Design Team Project #1 featuring Tim Holts Halloween Blueprint Stamps and Carta Bella All Hallow's Eve Designs (posted by Lesley)

BOO!!!!!

Hello lovely visitors.  It's my week to show you what I've been up to with the lovely products our smashing bosses, Val and Don sent us to play with this month.   For my first project this week I've mainly used the brilliant Halloween Blueprint stamps from Mr Holtz together with a few of the stickers from the Carta Bella All Hallow's Eve set.  Later in the week I'm hoping to show the versatility of these fabulous papers.  Actually, they are a heavyweight paper which is quite sturdy and more like card and this also adds to their usefulness and not just for Halloween either.

Anyway, to kick off my week I decided to alter some old coasters I had in my stash (another of my charity shop purchases ;D).  I started off by putting masking tape on the back so that I wouldn't get them all messy and then I gave them each two or three coats of Gesso because the surface of the coasters is really shiny.  I was going to use black Gesso which I KNOW I have somewhere in my tip of a craftroom but could I find it?  Could I heck, so I had to go with white and I followed this with painting two coasters with Sunset Orange Dabber and the other two with Citrus Dabber.  I gave them all two coats.  I deliberately used thick Gesso and paint layers to keep the brush strokes so that the surface has some texture.  It resembles linen.

I then used some Cut and Dry foam and Archival Black ink to apply ink roughly over the coasters and then added more over some Tim Holtz masks (barbed wire and an ironwork border).

The next step was to stamp my chosen images from the Halloween Blueprints using Archival Black ink.  I didn't always use the whole image as you will see.

Next, I cut out some skeletons and bones from the 'Eerie Notes' sheet of paper and then decided which of the stickers I wanted to use from the Carta Bella products.  There are some really good ones on two whole 12 x 12 sheets.  I arranged them on my coasters, stuck them down and finished off with a coat of multi-medium too seal the surfaces.  I only gave mine one thickish coat but I think a couple more thin layers might be advisable if these are to be used for their original purpose and not just decoration.

Finally, I removed  the masking tape from the back and used a thick Sharpie marker to ink all the edges black.

Well, that's it from me for today.   I hope you like my fun Halloween coasters but don't forget to drop by later in the week to see what else I've made with these fab products.  Also, if you haven't already done so, leave a comment on Gillian's first post for last week HERE to be in the monthly Snazzy draw to win some goodies and of course, the products I've used can be purchased from Snazzys either via the online shop (more goodies being added all the time), in store or via the phone.  As Gillian mentioned last week, the DT pack we lucky ladies are sent to play with will be available as a kit each month at a fab discounted price.  See HERE for this month's kit.

Have a lovely Monday folks and I'll see you later!