21st Century Pillow Book

Greetings! Welcome to a jam packed Wednesday. I've got some new challenges to share with you, and I hope you are excited to check them out. My first is for A Step in the Dark . We are sponsored by Aurora Wings , which is a company I have fallen head over heels for. I used Owl Masquerade for my 6x6 mini page. Is that a stunning image or what? I loved coloring it. I used alcohol markers and colored pencils. Plus a bit of Stickles and Liquid Pearls. I also broke out my Scales stencil from Dreamweaver Stencils . Applied Pumice Stone Distress Ink using a stencil brush. Then I applied the Amsterdam Flourish with Pearlescent Embossing Paste. I'll be submitting this piece into the new Haunted Design House challenge. I was very inspired by the photos they posted, so I give you my version of that. Moving on, I now give you the newest Wicked Wednesday challenge. This week, we are sponsored by Octopode Factory, and the theme is to "Use an Uplifting Sentiment....

Blog Land! Today, I give to you (almost by the skin of my teeth) a project made for the latest challenge (the Number of the Beast) of Haunted Design House . I know, I know...it's been ages and ages since I have played along. Not because I didn't want to, of course. But time just didn't allow me. Well, this time, I HAD to play. 666 was always a big number in my house...no really! My Dad had always found 666 to be a recurring number in his life. Weird, but true. His parking spot at work, it was on his license plate, and other unusual situations.  None of these things were sought out. In fact, when he had asked his job about the parking spot, they apologized and said they would change it. He insisted that they didn't. So I was excited to see this theme...though ironically, I paid no heed to the number factor of the challenge, only the "beast/devil" aspect of it..    I worked with As Death from Smeared Ink . I haven't use this set in a while, and I though...

Greetings! Today I have an art journal page to share with you. I was inspired by Rick St. Dennis ' image of Edgar Allan Poe . Further inspired by the latest Haunted Design House challenge of "The Poetry and Prose of Poe, Romantic or Lunatic?" Nevermore is a favorite of mine, of course, so I chose to work with that. Rick's image was the starting point of the piece, and I colored him with my alcohol markers and a couple watercolor markers. Then I printed out the first and last stanza of the poem, inked the hell out of them, and started to play with the Quoth the Raven set from Smeared Ink . How could I make this page without that set? Isn't the likeness to Poe incredible? Rick did an amazing job with this image. I know I will be using it quite a bit. I so enjoyed layering all of the background images. And I must say, that London Fog Memento ink is a new favorite of mine. I used that ink for the mesh stamp. I can say I am really falling in love with art...

It has been what feels like forever since I have had a chance to play with Haunted Design House . This week, the Macabre Monday challenge is Eerie Elegance . And I just knew I needed to use a Simply B Stamps image for it. But there are so many to choose from!!! I eventually decided to go with The Alchemist's Wife Nightmares . Seriously, how fabulous is this image? I used the Spotlight Technique to color my image, but with a bit of a twist. I printed the image twice, and cut out my spotlight from the colored version so that I could pop-dot it to the second. I used colored pencils, watercolor markers and Copics to color this in. I aged the background image with Antique Linen Distress Inks. I also used a cream colored card, instead of white, and I sprayed it with a coffee colored spray from Tsukineko. I recently became a Pampered Chef consultant (links on the side of my blog!). And I did pretty well my first month out, so I decided to give myself a little congratulatory gift...

As many of you know, I try to play along with Macabre Monday over at Haunted Design House as often as I can. I squeezed in some time to create a card for their latest challenge… Dr. Death . We had to make something with a medical theme. I immediately thought of some of the rad images I have from Strange Skin . And this is what I came up with. I used one of my absolute favorite images from them, the Bride of Frankenstein Cameo. I think she’s gorgeous. I colored her with colored pencils and my watercolor markers. Here’s a close up. I accentuated the pieced together look by making her skin all different colors… like she really was made up from different creatures. She also has quite a weave going…lots of different colors. You can click on any of the pictures to get a close up. The screw heads on the side are from Smeared Ink’s Urban Decay collection. Yup, the same ones I just used in Friday’s post! Screws are SO versatile!!! I hand wrote the senti, making it a little scratchy. The 3 ...

I am so excited that Strange Skin is sponsoring Macabre Monday this week. Yeah, I know…it’s a little late to be writing about it, but I’ve had a lot going on the past few days…I’m just glad I was able to make something. As you may or may not know, Strange Skin is a company that was created and owned by my sister Pamela and her boyfriend Jorge. You can read all about them over at Haunted Design House. This week’s challenge is Love Bites. Strange Skin just came out with some fang-tastic new digis (have you seen them yet???) that are just perfect for this challenge. I made a tag. The tag reads: “You were everyone’s Heart Throb… But I wanted yours to throb just for me… I love you.” A wee bit twisted, no? I added some delicious fibers to the top of the tag, which would make a fabulous bookmark. I colored the heart with chalk, and the blood with a Sakura Jelly Roll pen. In real life, the blood has a bit of dimension and is quite glossy. It was a quick and easy project, but I think it has...

Haunted Design House …how I love thee…let me count the ways… Maybe not. That would take waaaay too long! I haven’t been able to play along with the first few challenges of 2011, but I’ve got one today, and I am really happy with it! This week, you need to create something “using angelic products or images and creeping them out as only HDHers can!” My project uses a smattering of different Smeared Ink images. May I say, that is one of the reasons I love Smeared Ink…their images all work so well together! Enjoy… I started off with the Praise Angel, by coloring him in with Twinkle H20’s. Cut him out…then went to town on my background. I was immediately inspired by the Confined Space stamp from Urban Decay…and thought it would work really well with the church from Holy City. Added some crows (holy City…made ‘em grey so that they sorta looked like doves flying up towards the heavens), other textures from Urban Decay…ink…chalk…done! The entire background is stamped directly on the card its...

I couldn’t resist. I was inspired! And as any artist should know, you can’t ignore inspiration, you have to indulge it! Otherwise, your muses will get pissed off and go elsewhere to give out their amazing ideas! So I couldn’t help myself but to make a second card for this week’s Macabre Mondays from Haunted Design House . The challenge is Gothic Asian Persuasion. I saw this amazing drawing from THIS blog that my friend Alex (fellow Smeared and Smudger ) recommended for digi images. I love kites…but this one was just begging to be hidden. I immediately saw a skull floating in the air, but alas, the skulls I have just didn’t work. Then I came across these fab bats that I love so much and thought that they were perfect! As you can see, I pop dotted them. I also used that funky black patterned paper that I had in my card from yesterday. Figured I’d tie the 2 cards together! I feel so much better now! I had been wanting to make this card all week. Itching to do it really… So I am so plea...

Hello! It is a very white Friday on Long Island. My husband stayed home, (which was great!) and I finally got to do my Macabre Monday card! This week’s challenge from Haunted Design House was “Gothic Asian Persuasion. What a fantastic challenge! I love that combination! I got to use two of my (seriously) all-time faves. What ‘till you get a load of these stamps! I needed to take a pic of the stamps themselves because they are just so amazing. Both are from Inkadinkado. I have always loved Asian-styled art. Especially Japanese. The simplistic brush strokes, the exquisite beauty they capture in everything… I could really go on and on about it. I even took a course in college about Japanese Lit because not only is their art amazing, so is their literature. Case in point; my blog name is taken from Japanese lit. You can learn about Pillow Books in my intro box above! But on to my card! So I repeated the bamboo several times in black, then in white. I made the white more subtle then the...