Alpha Challenge H for Haunt

My next page for The Craft Barn Alpha Challenge is H for Haunt. I used Cherry Pie Gothic Halloween plate 47.  I stamped the tombstones in Memento London Fog so they are showing up faintly in the background and the other images in black. Everything stamped on the Gesso comes out textured.

Alpha Challenge - H is for Hedgehogs and Hexagons

  The Craft Barn Alpha Challenge is on H. H is a thin section, at least in the French to English part of the dictionary so it made it easier to choose and on this page two words leapt out at me, one was Herisson meaning Hedgehog, and the other was Hexagone meaning - well hexagon!

O.K. Hedgehogs was easy enough, I had a new Little Claire stamp of hedgehogs, and failing that I have loads of Penny Black hedgehogs. Hexagons were a bit more of a challenge. I thought I must have either a stamp or die but no hexagons anywhere. While I was looking I turned over a Really Useful box to see if I could see any magnetic stamps at the bottom that I had forgotten I had that might be hexagon shaped, and lightbulb moment - the bottom of the RUB was patterned with - hexagons!

 So without futher ado I inked up the box and tried it out, and then stamped the page and went over the lines with a Promarker because they were a bit faint. Then I wanted to fill the hexagons and somehow my Hero Arts owl flock crept into it, so lots of Hs on this page, but only the two words! The next word will come from the English part of the book.

I have taken two photos, I cannot get the book to stay down flat, and I cannot stop the corners curling, what does everyone else do I wonder, theirs all look so perfect and flat! So I took one with the book weight down with some hedgehogs which seemed appropriate, and the other is held with my fingertips hence the missing bottom of the page!

The Craft Barn Alpha Challenge - V

I only found out about this challenge at The Craft Barn blog yesterday and I have had a lot of fun with it! The challenge is to alter an old dictionary, a redundant one or a charity shop buy. You can also make tags or journal pages without a dictionary but you have to stick to the same thing right the way through this. Now I just hope my book stays in one piece or I will have to add it to pages and make a new book. 

The letter is V, and this is an old French dictionary of no great value as you can see, so I didn't hesitate (much) as I love books and it is hard to vandalise them. So I picked out my first word which is Valiant, meaning brave or courageous (courageux actually), gallant, robuste or hale and hearty or penniless according to the dictionary. I thought of my Rubbadubbadoo knight immediately and after painting the page with white gesso I got stamping. Oh before I started I outlined the word and meaning and then heat embossed them with clear EP, to protect it from the gesso, not sure it was a good idea! I stamped the castle in Memento grey, the knight in Brilliance black and heat embossed with black EP, and the seal with gold Brilliance and copper EP. I found it was not too easy stamping directly onto the book, I need to put a mouse mat or something under the page I think. I stamped the word brave also with Rubbadubbadoo stamps, and stamped an arrow and heat embossed that from an Autumn Leaves set I got in a sale and have never used, all the arrows are from the same set and the You Are Here sentiment. I die cut the V using Sizzix Shadowbox in copper metal sheet and a script paper. I decided the page looked too bare so I stamped the fluer de lis which I got free from Crafty Individuals with some other freebies when I purchased the music stamps. I decided to paint the by now curling edges of the page with Tim Holtz crackle paint in antique photo, this was an unopened pot I bought from someone and it was like thick mud - not sure if that is how it is supposed to be, it was difficult to paint!. Still not happy I sprayed the page with bronze Glimmer mist, this was my first Miranda type mistake - the green fleur de lis's started to run! So sort of happy I had done all I could and after drying the page with my heat gun I started on the word Vacance, holidays, vacation, take a holiday, go on holiday, which was on the other page. I painted the page first with gesso and heat dried it (I was running out of time by now) then painted the sea, beach and sky with acrylics, adding gold glitter to the beach paint. I used a Debbi Moore stamp set to stamp Summer and the shells on the beach, and a recent bargain Warren stamp from Happy Everything set by Craftwork Cards (isn't he the cutest?) onto white card and coloured it with Promarkers and Trias, and cut him out. I also stamped the sun and sheep cloud from a Hero Arts clear set called Sky's the limit. and that is it. Oh my other Miranda moment? I managed to knock the blue paint loaded brush onto my Valiant page and in attempting to clean off blue paint I managed to spread yellow on it too, scream!

So I may have messed this up totally but I had a good time doing it!