31 Garden of Hedes

WOW, can you believe we are at 31st October already!!  Happy Halloween.

Jas, I so remember the bent spoons from my Dad trying to 'carve' out a turnip, he always did an amazing job.  Pumpkin carving is so much fun and the design options are endless. Thanks Jas.

What an exciting month its been.  I would like to thank Bex and Jas for joining me on this adventure of creativity and for all their fabulous and inspiring projects.  I have loved every single one of them.

Todays project, well this is the idea that set off the whole Weird Scissors concept of 31 Days of Halloween.  I was sitting on the bus and saw a really cool window display and thought, if only those flowers where skulls, it would be super cool.

Garden of Hedes

Project Preparation

1. Using air dry clay and some skull chocolate molds make up some skulls ( I made 12).

2. Take some old bandage gauze and wet it and colour with alcohol inks to give desired colour.  I rinsed lightly in water to 'dull' the colour.  When dry cut into 8 - 10 pieces, rough rectangles.

Supplies & Instructions

1. Take 1 30cm x 40cm canvas and dribble some deep purple ink from the top, leave to dry.

2. Once dry, slap on a layer of  white gesso, this dulls down the purple drips a bit.

3. Using chalk pastels blend purples and greens to give desired look.

4. Set the pastels, I use Silvikrin hairspary.

5. I found an old thorny rose stamp and stamped it randomly around the canvas with black archival ink.

6. Take the bits of coloured gauze and pull and distress the pieces, and attch to canvas with white craft glue.

7. I painted the skulls with a watered down cream and using the Kaisercraft stamp crackle  and Foggy London ink, 'distressed' the skulls.  I've glued some crystals in the eye sockets, (I just love a bit of bling) then applied the skulls with a hot glue gun.

8. To finsh off I inked around the edges with a black ink.  

I hope you enjoy the piece that was the inspiration for this amazing blog, which would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of Bex and Jas.   Thank you girls.

I am entering this into the Left of Center Challenge and Open Minded Challenge for Halloween, the Artistic Inspirations for spooky, Ooh La La for the witching hour and the Corrosive Challenge for magical.

Pop back tomorrow.  The fun continues with some Day of Dead inspiration with Bex.

TFL Lou x

15. Junk key...surprise!

Thanks for joining me on this Wicked Wednesday! Now every good, bad or ugly witch, warlock or wizard, needs to keep their things locked away, and if they're anything like I am it needs to be a bulky keyring so they aren't lost down the back of the sofa.

It's a pretty simple concept lovingly 'borrowed' from an art blog pal of ours called DonnaLouiseRogers, as can be seen in more detail here: grab an old looking key - make sure its not one you're going to need at some point, and start adding to it.

Alternatively if you don't have a big enough key, or want more use out of the finished piece try a kilt pin brooch instead.

*NON HALLOWEEN STORY SKIP IF PREFERRED:

Recently for a friends wedding I had a padlock engraved with their details, and gave them a shadow box frame, the idea was to either put their padlock in a collection, or somewhere special that has meaning to them both and use the frame as normal.

OR

Frame their lock, adding things to to it as they went, their baggage clips, festival bands, keyrings from day trips, ticket stubs, babies hospital bands etc as life moves on.  I was thrilled when I went around to find it hung on their wall as living art of their life together 
without having to get out an album or three

The padlock idea sprung from the original Junk key and either or both can be used for a variety of projects like weddings or moving home, but Halloween themed is definitely much more fun and is finished quicker - in theory :)

Anyway once you've found a starting point, just keep adding to it, whether it be charms, beads, chain, ribbon, little potion bottles, papertags, stamped bits, shrink plastic, scraps of leather, etc until its nearly lost, then either frame it or put in a little matchbox as lost and found. 

If you've made a brooch attach to your coat or bag and wear for the rest of the season

These are my starters for 10: 

*To be truthful I'm not as happy with these as I want to be at the moment, (wrong key, not enough papery things, etc) however I am going to carry on adding to them and by the weekend they should be how I want them, at which point I'll add a new pic.

and...

Surprise! I'm going to give these away including a brand new pair of earrings just about the same as in the photo (but never worn).. Me being busy carrying on with these gives you some time to comment on our pages, and fb group. Any new comment (preferably a nice one and 'likes' don't count it has to be a comment) that has been made between last weeks draw and the same time this weekend qualifies. So go on have a poke around and see what you've missed.

I'll pick out 3 random winners to send to, no specifying which you'd prefer as that would take organisation. It's not a pretty picture. I don't like doing it!

I am entering this in the Left of Centre Altered Art Challenge.

Jas x

This weeks wicked Wednesday Winners for the Junk key, kilt pin or earings are in no particular order:

Susibee

Carmen

Pauline

If your name matches the above and you posted on our blog or FBpage between Saturday 1201 and Friday Midnight, email your address to Minerva27.jg@googlemail.com and I'll post one of the items to you

Thanks for joining us, and keep an eye out for our next give away.