Strange Beauty

With Halloween almost upon us my mind can't help turn to the strange and spooky.

Here are a couple of very quick spooky ATC's 
This one uses a stamp from Inkadinkado. I've had the set for ages as I just couldn't resist the quirky images, but this was the first time I've used it. The quote round the edge is "there is no beauty without some strangeness" which is a variation on an Edgar Allen Poe quote and very fitting for this fab octopus. It is coloured mostly with watercolour pencils.

For the second one I used a Sheena Douglas stencil and a gorgeous tree stamp from a Crafty Individuals set. It was coloured with a mixture of watercolour pencils and black and white Neocolor crayons.

I'd like to enter these into the Craft Barn weekly challenge.

Happy Halloween to all!

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

My little boy recently turned 3 (where on earth did the time go!). He's a very sweet little lad (most of the time) and loves singing. One of his favourites is twinkle twinkle little star, and he sings it so sweetly that I well up every time. He's my little star. 

So today, I want to share a piece of home decor I made with this in mind. I have wanted to do something with teabags for a long time, and it finally got pushed to the top of my mental ideas list by an article by Jaine Drake in this months Craft Stamper magazine. My piece is a very different style but the patchwork effect was definitely inspired by that project.

I have to admit, it's a bit, hmm, should I say 'rustic' and I'll apologise in advance for the poor picture quality.

It's made of teabags stitched together and then stitched onto some brown packing paper. The packing paper had white and gold paint applied randomly using my Gelli plate (using up a failed experiment). Some of the teabags were stamped or stencilled. The stars were stenciled in Prima copper crackle texture paste through a Prima stencil and outlined with watercolour pencils. I stamped the words and stitched those on too. 

I'd like to enter this in the Craft Barn weekly challenge on the theme of light, and also into Craft Stampers 'take a technique' challenge. 

Finally here's a quick pic of my lovely little muse.

Thanks for looking! X