Skeleton Dwellings Slide Mailer Swap

It's another fabulous Alpha Stamp swap...this one is the Skeleton Dwelling slide mailer swap. We were required to use slide mailers and at least one Alpha Stamps collage sheets and or stamps. But come on, you can't just use one Alpha Stamp product, there are just way too many wonderful things!

Witches Brew:
Many of you know that one of my favorite themes to work with is tea/coffee , on the Something Witchy Collage Sheet from Alpha Stamps is a wonderful image of a group of Witches taking tea in an outside courtyard. I simply had to use this image.

The front is one of the simplest things I have ever done. the image is from Alpha Stamps Gothic Arches Collage Sheet which Leslie sized perfectly for the slide mailers. The cat is from the Something Witchy Collage Sheet and the bat charm I got from a Paula's Kit club. To spruce up the cover I tried to make it shimmery but there is some kind of coating on the Collage Sheet so the shimmer did not take evenly. The cat is 3D mounted and the bat i painted black with acrylic paint. To add some bling I attached some fun black fiber and some beads in coordinating tones.



The inside actually proved to be a bit more difficult than I thought. I loved the image so much that I really didn't want to do anything to it. It was however just slightly to small so I made a frame using Stampington & Co. Brick stamp. Instead of having a dark and spooky tea party I decided to give my witches a little bit of pizzas and added glitter to some of their hats and painted the tea cups with Twinkling H2O's. As a finishing touch I stamped the swirls, added diamond glaze to them and finally affixed various types of tea herbs all over the brick wall.


Nevermore:
Now what would Halloween be without Edgar Allan Poe's works? Well, boring that's what. So of course I had to use him as a theme. I took a transparency of Poe from the Edgar Allan Poe Collage Sheet and glued him to the back of a frame I made (using my new awesome stained glass skills) and affixed a skull that I turned black. The black raven on the tree is also from Alpha Stamps.

Around the outside of the slide mailer I affixed twigs and black feathers. They didn't exactly go on like I envisioned but they are on and staying on so I guess I should be thankful for that.








On the inside I stamped a tree from Tim Holtz's collection and then cut out the collage image from Poe's Words Collage Sheet. When I was done cutting it out I said to myself...wow this stuff is really spooky...in other words the images are fabulous.

On the opposite side, where the glass slides would go, I put a fold out of the poem "The Raven." To hold it in place I used a clear acrylic tag that I glued a signature of Poe's and the title of the poem. It turned when I tested it, I hope it does when it reaches it's final destination.



The poem is really long it took up three columns top to bottom of a sheet of paper...it is actually kinda fun to see the entire thing fall open.

Dissection:

This one I had a really hard time with. I guess I started without a clear plan. I used one of the wonderful graveyard scenes from the Cemetery Collage Sheet. To fill in around it I mixed some acrylic paint and then covered it with a crackle glaze. It looked really plain so I just kept adding, a glittered spider web, skull and crossbones and lastly the rub on bats.

I thought this black Dresden kinda resembled the rounded tombstones so I used it all around the edges adding the flowers as a kinda macab addition.

Inside I painted black, a high gloss, then stamped an atomically correct heart covering it with red pearl ex powder. On top of that I white embossed the skeleton and then affixed the skull...once again one of those really creep and wonderful Collage images that once I had it cut out gave me the willies.

In the slide mailer opening I placed a collage images that looks like an old painting of medical men dissecting someone. I thought a sheet covering the opening, since sheets normally hide patients from view, would be a good idea, in hind sight it looks more pirate than medical.

I am off to put these in the mail. I hope whoever ends up with them likes them and I can't wait to see what I get in return. If you haven't joined an Alpha stamp swap then shame on you...come over and join us they are a ton of fun.