14. Danse Macabre

Fabulous project from Lou yesterday - all I need to do now is find some matching socks. I swear I sacrifice socks to the god of washing machines every time I run the thing!

Today, I wanted to do something based on the Danse Macabre, because, well, who doesn't love a dancing skeleton or two?!

This is a simple cheap wooden shadow box frame that I bought from the craft store. There are various ways you could produce this. I actually had a stamp with the moon, tree and graveyard, but if you don't have anything suitable there are plenty of graveyard images out there on the web.

You need to make your background the same height as the interior of your shadow box but, and this is crucial, wider. Rather than trying to cover each side, it is much easier to bend it round. Hopefully you can see what I mean in the photo above. This also gives a better 3D look, plus much less need to fix it in place, although you can add a little glue if you like. You should paint/decorate the top and bottom of the inside of the shadow box before you fit your background in - I used the same paint I used on my stamped image, painted directly onto the wood, and then plain black at the bottom.

Once you've fitted your background, you're going to need some skeletons. If you have suitable sized skeleton stamps then all well and good but I don't. A search online produced a very popular dancing skeleton on the left, although I am unable to find who made it. The one on the right is from Hans Holbein's woodcuts. There are a huge variety of skeletons in there, and since they were produced in the 16th century then they are well out of copyright now!  Print/stamp your skeletons onto as thick a card as you can manage, and back it with another piece of card if possible as they have to be sturdy enough to stand up. Carefully cut around them, leaving a small tab at the bottom of their feet. Colour the tab the same as the bottom of your background and bend it back so that you can glue it to the bottom. As it's a shadow box, you can glue them a little bit apart from the background so add dimension.

Finally, decorate the outside of the fame however you like. I used some paint, web stamp and crackle glaze because, having found my crackle glaze I am determined to get some use it before I lose it again!

I love the way that as the light changes during the day, the shadows from the skeletons change position and add to the general spookiness.

This is also in the Deliciously Dark Challenge.

Well, that's it for today. I will leave you in Jas' capable hands for tomorrow. Enjoy, and hope to see you again soon.

Bex