CAPTIVATING New Watercolor Medium

Happy Halloween!

This is one of my favorite holidays, and I'm really hoping we get a lot of trick or treaters. But if not, we have lots of FULL SIZED candy bars to give to a good cause. Don't skimp on Halloween, y'all. I still remember this freaky dentist on the street I grew up on who gave out toothbrushes and those tablets that you chew and they make your teeth red wherever there's plaque.

He was like the harbinger of people thinking commenting on things on Facebook changes the world. YOU AIN'T CHANGING HALLOWEEN WITH YOUR TOOTHBRUSHES, BRO. YOU'RE JUST MAKING KIDS SAD.

ANYWAY - I'm not sad because I love Halloween and I'm going to make a lot of kids happy tonight.

I have been hanging onto this stamp set for a while because it's so perfect for Halloween/Dia de los Muertos - and all of the sudden - there was a new Inktense product that was PERFECT for painting this card! If you love Inktense as much as I do - although that doesn't seem possible - you will love this travel-friendly new format. I love my pencils and my blocks, but they definitely aren't something as easy to travel with as this is. You'll see a video walkthrough below. I paired this with the couldn't-be-more-perfect sentiment from this set.

AALL & Create QUIRKS 73 Clear Stamp... [ SSS ] Happiness Belongs To You - Picket... [ PFS ] Derwent Inktense Paint Pan Travel Set... [ BLIC ] VersaFine Clair Ink Pad, Nocturne -... [ ELH | SSS ] 06196-1002 - Silver Brush Black... [ BLIC ] Fabriano Extra White Cold Press... [ BLIC ] Avery Self-Adhesive Removable Laser... [ AMZUS ] Heavy Base Weight Card Stock- Key Lime [ GNK ] Heavy Base Weight Card Stock- White [ GNK ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSW | HA | SSS | ELH | MFT ] Lawn Fawn STAMP SHAMMY Cleaner LF1045 [ SSS | ELH | CST | ART ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] Tombow MONO MULTI Liquid Glue Two... [ SSS | MFT ] Absorber - Synthetic Cleaning Cloth [ AMZUS ] Mudder 10 Pack White Buffer Sanding... [ AMZUS ] Xyron ADHESIVE ERASER 23675 [ SSS | ART | AMZUS ] Essentials by Ellen Storage... [ ELH ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH | SSS ] Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue [ ART | BLIC | ELH ] Ink Off Cloth [ INK ]

I love how you can customize all the little haunts in this set. I felt like this combo I made was the Halloween version of "paint me like one of your French girls" and so it cracked me up.

I hope that you get lots of fun, costumed kids at your door tonight, and if you don't, I hope you chose your candy wisely so that you will have a gift that keeps on giving.

Here's the video!

Loveyameanitbye.

A Sugar Skull and a Few Thoughts on Irish Skin

My friend Sue and I were talking last time I saw her about what it's like to have sensitive Irish skin, which we both do.

Basically what it means it that you have extra nerves in your skin that other people don't have. If a tiny little mote of dust lands on your arm, you feel it like a cattle prod and have to scratch it or rub it off. So where some people have trouble falling asleep, Irish people spend the first hour after they go to bed making their hair stop touching their neck, or getting an uncomfortable sheet fold off their knee.

It's really a fright. Any tag in clothing is like the fire of a billion suns boring into your neck and you LITERALLY can think of nothing else but removing it, or a teeny loose thread that keeps touching your shoulder.

I don't know why this would really be an evolutionary asset, unless we are just supposed to be tiger fodder while people with less sensitive skin carry on the human race, but it is a bit of a curse. Hang on - my eyebrow itches!

I thought about this last night while a fold in my pajamas was torturing the back of my knee.

Anyway - HALLOWEEN IS COMING!! I'm breaking into winter holiday crafting with a glorious sugar skull mask! I love this one because it covers the whole card front, but she also has this smaller one and this smaller one too.  This one is actually a mask, not a stencil, because just the skull part masks the white off - there's no frame around it. I thought it might be fun to do a galaxy background with this one, so I used my Life Changing Blender Brushes and these Gina K Inks: Wild Lilac, Blue Raspberry, Wild Dandelion, Innocent Pink, and then went over it in places with Amalgam.

Then I splattered Pen White Ink all over the whole thing after removing the stencil. I thought about a word die, but it is so cool unobscured I just left it. So fun.

Sugar Skull - A Colorful Life Designs [ CLD ] Sugar Skull Pie Eye - A Colorful Life... [ CLD ] Sugar Skull Sun Eye - A Colorful Life... [ CLD ] Amazon.com: Dr. Ph. Martin's... [ AMZUS ] GKD Amalgam Ink Pad- Jet Black [ GNK ] GKD Color Companions Ink Pad- Wild... [ GNK ] GKD Color Companions Ink Pad-... [ GNK ] GKD Color Companions Ink Pad- Wild Lilac [ GNK ] GKD Color Companions Ink Pad- Blue... [ GNK ] "Life Changing" Blender Brush Set -... [ PFS ] Heavy Base Weight Card Stock- White [ GNK ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSW | HA | SSS | ELH | MFT ] Absorber - Synthetic Cleaning Cloth [ AMZUS ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] Mudder 10 Pack White Buffer Sanding... [ AMZUS ] Xyron ADHESIVE ERASER 23675 [ SSS | ART | AMZUS ] Essentials by Ellen Storage... [ ELH ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH | SSS ] Tombow MONO MULTI Liquid Glue Two... [ SSS | ART | BLIC | ELH ] Ink Off Cloth [ INK ]

I thought about giving out bottled water for Halloween as a joke, but I did the right thing and ordered the good candy from Instacart, so now we wait for what I hope is a large crop of Trick Or Treaters. I look forward to the cuteness from my Ring Doorbell videos every year, even though the kids seem to get sparser with each passing year.

