SHOW ME YOUR SCARY!!!!–October 2015 challenge at Our Creative Corner

A scary treat for everyone this month over at Our Creativc Corner.  The challenge is hosted by Laura who says:

Forget cute cats and smiling pumpkins....
we want....

For this Halloween share with us some horror inspired creations that

are sure to send shivers down our spines.

Bring out your most grotesque stamps and embellishments....
....or perhaps take on the challenge of finding a way to transform pretty stamps into something macabre.

Reach for the grungiest colours and textures....

Come over to the dark side of Halloween
Can you scare us?

Laura

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For my part I took a regular notebook and turned it into a spellbinding…..

 

that might serve up the grotesque potion recipes for some macabre mischief.

Here is a quick photorial on how I did that!!!

Now can you show us your scary???

As always, merely playing along with the challenge theme and submitting your project affords you the incredible chance of being picked as the winner of some awesome prize loot!

The challenge this month is being sponsored by

Nicecrane Designs

I had a little sneaky peak at what my fellow Design Teamies have come up with and it is sure to creatively conjure up your scariest admiration.  So please hop on over to Our Creative Corner to frighten yourself rigid!

----AND lastly----

BOOOOOOOOOOO you all!

Candice

September "Shades of Autumn" Challenge at Our Creative Corner - Fallin' off the Page

One of my favourite crafty things to mess around with is Glycerine Soap.  While I love the chemistry of Cold Process soap from scratch, there is so much room for creative versatility with Melt and Pour Soap. From making the soap, to choosing the scent, to designing the aesthetics of the soap, for me its a blend of all different kinds of fun crafty creativity.

I have been waiting for an OCC challenge that would allow me to share some soapy craft - this month's challenge hosted by Julia with it's theme of "SHADES OF AUTUMN" allowed me to do just that.  And the coolest thing about OCC is that you can share ANY type of craft. I was inspired by the rich tones and hues of autumn leaves and decided to make a batch of soap creations which reflected that.

I have titled my contribution: "Fallin' off the page".   There is that self-evident play on words there.  I also wanted to share how I use paper crafting tools in soap crafting.  I made a bunch of different soapy creations which I plan to give out as gifts soon for upcoming birthdays of friends and family.

Play along with the challenge theme this month and you could be the winner of $25 gift voucher from our generous sponsor

 

Creative Embellishments.  

Here below are Julia's rules of the challenge.

"I love the colours of autumn! Those beautiful and dramatic reds, golds, yellows, browns, greens and all shades in between. Your challenge this month is to take some inspiration from the colours in the image provided and make an autumnal inspired project."

 I used different stamping and crafting tools to make my basket of gift soaps.

For the soap with leafy imprints.  

I used some rubber and acrylic stamps from my collection.  See a quick photo tutorial of the process.

I placed the stamps flat side down into a silicone mini loaf baking pan.

After I unmoulded the soap, I made a "soap paint" by mixing shimmer powder with some glycerine and alcohol and using a long bristled brush, carefully painted each imprint or debossed leaf design.

For the clear soap with maple leaf embeds.

I poured thin layers of different colours of soap into a baking pan.

I used modelling clay cutting tools to punch out the leaves. 

The trickiest soap was the Autumn Tree.

(woops about the blurry picture)

I used a kitchen grater to grate different autumn coloured soap into tiny strips and then I minced that with a regular knife.  To get as close to a tree shape as possible I squished the coloured chips into an egg holder.  I made thin block strip of brown soap and created the trunk of the tree.

And that there is a basic run down of how I created the basket of Autmny soaps.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with for Julia's "Colours of Autumn" Challenge.

Happy Crafting!

Whats going on?

Hi guys, 

Well July 2015 has ended and it has been a great month, from multiple birthday parties, parties and excellent company.  Here is a little collection of what I have been up to.

two girls and a thing

In Cass and Dash's paradise garden

I no longer straighten out my natural curls and I have decided that I love red - thanks to my  new friend for this picture on the floor

With Tommy and Cass at Hidden Festival

Same fellas with Michelle

Psychedelic stomping boots with Michelle

A little pretend cabaret on a night out on town - FUUUUUNNNN

Witchy brew with me best bud Nicol

a night out on the town and the bicest dress I own and possibly the only time I will ever look "elegant"

AWESOME BIRTHDAY SURPRISES

 

work surprises

From Left to Right - Nicol, me. Brandon, Tommy, Cass and Isabel with a hidden Dash possibly behind Tommy at another one of the birthday bashes

Nicol my best buddy, and I at fancy schmancy Country Club for a joint birthday dinner

Yes - July was fun for me

Saucy Centrepiece

“We want you to grab any inspiration you like from these wonderfully exotic photographs...

Go for colours, shapes, textures, objects or style - There is certainly plenty of inspiration to choose from here in this selection of glorious, vivid, colourful photographs.
Join us in the summer holiday mood....!!!”

This is the challenge over at Our Creative Corner this month of August 2015.
Join in on the challenge because there are some nifto prizes to be won from our generous sponsor Tando Creative. Be sure to link over there (click on their logo to go) to see their mind blowing variety and collection of awesome stuff they have got going on.

I did a littl’ ol’ whoopdy whoop at this moodboard because my house loves these colours.  In fact I even have 

walls these colours, for real, “look it Linda, look it” 

So the moodboard made me do a little celebration dance, though that is not what that crazy picture on the right was about, that’s just random picture that got taken of me with my cute coloured walls behind me.  My lounge, dining room, kitchen is one big open plan townhouse meld, so whatever colour scheme happens in any one of those areas has to happen everywhere else too.

