or Halloween colours. Again hopefully a grave shrine will be Halloween enough.

The Crafty Pad are having a 'Distress it' challenge.  I love distressed challenges ( I can not do clean and simple) ;)

Haunted Design House 'Bats In The Belfry' Challenge And Swap

 Well it is once again that time over at Haunted Design House  Our challenge this week is 'Bats In The Belfry' You should do something Gothic/dark themed around bats.
Head over to Hdh to see some amazing DT pieces from the team and then give your selves over to the darker side of crafting ;)
 This week I am killing two birds with one stone, (no not some kind of ritual slaying) I made this ATC for the challenge and also as part of a swap, with Suzanne,more of that in a minute.
This Atc was made using one of my new stamps from Artistic Outpost, one of their Halloween sets. the frame was cut out from a couple of sheets of card and glued together to make the 3d frame, It was then covered in Deco Arts crackle paste and painted with acrylic paints. the little figure is from the Games Workshop. It feels very odd going in there at 35 buying their figures. The back ground was done using distress inks and then covering it in UTEE.

Ok now on to the swap I mentioned. A little while back Suzanne and myself decided to do an Atc swap, three cards with a horror/Gothic theme. here are the other two I made. the first is a re make of one I did a little while ago, I tweaked it a little and I think improved on the first attempt.The main image is a digi from Stitchy bear called Bella Donna, she was printed out and then cut out with the atc die from Tim Holtz, coloured with Copics and then covered with matt glue n seal, I also used the cob web stamp from Tim and stamped that with glue n seal as well, when dry it acts as a brilliant resist.The whole thing was gone over with distress inks and some embeleshments were added. the spider is from the bead store in Brighton.

 The second Is a Paper Artsy stamp stamped onto acetate and attached with a couple of brads to a distressed back ground, Th BG was done with acrylic paint, red over white over silver, this was then sanded back in places so the different layers would show through. It was finished of with some wire wrapped around just to give it a little more depth.

Now I was blown away with this swap, Suzanne not only did three stunning ATC's she also added a rather amazing care package as well that contained all sorts of goodies. (I am a very lucky  boy).

Above are the atc's  please check Suzanne's blog there are some great projects for you to feast your eyes on.Below are all the amazing extras she sent me as well.  It was like Xmas.

 As well as all these goodies I also received a Stampotique stamp, Probably my fave stamp company and some stamped up images from her stash of stamps, One of which I used last week for my fat book page.






Luckily I did have something already made for Suzanne for this swap. A little while back I made a  KISS (keep it simple stupid) green frame with a Stampotique image inside which I think she liked at the time, So with my fingers crossed I hoped Suzanne liked the colour blue and did another frame in the same style with a different Stapotique image.I forgot to take a pic of this before posting so thank you again Suzanne for sending me the pic (incase you were wondering why that pic looks better than the ones I take )

Thanks for reading this far. As always I love having you here and reading your comments. It would be great to see you all over at Haunted Design House letting your inner demon out ;)

Thanks, xx

I would like to enter my Bella donna Atc into a challenge over at Digi Galore where the theme is Goth.
They are a digi only challenge.
I would also like to enter these pieces into the challenge over at Art With No Boundaries they have a 'Halloween' inspired challenge for the whole month of October, It's been a little while since I joined in over there.