Make It Spooky at Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps

Could we possibly squeeze any more fun into one day at the Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps Blog??!! We have our weekly challenge, another round of August sneak peeks and bog candy!! For today's challenge all the Krafty Girls have made projects featuring the August stamps by Krafty artist Annie Rodrigue...just wait until you see what she has been brewing up for your colouring pleasure!!

Our challenge this week is "Make It Spooky", so look into your crafty treasure troves and pull out all things ghoulish and creepy and get Krafty with us.

This brand new little spell caster by artist Annie Rodrigue is "Magical Mathilda". (she comes with two sentiments: "Come and sit for a spell!" and "Bugs and hisses to you!") That's quite the book she's got there, no?...not sure what magic she's released by opening the cover, but she is quite enthralled with that wispy trail of spooky skulls! It kind of reminds me of the books in Harry Potter. (Remember the Monster Book of Monsters? Or how about that creepy one from the restricted section in the Hogwarts library...the one that lets out that spine-tingling screech when opened??) I have a little story about this card. You see, months ago I had coloured up a Halloween image and created this card base for it. I sat it on my shelf and looked at it for two days...and hated it. The colours were just "off"...so I very carefully used a piece of thread to tease the image off, and created another card base with papers that matched that coloured image better. I was not about to throw this one out though, so I stuck it in a file for future use. When I set about colouring up images for this month's release, I pulled out this card to see if it suited any of them, and thought Mathlida would look cute perched on the circular layer. I just made sure to colour my image to actually MATCH my papers this time, lol. However, I still should have coloured the "magic spell" darker...it's a bit too bright for this card still. Anyways, the point of my story is never throw away your "failed" cards or even bits and pieces of cards...you never know when they will come in handy! I can't quite remember for sure, but I believe the papers are from Basic Grey Wassail (yeah I know, Christmas papers on a Halloween card?!) and some MME paper that was heavily inked with Distress Inks to coordinate with the colour scheme (probably Bundled Sage and Black Soot Distress Inks). The ribbon is Offray from Walmart and the little brad was one I had in my stash. Circle and Lacey Circle Spellbinders were used for the circular panel. It was embellished with flat backed rhinestones (from Walmart) that were coloured with a C9 Copic marker.

Magical Mathilda was stamped on Neenah cardstock with Memento Ink and coloured with Copic markers. As I said earlier, I should have coloured the "spell" darker...I used several markers on it, but perhaps the C's should have been a little more dominant. I did use some black Conte crayon afterwards to try to make it appear "smokier", but I also applied a bit of Smooch Illuminate which may have decreased the effect. While I wanted the pumpkins to be orange, I still wanted them to have a "ghostly" feel since they are part of Mathilda's spell so I first coloured them in a base of BV23 and BV31. That was followed by some E97, E99, a bit of C5 for shadows along the left edge and a bit of RV000 for the highlights on the right edges. I think next time I'll try to colour them a bit more "transparent" so that you can see the wisps of smoke through them. I adhered Mathilda directly to the paper with my favourite adhesive Tombow Multi Liquid Glue, but I popped up the "spell" with foam squares for a bit of dimension.

Skin: E000, E00, E11, R20  Hair: E50, E31, E33, E37, E59  Dress: R27, R46, R59, C5, C7, YG00, G20, G24, YG91, YG95, G99, C5 (and a bit of black Conte Crayon to deepen the shadows) Tights: E41, E43, E47, E50 (and black Conte Crayon) Book: E25, Y23, Y17, E31, (first coloured with a base of BV31 before applying red) R27, R46, R59, C5, C7, black Conte Crayon  Spell: BV00, BV23, BV31, RV000, C00, C1, C5  **NOTE** if you plan to use Conte Crayons for additional shading, please make sure to do so after you have completely finished with your markers so as not to contaminate your marker nibs. :)

We'd love to have you play along with our Make It Spooky challenge. Our random winner this week will receive their choice of one of the brand new August stamps!! (just make sure to use a Kraftin' Kimmie Stamp on your project to be eligible) The new stamps used by the Krafty Girls today will be available for purchase tomorrow, but in the meantime you can use any of last year's amazing Halloween release to play along with the challenge!! (I loved last year's Halloween release as well...so many fantastically creepy characters! you can find them all at the Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps Online Store) For more creepy inspiration and sneak peeks of Annie's newest Kraftin' Kimmie stamps, please make sure to visit with the rest of the Krafty Girls today...links to their blogs can be found at the Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps Blog.

***SNEAK PEEK BLOG CANDY ALERT***:  Would you like to win some of the newest Annie Rodrigue Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps??!! Well, make sure leave comments for each of the Krafty Girls participating in today's sneak peeks, and Kimmie will draw TWO winners who will each win THREE of the new stamps!! Their names will be announced on tomorrow's post at the Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps Blog.

One more sleep my friends, and then you can get your inky fingers on the new August stamps!! Please join us tomorrow for the release day blog hop. You will have the opportunity to see a variety of the new stamps in amazing projects by a fantastic group of very talented paper crafters sure to spark your creative juices...and then you can do some Krafty shopping!

Blessing,

Melanie

Stamps: Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps "Magical Mathilda"
Ink: Memento, Copics, Distress Ink
Paper: Neenah, Bazzill, MME, Basic Grey
Embellishments: Ribbon, machine stitching, rhinestones and brad
Tools: Spellbinders