Dance in the Pale Moonlight by Katy Leitch

I've been mixing and matching Andy's stamps new and old for this week's tag project, combining the Stampendous skeleton image with those fabulous gravestones from the new Illusionary Artists Gothic Grunge set.

Here's a quick guide to how I made it:
1 Gesso the tag white. Punch a circle from paper to use as mask for the moon. Stick it down with temporary adhesive.

2 Paint the tag with greys, blues and purples, lightening the tone as you blend from bottom to top. When the paint is dry, remove the mask.

3 Add some pattern to the moon (I stamped this with a homemade carved stamp but you easily paint some detail in there). Add a wash of Paynes Grey so the moon is a little less stark white. Add a halo of light around it by blending Transluscent White paint around the other edge with your finger - you can blend out the edge with a baby wipe to make it really soft.

4 On a separate piece of card, stamp the skeleton. Fussy cut and wash with Paynes Grey.

5 On another piece of card, dab black, Sap Green and grey paints using pieces of sponge (I use cheap kitchen sponge). Cover the whole card but make sure areas of all colours remian visible. Stamp the gravestones onto this card and cut them out.

6 Assemble all as shown, using heavy gel on some of the gravestones to lift them slightly. The sentiment is from Word Up and stamped onto a Tim Holtz banner die cut.

Hope you like my spooky tag!
See you soon,
Katy

Products used:
Illusionary Artists Stamps: Gothic Grunge, Word Up (available here)
Stampendous Andy Skinner Stamp Set: Birds and Bones
DecoArt Media: Fluid Acrylics
DecoArt Media: Heavy Gel Medium, White Gesso
Tando Creative Tall Tag

Always... by Katy Leitch

I was lucky enough to receive the Gothic Grunge set from Illusionary Artists for my debut DT piece. As soon as I saw it I thought it would pair beautifully with Andy's skull stencil for a monochrome project. The word stamp comes from the versatile IA Word Up set - I decided to give this romantic sentiment a sinister twist....

Here's how I made it:

1 Repeat stamp the arch window in a pattern onto the journal page – be sure to use permanent ink. Overstamp areas with the smaller arch.

2 Mute the stamping by covering with a thin coat of white gesso.

3 Add colour wet-in-wet with Dark Grey 6 and Translucent White DecoArt Fluid Acrylics

4 Stamp the gravestones in Watering Can Archival and again over the top in Jet Black (this gives an illusion of perspective).

5 Stamp all around the edges using just the very top of the scenic stamp and one of the ‘fig’ text stamps to create a 'frame' to your page.

6 Draw the outline of the skull through the stencil with pencil and block out in white gesso.

7 Position the stencil again over the gessoed area and apply Carbon Black Americana Premium through it with a stencilling brush.

8 Use your finger to apply more Carbon Black around the page edges.

9 Finish with the word ‘always’ stamped into a white area of the skull image.

I hope you like my Gothic-inspired journal page!

Katy x

 Gothic Grunge and Word Up sets from Illusionary Artists - available here