you should celebrate the end of a love affair as they celebrate death in new orleans, with songs, laughter, dancing and a lot of wine - francoise sagan

Oooooh-la-la this post is l-a-t-e!  By a month at least.  It seems that I have found a trend in my posting and it isn't pretty.  Good thing New Year's is fast approaching; I can be assured I will not struggle with coming up with enough resolutions.  First one was a pilot to test out the waters: I resolved to not be cold this winter.  So far, so good and I am definitely gaining resolution-making confidence.  Second resolution: plan out my crafting a bit better.  I need to balance out the commitments and plan better.  I'll keep you updated on how my resolutions are coming along.  Third resolution: Follow through with following up.  I should throw in a: don't-take-on-more-than-you-can-chew resolution but that would mean before December even hits I already have four resolutions.  I should pace myself.

I had a blast making this double-sided Halloween tag for our Halloween tag swap.  Theme: New Orleans.  I wanted continuity between the two sides and so the cobbled path on the bottom of side one matches up to the cobbled path on side two as does the fence.  F-U-N spells Halloween in New Orleans.

I wanted the haunted house stamped image to be a mix of colour and black & white; vintage meets retro colour.  I kept the tag to three main colours: orange (all time fav colour), purple and green and accented the colours with stickles.  The background was painted using distress ink (pumice stone).

Here's a close-up of the pumice mixed media cobbled path.  I decorated the fence with sequins and sprayed tag side one using dylusions (picket fence) and both the shattered and halloween text stencils.

Tag side two highlights our zombie/day of the dead friend who may have left his haunted house to party New Orleans-style at the Haunted Chateau which is in the cemetery.  The forest was created using dylusions (picket fence) spray and a forest stencil.

I added a day of the dead face to mr. zombie (stampers anonymous zombie dancer) with a wiggle mechanism so mr. zombie really does boogie.  He was painted using distress inks (peeled paint,seedless preserves, tea dye).

The rats in the cemetery image is actually not a stamp but an embossing folder that I inked.  I'm not much of an embossing folder user, however, I do have an unexplainable number of folders and I often take a bunch out at the beginning of each project hoping that one will find its way into my work.  And really they do not.  I was adamant about using the rats in the cemetery folder for this tag swap and as I often do, I thought how the folder would make a much better stamp than a folder et voila! the background embossed stamp was born.  Not revolutionary but effective.

Some folks do Christmas in July; maybe Halloween in November will start to trend.  Just when you thought it was over and all that was left was a memory and some caramel chews you visit everything she touches for a little reminder of our favourite spooky holiday.

Boo.