What do you do for Halloween/Dia de los Muertos? Besides eating candy, that is. It's usually too hot here for pumpkins - they typically rot the same day you carve them unless it's a super unusual year, so I either paint them or skip them altogether now. 

Are you dressing up? Dressing up some littles or your pets? Let me know! :) I'll be back Wednesday with my Halloween card featuring a fun new watercolor product, and then Thursday I'll have a BEAUTIFUL new set that is perfect for no line watercolor.

Have a great start to your week!

Loveyameanitbye. 

Don't Skip Fall

I may be a warm-blooded desert-loving sun worshiper. BUT - my homeland and the place I went to college had actual fall.

And, if I'm being honest, I feel that it's the best brief season. Summer is the best season of all - don't get me wrong. HOT, DRY, SUNNY - that is the holy trinity. But a crispy, sunny day where things are colorful - that does pull a summer loving person towards a falling leaf. The only weakness of autumn is that it's a hostage situation - it's that place where you've left your one true love, summer, and you're hurtling towards your mortal enemy - winter. So it's sort of the bad boy, siren call season. And also a season we tend to skip in stamping and decor, which is a crime.

But it's pretty. And pretty wins most contests.

I was SHOCKED at all the color of autumns in upstate New York. Before I'd listened to 2000 hours of true crime podcasts, I spent most falls alone in one of the most beautiful cemeteries on the planet - the Mount Hope cemetery in Rochester. Susan B. Anthony is buried there. There were indigo buntings there, and ancient gravestones you could hardly read, and a field of military headstones. It would have been a sea of grey and white marble if it hadn't been for those spectacular fall colors. If only I'd learned to watercolor in college, I'd have a stack of lovely sketches to show for it.

Anyway - while I don't miss those temperatures, I will always think of fall as the MOST colorful of seasons. Even more so than spring, and so it's my favorite stamping season.

This card is from a video from a week or so ago (this year has been a blur) - and I had SO much fun making these crazy abstract backgrounds. I'll include the video below in case you missed it - but on this card I used this gorgeous large leaf stencil with this stamp set and my Gel Press to make this card. It really represents all the happy bright colors I remember from a pretty place that changed color a few times a year. I hand cut out the leaf after blending Distress Oxides on it with my life changing brushes (now they come in a two pack and a four pack) to match the background - Picked Raspberry, Mustard Seed and Peacock Feathers - and matted it on black cardstock. The sentiment is stamped in Nocturne. ( I feel like I don't even have to say that - it's the one true sentiment ink.)

Give Thanks BUNDLE - Concord & 9th [ C&9 ] Big Leaves - A Colorful Life Designs [ CLD ] Holiday Sale | Ellen Hutson [ ELH ] Ranger Distress Oxide Ink Pad,... [ ELH | SSS | CRF | CST ] Ranger Distress Oxide Ink Pad, Picked... [ ELH | SSS | JGG ] Ranger Distress Oxide Ink Pad,... [ ELH | SSS | CRF ] Life Changing Blender Brush 2-Pack -... [ PFS ] Life Changing Blender Brushes. 4 Pack... [ PFS ] "Life Changing" Blender Brush Set -... [ PFS ] Americana® Acrylic Paint: Baby Pink... [ CNS | AMZUS ] Dina Wakley Ranger TURQUOISE 1OZ... [ SSS | JGG ] Buttercup Anita's Acrylic Craft Paint... [ HBL ] Americana Gloss Enamels 2 Ounces-Baby... [ AMZUS ] Gel Press 5 x 7 REUSABLE GEL PRINTING... [ SSS | BLIC ] Tsukineko VersaFine Clair NOCTURNE... [ SSS | ELH | CST ] Inovart Pro-Roller Brayer [ BLIC | BLIC ] Amazon.com : Hammermill 102467 Copy... [ AMZUS ] Heavy Base Weight Card Stock- White [ GNK ] MISTI Stamping Tool [ MSW | SSS | ELH | MFT | SBC ] Absorber - Synthetic Cleaning Cloth [ AMZUS ] Purell Advanced Hand Sanitizer... [ AMZUS ] Rotatrim Professional Series Cutter -... [ BLIC ] Mudder 10 Pack White Buffer Sanding... [ AMZUS ] Xyron ADHESIVE ERASER 23675 [ SSS | ART | AMZUS ] Essentials by Ellen Storage... [ ELH ] Teflon Bone Folder - Ellen Hutson LLC [ ELH | SSS ] Tombow MONO MULTI Liquid Glue Two... [ SSS | ART | BLIC | ELH ] Ink Off Cloth [ INK ] 40 little artful & inspiring cards... [ ETS ]

What is your favorite season? If you say anything with rain in it, I'll have to shun you, as my city has experienced the rainiest year on record and it's making me insane, not to mention I've been deprived of ice and running water for a week now.

So please, entertain me with your desert paradises.

And if you're looking for a sale - here's a great one - today and tomorrow and it includes lots of Concord & 9th, including this gorgeous songbird - 25% off all holiday stamps & dies!

Here's the video, ICYMI.

Loveyameanitbye.