WINNERS - Challenge #6 - 31 Days of Halloween

Sara Emily here, and I'm having to write the most difficult post I've ever had to write. Most of you know how much passion I have for Halloween, and I was totally blown away by the number of you that share that passion. Your enthusiasm came through loud and clear with all of your amazing haunting entries. I was so impressed with the creative ways you found to include the # 31 on your projects. Choosing a winner wasn't hard, because they were ALL winners in my book, but narrowing it down to only one was next to impossible.

After tossing and turning for a couple of nights, flipping coins, revisiting all your blogs, and working the problem out on paper, I came to the conclusion that the winner is:

WINNER: # 24 Lynn Price

Lynn used so many techniques to create this eerie scene. Her rotten skull is amazing, and the candle and the roses just sealed the deal for me. It looks as if her elements are surfacing out of a thick fog. If you haven't had a chance to see this exceptional mystifying journal page up close, please be sure to visit her blog. You will be amazed how this was created!

Congratulations Lynn! Pamellia will be contacting you via email to send you your personalized winner's badge and details about being our Guest Designer for our next challenge!

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And for my Runner(s)-Up!

# 4 Nicole Wright

One word. WOW! Just look at the way these houses glow! Lots of great Halloween details on these that must be seen up close to truly appreciate! I love how Nicole incorporated her # 31 using those letterpress blocks! Her passion for Halloween transferred to this pair of Haunted dwellings, and I could almost hear her chuckling to herself as she crafted these!

and

# 15 Jackie P Neal

I'm pretty sure Jackie took a photo of me and stuck it on this gorgeous, colorful, textural Halloween tag, because I looked just like this witch pretty much the month of October, as I fought back the flu. What a fabulous background with clever use of products! I have to give her a big round of applause for every single spooky detail, but the scaly snake just stole my creepy heart!

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Now on to our DT Favourites

Branka's Favourite - #14 Kerstin F.

This fantastic altered book has stolen my heart! I am amazed by so many awesome details wonderfully arranged, creating such an unique and spooky piece of art! 

Cec's Favourite - #14 Kerstin F.

I also chose this fantastic altered book.  I think it is so clever of Kerstin to carve out the pages to provide niches for her spooky scenes.  The colour palette is perfect for the theme as are all the great Halloween-themed elements that she added.

Georgie's Favourite - 26 Suzz's Stamping Spot

I just adore this tag, the colours are perfectly Halloween. Gorgeous layers with the bingo card and string, and of course the beautiful owl. The way the ribbon has been used to complement the colours is fab and great use of asymmetry! A little project but big on wow!!

Niki's Favourite -#3 Wendy K

This book caught my attention right quick! There are so many wonderful pages, full of Halloween goodness. Poe is my favorite page, although all of the pages are awesome sauce. The details and different elements are what made this my favorite.

Pamellia's Favourites
10. Julia Aston

I just fell in love with Julia's spooky Halloween window box! It's fun and wonky and her techniques creating textures are just amazing! If you would like to see how she put this together, click on her name, she has lots of in process shots so you can watch her create!

12. valerie-Jael

Valerie's tag just jumped off the page to me! The contrast of the black and orange in fantastic and so perfect for Halloween! I love all the little details she included, like that creepy little spider on the broom stick! Well done!

Samra's Favourite - #28 Evelyn Walter

Gorgeous transformation of a serving tray with such great idea of eerie yet beautiful and dark make.

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Honourable Mentions

7. Deb Riddell             8. chrissie             11. Paradise Lost              22. Lisa H

      

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A huge congratulation everyone! Thank you so much to everyone who played along with us last month and don't forget to grab your badges! You earned them!!

There is still plenty of time to enter Cec's current challenge "IT'S ORNAMENTAL"! We can't wait to see what you come up with this time!

Hugs to all, from the 'Anything But Cute' Design Team

Challenge #7 - It's Ornamental

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to a new challenge here at Anything But Cute. It is Cec here and I am your hostess for this month.  Before I tell you all about the challenge, I just want to thank everyone who joined us last month with all their wonderful and very spooky Halloween projects.  Don't forget to check back with us next Thursday when Sara Emily and the team announce the winners of the 31 Days of Halloween challenge. Now on to this month's theme.

Once Halloween is over everything kicks into gear for Christmas and I always like to get an early start on my preparations so I am not doing it all at the last minute and this year is no exception.  About 4 years ago I decided it was time to hand the tree with all the kid-friendly and kid-created ornaments over to my Grandchildren and get a new tree that I could decorate in a more adult fashion - besides I was tired of stringing all the lights on it and wanted a pre-lit tree.  I love to decorate the tree with lots of ornaments and the house with lots of holiday decor items, which led me to the theme for this month.