I have to tell you that when I see those vibrant colours like those in the moodboard, for some reason it makes me think of the Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs, the Yucatan and that sort of thing.  I assume it is because of the association with the glorious, gorgeous woven cloth and patterns, traditional to that area.

So I had already had this little Aztec idea floating around in my head.

But I had a more pressing issue to deal with at hand.  Dinner time for me always requires one of the following hefty doses:  pickles, shaved chilli, Tabasco, Worcestershire Sauce. Powdered Parmesan, Crushed dried Chilli or Chilli-Garlic Salt and a variety of peppery infused olive oil blends.

Lately I have been thinking that I need to have all my condiment and sauce bottles on the dining table instead of hunting around for it in the cluttery collection of everything I have standing on my kitchen counter.  I get a little frustrated when I can’t get to my chilli instantly.

So anyhow, I did rescue them from the certain clutter kitchen counter death,  took them out and placed them in the centre of the table for easy access,  but……. they just didnt fit with the whole theme going on in the space that they were in and to be brutally honest, they just weren’t cute enough in their original packaging.

A plan needed to come together. 

The necessity of cuteness, the hot tamales connection and the coincidence of the August theme at Our Creative Corner culminated in this here my “SAUCY CENTREPIECE”.

Not only do they add a nice design accent to the room, but they do have a practical purpose, functional decor is a score!!!

I pulled out a bunch of different mediums and techniques for this cheery collection.  I have to give props and kudos to my favourite South African brand of craft supplies –  magnificent DALA.  Yes, you have heard me go on and on and on about them before.

The first order of business was to wash out some older sauce, vinegar and oil bottles, and remove the labels.  I siphoned in some denture cleaner, added some warm water and let that sit

for a while.  My idea here was that if it can clean dentures, it ought to sterilise the inside of these bottles as well.  It was well worth the look on the Dischem lady’s face when I asked where I could find denture cleaner.  I literally did see her stare at my teeth, as she tried to reconcile her confusion about my request for fizzy denture cleaner and my not so denture perfect looking teeth.

I then became paranoid about denture cleaner residue being in the bottles.  So I boiled the bottles in a vinegar and water solution – not sure why, I just thought vinegar would remove the residue and that it would work better if it was boiling hot. No scientific basis for this step, just paranoia manifesting in weird ideas. This kinda also got the labels loose off of the bottles – aha, that’s what I am going to say – I boiled them in vinegar to get the labels off.  Important observation coming up – boiled vinegar reeks and gives you a strange craving for S&V Pringles.

Now that I have the bottles all sterilised and vinegar cured – I got to the fun part – altering the bottles. I stained them with Dala Glass Stain, I painted them with Dala Glass Glaze, I drew patterns with Dala Glass Liner, I plastered on some texture paste on some bottles and dyed the design with Dala Suncolour Dye. 
I made wire symbols (with -you guessed it - Dala Coloured Craft wire) that I thought looked somewhat in-theme and wrapped them around some bottles.
I made up some fake Aztec/Mayan symbols (I didnt want to blindly copy some symbol and then find out later that I have called down some kind of curse down from Atahulpa or something).

To add more interest to the stained bottles I wire-wrapped or hempcord wrapped the necks of the bottles and added a few beads and the like.

I dipped some of the tops in a sealing wax that I melted in makeshift double-boiler to which I added wax crayons to dye it the right shade of green.

Now I am pretty sure painting glaze and drawing designs on a bottle is self-explanatory, so I am going to forego a (redundant) tutorial as I usually include for that. 

I am sure that you can work it out and have fun messing around that way. 

What I am going to include though is a little bit of information on the products that I used – if you’re a South African, you probably know them cos they are pretty household I think when you think of paint and crayons and playdough, but I do want to let you in on the fact that they carry some other really cool products like glass glaze and stain and liner that I didn’t know about until recently. They also have a ceramics line of products that I have not messed with yet.


 
\

 

and I got jiggy with my new favourite craft thing GLASS LINER, this stuff holds shape and texture to a decent degree and adds a faux leaded glass effect. I am going to do a whole other post on all the  ways that I have discovered that you can use this awesome product to create some pretty darn awesome effects and texture some time later.

Finally I bust out the ol’ texture paste

and Dala Suncolour Dye Ink. 

Dala Suncolour will stain and dye ceramic tiles – I got some on my porch tiles and have never been able to remove it and it is still as garishy vibrant as it was four years ago when the accident happened. I have blogged about this before as well – here are some links to posts where I have done other things with suncolour apart from dyeing fabric – 
http://tincanhandmade.blogspot.com/2015/01/string-lights-alchemy-our-creative.html.
http://tincanhandmade.blogspot.com/2012/02/homemade-kraft-core-coredinations-duped.html
http://tincanhandmade.blogspot.com/2013/02/faux-weathered-leather-effects-with-dala.html
http://tincanhandmade.blogspot.com/2014/12/i-made-design-team-on-rad-craft.html
http://tincanhandmade.blogspot.com/2013/03/just-because-i-wanted-to-add-second-tag.html

I’m telling you guys DALA is the freaking best, they have everything and at the fraction of the cost that you would usually pay for similar products in other ranges.

So that's my creation for the August challenge at Our Creative Corner

and if you want to get into a debate with me about it - I am going to stick little Mateo on you!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI9iEgdujjA