23rd Day of 31 Days of Halloween

Welcome to the 23^rd Day of the annual blog hop “31 Days of Halloween,” organized by Smeared Ink.

My offering is a little mixed-media piece entitled “Forever.” I really forgot how much fun mixed-media is. I lost track of the world and it was glorious.

This is a 6” x 6” canvas. To get started on “Forever,” I went through my stash of white tissue paper, and glued it down, with the wrinkles in (the more the better). After that was dry, I added black gesso on one-half, and white gesso on the other half (you can’t see the white anymore). At this point, I had no idea where I was headed. I did know the two images I wanted to use.

My two main images were a rubber stamp and a digital image. The rubber stamp, which is part of the background, is one of Rick’s from SmearedInk’s Rubber Stamp Club. This image is either the first or second sheet of Rick’s designs.  The digi in the front, “Souvenir,” is from Rick’s Zibbet shop. I hope you head over to Rick’s new expanded Zibbet shop. There is something there for everyone’s taste.

I colored both images with Copics. After that I fussy cut them both. The stack of skulls image was glued on first.

Copics Used:

Souvenir:

Skin: E000, 00, 11, BV0000, Ro2

Hair: YR21, E15, 18, 19

Lips: R22, 39

All skulls:

W0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and

R39, Y26, YG23

Now it’s time for all the embellishments. I die cut Cheery Lynn’s Spider Web out of Stampin’ Up!’s Early Espresso cardstock. I added a little shine to it with Smooch Illuminate ink, glued that down. The next die is the Ivy Corner Flourish cut with SU’s Old Olive cardstock. I die cut two and placed them on the opposite corners. I think that this die is going to get a lot of use. These two elements were glued down last.

Now it was time for the image “Souvenir.” As most of you know I love coloring hair, and auburn is my favorite color, so my choice of hair color was not too hard to decide on. In fact, I think it was Rick that put that idea in my head a while back. I used some pop dots to place her away from the base.

It was all coming together, but my little piece of art was still missing something. That’s when I decided on the word “Forever,” which I computer generated and distressed it with Gathered Twigs and Black Soot Distress Inks.

Still not done! It needed more, something on the outer edges to bring your eyes to the middle. That’s when I remembered some of my embellishments that I used in other mixed-media pieces, mica flakes and teeny tiny beads. I have so many little bottles of colored mica flakes from USArtQuest, but I could not go bright, so I decided on Essence of Pearl. My beads I purchased from Suze Weinberg, but she no longer carries these, which is too bad. I am almost out of the black and red. I do have other colors. For these beads to be so tiny, they add just the right punch to any project.

That’s it for today. I hope I didn’t leave anything out. If I did, don’t hesitate contacting me.

Aletha Jane

AJ’s Design Artz

RSD Elite Design Team