IT'S ORNAMENTAL

Since the holiday will be coming up pretty quickly, we want you to create a mixed media ornament for your Christmas tree or a Christmas decor item for your house or table.

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And now for some inspiration from the talented Anything But Cute design team!

Anne - Redanne

I love Christmas and I love making 3D decorations for our home. I have used lots of texture paste, shrink plastic and a lot of glitter to create this festive church scene - it lights up too!

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Branka - Vintage Handmade

I like to decorate my home for Christmas time in a vintage style so I created this piece to decorate my craft room. I used the back side of a small canvas, white crackle paste, some alcohol inks and some embellishments mostly from my stash. 

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Cec - CW Card Creations

I made this ornament for my tree from a wooden shape that my husband cut for me on his laser cutter - I am loving his new toy.  To turn it into an ornament I used more wooden shapes, lots of texture paste, metallic paints, lace, gems and beads.

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Niki - Pawsitively Creative Crafts

I love the Christmas season and was super excited to design this altered mailbox. I went for a soft and elegant feel. It all started with a paper mache mailbox and Shimmer Sheetz. And of course, there is a surprise on the inside! This season is all about surprises for me and I enjoy giving people any type of surprise! Happy Holidays!

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Samra - Paper Talk with Samra

I made this ornament using a paper mache star ornament from a craft supply store. I decorated it with Inca Gold paint, glass glitter, micro beads, metal filigrees and a metal flower.

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Sara Emily - sarascloset

Not yet quite in the Christmas spirit yet, I pulled some mismatched salt shakers from my bottle collection and made a snow family.  I used paper clay, alcohol inks, Crackle paint, Gesso and Distress paints to craft my Snowshakers. Oh, and there's a bit of glitter in there, too! Maybe these will bring some real snow to the south this season!

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I know you will agree that my team mates have created some fabulous projects for this theme and they are going to have some beautifully decorated homes this holiday season. Please hop over to each of their blogs to see more photos and get some details on how these projects were made and while you're there be sure to tell them how much you love their work.

I hope that we have inspired you to head to your craft room and create something to add to your tree or to show proudly as part of your holiday decorating.

The winner will receive the honour of being our Guest Designer for an upcoming challenge!

Here at Anything But Cute we just love to see all the seasoned and expert mixed media artists, but we also want to encourage those who are just getting their feet wet. Our design team will always be on the lookout for these exceptional projects and artists. You just never know when we might be giving out something special to a lucky mixed media newcomer. We all have to start somewhere, right?

This challenge runs until December 4th - we can't wait to see what you come up with! Happy Crafting from the entire team, and thanks for visiting Anything But Cute!

An InLinkz Link-up

Introducing Anne

Hello Everyone!

It is with great pleasure I am here today, as I am introducing the newest member to the Anything But Cute design team. I have been following Anne's work for some time now and not only have I been lucky enough to get to know her amazing work, but I have been even luckier to get to know what a wonderful woman she is! Please hang around and learn a little bit more about this spectacular artist and see some of her outstanding mixed media creations! I am so honoured and thrilled to welcome...

Anne Redfern - Redanne

Hello Everyone! My name is Anne Redfern (or Redanne as I am known in Blogland). Since emigrating from Canada 40 years ago I have lived in the beautiful County of Cheshire in England.

I have always loved crafting, in any form, be it sewing, knitting or papercrafting.  I also share my DH's passion for model railways (we are planning to build one from scratch). About 6 years ago I took early retirement after a long and rewarding career in Human Resources. Since the family had long flown the nest, I was tempted, after seeing a demo in a Craft shop, to buy a Big Shot and a couple of dies and the rest, as they say, is history! My latest love is mixed media and although I have only fairly recently dipped my toes into this amazing form of art, I really am completely hooked!

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Anne has picked out a few of her favourite mixed media projects to share with us today. Her creativity just blows me away and her ability to creature texture is absolutely incredible! Every project is unique and truly a work of art!

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This is my most favourite project ever, ever! I just love building 3D projects and this one is constructed from two Artist Trading Blocks. I love how a few paints and mediums can create a true rusty and aged appearance on plain white card - it just fascinates me....

This little binder album was created using a faux wood technique, taught to me by my exceptionally talented friend Jenny (Buttons). Rust features quite heavily too both inside and out, something I think I have a slight obsession with! 

