Spooky Halloween Fun on a Tag

Today I am playing with Topflight Stamps, making a spooky Halloween Tag. I love this holiday it is my 2nd favorite. I also love making tags so perfect combo. 

Spooky Tag Fun!

Here is my cool tag using Katzelkraft stamps. I also recently bought the Tim Holtz Stamp Platform, mainly for kitting for my classes. However I played with it for the 1st time on this tag & realized even mix media artist need this!! I will show you how the Stamp Platform saved my tag. I am also entering this tag in the Craft Stamper Magazine challenge site, this months challenge can be found here if you want to play along. 

First off here is the stamp set Halloween I got to play with. You can buy this from Topflight as well as Tim's platform. More on that as we play!

 Let's Distress a Tag. 

 Starting with tag spritzed lightly with water, spray your colors on the tag. I was worried that these colors would make mud together because of the purple so I did a test first on a piece of paper. Where the purple & yellow mixed it was muddy but a nice espresso color so I went with it. 

Opps Craft Fail...

After adding some washi tape I heat embossed the haunted house. My idea was to add some alcohol ink to darken it some & doodle. As I started working on it I realized a lot of the cool detail that makes the stamp special was being lost as the emboss is too thick for it to show. So I flipped the tag over & started again. I can always add a piece of pattern card stock on this side to hide my boo boo. 

Stamp Platform Time

At this point I pulled out this handy dandy device. You can find it here at Topflight Stamps. Rather then me try & explain how it works how about I let Tim show you in this video you can find here. 

Just like in the video, opened the tool & placed my tag using the magnets. Next step is to position the stamp on the tag & bring the top acrylic piece down & push so the stamp adheres to the acrylic. 

After opening the tool lid & inking my stamp I brought the lid down and pressed as if it was a normal acrylic block, just like in the video. After lifting the lid I realized that my stamp was resisted by the washi tape as it has a slick finish & bold image. Normally this would be a problem that potentially would cause me to start over. Not with the Platform however! I simply removed the washi tape. See the blank spot where the washi was on right side pic above?

 I simply brought the lid down again & re-stamped. The image is crisp & much darker. YAY!!!! Total craft save! It is hard to tell in the above pic how well this 3x stamped image worked but you can sure see it below.

Now let's add to this tag! Using the eye & bat stamps with some heat emboss helped the images to pop. I really wanted the bat to show up so why not yellow, this is art after all not real life. Who says a bright yellow bat could not be living on my imaginary tag? Inking in some details using paint & gel pens also really bought this tag to life.  

Time to add my stamped, distressed & pop dotted title. Love the details on this title! Finished this tag with ribbons & some charms. Thanks so much for joining me today & please head over to the Topflight Blog & leave me a comment, it would be much appreciated! I hope you have some time to play today!

Time to Make the Donuts Art Card!!

Hello fans of inky cards & techniques, today I have a fun Doughnut mini art journal page for you. I seriously love the stamps available on Topflight Stamps there are so many great options & this one is no exception. I have a quick tutorial on how this came about. 

Art Journal Page in my Eileen Hull Hummingbird Passport Book

 Mini Art Journal Page

I decided to do a page in my stamps mini art journal. I will show the book at the end of this post. I really love how this turned out because it went through a case of the uglies big time! I just kept adding & tweaking &  voila! If you have never been to Duck Donuts I highly recommend them, they are currently my favorite. You custom order your doughnut & they are given to you fresh made & warm!

 Here is the stamp set I used: 

 

Delicious Donuts

This Delicious Donuts set was so much fun to use. I love that it can be made cutsie or grungy & of course I went with the latter. The building block stamps are perfect to build this nummy breakfast treat.

Stamping with Acrylic Paint

To start my background I simply swiped the purple on with a baby wipe, let it dry & then swiped on the orange. I dipped the stripe doughnut piece in turquoise paint and used it without an acrylic block to just add some random lines on the background. The O was dipped in magenta paint and stamped but it didn't show up so I redid it using gesso. 

 I stamped the "icing swirl" using Archival to make my border- fun! 

Time to make the donuts!!

I stamped the donuts on telephone paper using archival ink & cut them out.

Next step was to use watered down paint to color in the icing portion. The diluted paint let the stamped image show through so I could color the sprinkles in. You can see on the finished card I did just that with gel pens & ink. I added some ink marks too.

My big doughnut was stamped on card stock in archival ink. 

The icing was painted with watered down paint, then sprinkles stamped with paint & finally chocolate icing swirl with archival ink. I let the doughnut dry in between each step. I think the next time I would heat emboss the chocolate swirl to give it some dimension. I then cut it ti make it look nibbled on. 

Then it was a simple matter of assembly. The boy doll holding the doughnut was the perfect addition to finish my card off. I did add some sprinkle stamping in the background too. It was stamped with archival ink just to add some subtle interest. Also some random doodle around the small donuts. 

 

This page is going in my Hummingbird Stamp Book which you can find a full tutorial for it here. Thanks for stopping by today to check out my project. I hope you enjoyed it!