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Showing posts with label paper dolls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paper dolls. Show all posts

Friday, 3 October 2025

Pumpkin Season - Creative Artiste Oct

Good Morning everyone

Im still waiting for my eye op so vertigo and extreme nausea still plaguing me, I  can only spend about 5mins looking at a screen so this post has taken weeks to type up so I hope it all makes sense - luckily blogger allows us to plan and schedule these posts well in advance if we need to.


Its Autumn and Its October so for my make for creative artiste this month ive made a pumpkin scene and had great fun making it too.

Over at Creative Artiste its always anything goes as long as you use mixed medias, at least 3 Different types

This is very much an assemblage make for me as no stamping or cutting out involved and all the leaves were die cut previously from my inky scraps.  So I just had fun with texture paste, crackle paste, acrylic and shimmer paints and bringing it all together in a little scene.....which doesn't happen over night😊



Approx Size: 10x8"  Wooden pumpkin from the works a few years ago.  I also decided I wanted to use some of the tim holtz paper dolls I have had for years and keeping in a safe place.  I made this for a friend who I know loves all things Tim Holtz so the ideal opportunity to use the paper dolls.

We've got an end of season pumpkin picking scene.  See below for photos of how i made the background.  Once I had finished the background and adding shimmer and shine to the pumpkins I added some of the dolls to look like they are sat on the giant pumpkins and leant up against them.  

I then added lots of die cut autumn leaves which I have a bag full off as I always die cut any left over inked pieces into leaves as they are always useful. So the leaves were inked up with various brushos, distress inks, oxides, mica sprays, pixie powders etc....  I arranged them to look like they are blowing around in the breeze and falling from the trees.



Close up off the pumpkin pile and dolls



Love this little doggy, he has a little pumpkin beside him and is just wondering if he will chase some leaves.....I added a little plastic spider on one pumpkin...it is a little spider but compared to the size of the chap I guess its huge! lol   To take off the plastic shiny finish i covered it with black gesso 

I painted the edge of the wooden pumpkin with black and then edged the front with gold and orange dora paint 

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now onto how I did the background
I first covered the wooden pumpkin with acrylic paints, then adhered the polystyrene pumpkins and painted them with gesso and added some texture paste here and there to the background and ground.  The large pumpkins I cut in half as they would have been too deep - this also makes them go further too - the polystyrene is fairly easy to cut with a craft knife. 
I then built up the colour of the pumpkins and background using acrylic paints, slowly building up the layers until i was happy, this is quite a slow process for me and comes together over days.  It needed to be dark and in shadow amongst the pumpkins to help give the effect of a deep pile of them.  Also dry brushing on several layers to the background to build up the colour.  To help the pumpkin stack to stand out the main background pumpkin is a much darker orange almost red and the smaller ones more yellowy orange.


I dried brushed on a top layer of cadence dora paint in orange and gold so the pumpkins really shimmer in the light - although hard to capture in photos but it is sparkly.  I very lightly added touches of the dora paint to the main mdf pumpkin so it catches the light in places - less is more as the cadence dora paint is very shimmery
I wanted the main pumpkin to have a gnarly tough skin effect like you get on some pumpkins that have battled the weather and garden wildlife so they sometimes get a tough rough skin.  I added texture paste and some crackle paste in areas.

Items Used:
Mdt pumpkin from 'the works'
Polystrene pumpkins from ebay
Tim Holtz ideology pumpkins
Tim Holtz paper dolls
Spellbinders leaf dies
Cadence dora paint 'gold & orange'
Acrylic paints
Ranger Crackle paste
Texture paste

My dad has grown a bumper crop of pumpkins this year with the dry weather so the girls are delighted and i guess we will be living on soup all winter😁

Do hop over to Creative Artiste to see what the rest of the DT has created and to join in with your creative mixed media makes - we love seeing how you mix those medias.

Wishing you all have a very happy October. Emmax


Id love to enter the following:






 

Monday, 23 October 2023

The specimen jar

Good Morning everyone

Today card is for a good craft friend who is halloween & tim holtz mad, she loves using Tims paper dolls so i have teamed up 3 paper dolls with an acetate jar i had.  It is sat on the shelf in the witches den among her other lotions & potions 


   I took a piece of white card and drew around the jar acetate as it has a border around the actual printed line, i then used a craft knife to cut just inside the pencil line, i used very thin super hightack tape to adhered the bottle behind the aperture.  Before actually sticking the jar in, i used glittery texture paste through a shattered stencil and inked up with oxide inks, once dry attahed the jar.

I cut another piece of white card with the next size up die, in the middle where the bottle would be i inked with lemonade and twisted citron inks to give a glowing effect, the outside edge i inked with violet, potion and sapphire inks.  I worked out where i wanted my 3 paper dolls so that they would appear in the bottle and adhered them in position.  I added foam tape to the back of the front panel and stuck into place.  

From previous years i had these digital images of jars, skulls, eyes, bugs printed off and covered with glossy accents.  They are a very very old daisytrail digi-kit.  I arranged them around the main image.  I also had an offcut of spider web and 2 spiders, all cut from black card and dry brushed with silver paint - i also added crackle accents to the spiders.

Dreadfully wicked chipboard
and then 3 chit chat stickers which i mounted onto black card
'Watching and waiting'
'what horrors they had seen'
'Here in the darkened house of weeping'

..............one day the specimen jar will break and they will escape and get the witch😊




This is my last halloween card for this, ive had great fun letting the imagination run wild and distract from real life for a while.


Items Used:
PET/acetate/transparency jar 
Tim Holtz Stencil - shattered
Tim Holtz Paper dolls
Tim Holtz Halloween clipping stickers & Halloween baseboards
Stamperia texture paste 'arctic ice'
Distress Inks 'squeezed lemonade, twisted citron'
Oxide inks ' violet, villainous potion'
Spider & web die
Discontinued daisytrail digital kit for all the bottles, skull, eyeball etc...

Thank you all for stopping by once again. I can't believe its half term already, babysitting 3 nieces so lots of crafting to be done which is lovely, i provide the stash they provide the energy & imagination.  I hope you all have a great week.  Big hugs Emma

Id love to enter the following:


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