Indigo Blu Challenge - Things with Wings - Hallowe'en Owl Shrine

On the Indigo Blu blog they are having a challenge to make something with wings. Last month I was lucky enough to be picked and it is such a generous prize - I chose two A5 plates, Hocus Pocus and Sarah's Choice. I thought the Hocus Pocus one would be fun for Hallowe'en as I don't have many suitable stamps and this one has an interesting mix, with a beautiful owl on it. I thought he would fit the bill as my 'things with wings'. I'm a big fan of Indigo Blu as the stamps always stamp up beautifully, and Kay is so sweet and helpful when you meet her at shows. I watched her Create and Craft shows on television last week and jotted down lots of tips and techniques to try and there are some new release stamps I have got my eye on!

I decided to make a wooden shrine and a number of things went Pete Tong along the way! I did the shrink plastic owl a couple of times as I painted the background and the owl, which looked lovely and I will use it on another project but it just didn't stand out enough as a focal point, so I redid it in plain black and white. I measured it carefully to get it to fit within the art mould frame, which I made up in clay, painted in various shades of brown, and highlighted with Ice Fire Treasure Gold.

 

I wanted my colourscheme to be Hallowe'en colours of purple and green but the purple background gave me a problem of other things not standing out against it. I mixed green paint with my Kroma Krackle for the base of the shrine and patiently left it a couple of days and all was fine, but once I had added the Ice Fire it was more gold than green, although very pretty, so I didn't really have any green in my project. I used more Ice Fire on the photo corner charms and the edges of the shrine as I had nothing to lose by this time! The spider got some too! I then found I couldn't do the gold embossing I had planned around the side edges as my ep was a true gold, so I used some orange K and Co trim which is really pretty, and decided on orange as my additional Hallowe'en colour instead of the green.



On the left hand panel of my shrine I embossed the 'Magic' wording with purple shimmery embossing powder and on the right hand panel, the spider and its web. I applied Croco Crackle in Blackberry through a Harlequin stencil in several places over the shrine and once it had cracked, applied a little Treasure Gold. I then stamped the script from Sarah's Choice, which is lovely, in Galaxy Gold Brilliance, which is a soft gold which goes well with the Ice Fire, to fill in all the gaps. I embossed some bats on black card using a Sizzix embossing folder and carefully cut them out and stamped them with the script in Galaxy Gold for a little twinkle.

I stamped the words 'A friend is like an owl, both beautiful and wise' in shrink plastic' and positioned them under the pumpkins which added a pop of colour. To finish off, I added some fake spider's web around the frame and dotted the bats around the piece.