This 5" x 5" canvas was an absolute joy to make, I just love using pastes to create lots of texture.  I adore creating underwater scenes, they feature heavily in my work and this is one of my favourites.

I am truly inspired by the work of Andy Skinner and this Valentine block was made using his faux letterpress technique and lots of DecoArt products. It is perhaps a more 'pretty' result than Andy's style but I am happy with that. The flower is handmade, another passion of mine but one that has not been used much lately.

I absolutely adore Halloween and this was a project I did in an on-line class with Richele Christensen over a number of weeks.  It is chock full of wonderful techniques that I still use today.  This project really gave me the confidence to delve more into the wonderful world of mixed media.

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Well, I think you will agree that Anne is a mixed media genius and I am just so excited to see what she comes up with for our challenges! She is going to be a wonderful source of knowledge and inspiration!!

Please come and visit us again on Thursday, November 5th when we start our next challenge, and don't forget to hit that Follow button while you're here!

Thanks for visiting and Happy Crafting!

Pamellia :)

Spotlight Artist - Branka - Dylusions Paints

Hello! It's Branka here and I am pleased to be presenting the spotlight post this month, which is about playing with Dylusions paints. You may already know how devoted I am to these awesome paints. After reading this post you'll find out why. Dylusions came out with a line of twelve paints designed to match their ink sprays.

Here is the list of colors: Black Marble, White Linen, Bubblegum Pink, Postbox Red, Squeezed Orange, Lemon Zest, Fresh Lime, Cut Grass, Vibrant Turquoise, London Blue, Crushed Grape and Melted Chocolate. They come in jars and they are very liquid so be careful when you open the jar. The paint cleans up easily with warm water and soap. I love to apply them using my fingers and my brush.

These vibrant paints are easily blendable and they are translucent which I love. Not too thin and not too tick, this paint is just perfect for art journaling and mixed media creations. If you want to achieve a less translucent look, you can apply more layers of the desired color. Since they are designed mostly for art journaling these are fast drying paints and they are permanent when dry so you have to bear that in mind when blending them. 

I used 'finger' technique to create the background on this card:

If you want to achieve more smooth look you can use your baby wipe to apply these paints and to blend them. I like to use Dylusions paints directly on my art journal pages or manila tags without gesso. These paints can be diluted with water as any other acrylic paint. It's a great way to create beautifully blended backgrounds using as many colors as you want and creating as many layers as you desire. 

Here's the example of an art journal page with baby wipe blended background:

The other way you can apply these paints is using the Tim Holtz mini blending tool. You can apply the paint randomly or you can use Dyan Reaveley's block technique like here:

Tip: in creating these blocks use the paint from the lid of your jar because in that way you can more control how much paint you take. I always take a very small amount of paint and testing it on my craft sheet to be sure that it's not too much. 

After creating your blocks you can play with your stencils. Small amount of paint, mini blending tool and your stencils - that's all you need to create a vibrant and wonderful background.

I like to add borders using my stencils and mini blending tool to achieve more finished look. 

You can doodle since this paint accepts all types of writing inks. One more fantastic thing - the pages won't stick together after you use Dylusions paints. Here's the example:

If you rather like to achieve a kind of effect for your background as on the picture below.

Then you can use your brayer and a palette knife. Pick a small amount of paint with your palette knife and place it on your craft sheet. Use your brayer on the paint and randomly roll on your paper or art journal page. Play with different color combinations and because of these fast drying paints you will be able to quickly add many layers. How fun is that?

This is how this technique works on a black surface:

Tip: You don't want to waste your paint so you can use your palette knife and draw or doodle on the rest of your paint after brayering and press a tag or an art journal page onto it. Cool, isn't it? To achieve the same result you can also use Dylusions paints with your gelli plate. The trick is to always use a very small amount of paint. You can always add more paint if you want to.

You want to create a Bokeh effect background like I did here?

Just clean your mini blending tools in your art journal. I always try to leave my blending tools as clean as possible after using them with Dylusions paints. To do that I am just creating dots in my art journal. To achieve a Bokeh effect you can use your mini blending tool with White Linen Dylusions paint and create white dots randomly over the dotted page.

I hope this post has inspired you to play with these awesome paints, to experiment with them in creating something new, fun and beautiful! 

There is still time to join the fun for Sara's 31 Days Of Halloween at Anything But Cute! 

You have until the 4th of November to play - and you'll find all the challenge details as well as lots of inspiration from the brilliant Anything But Cute design team by clicking on the challenge link.

Happy crafting!

Branka x