Monday, September 17, 2012

Bookmarks XXIII: Thing That Goes Bump In The Night

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

I didn't just use the "Mustard, Navy, and Orange" color prompt from this week's Stampotique challenge -- I actually took a look at the design team's designs. Wouldn't you know it, those pieces they make for inspiration are inspiring!

In this case, I had no idea what to do with mustard, navy, and orange. I guess it's a great combination for some moldy bread? Presenting Bookmarks #23: Penicillin! But I took inspiration from the trend I saw in the images used by the design team: a little bit odd, a little bit monstrous, and a little bit sketchy.

I hadn't opened it yet, but I did have a stamp set that fit those criteria: the Little Monsters cling rubber set from Recollections (a.k.a. Michaels). It even has a little boo! sentiment, so I decided to make a Halloween-y bookmark.

It's a fairly cute little monster-thing. I first stamped it in mustard and clear-embossed it, but it was pretty hard to see against the orange background. So I took some blue and some black (I don't actually have any navy) ink and smudged them around with my fingers. Fortunately this worked; the heights of the embossed monster caught more color than the underlying cardstock, and now the monster shows up acceptably. I repeated this technique -- stamping in Perfect Medium and clear embossing -- to make a strip of tone-on-tone boo! sentiments. I also then repeated the "oops, smudge ink on it" technique when I realized I wanted something that stood out more than tone-on-tone. An extra benefit of the embossing is that the words are shiny, so they stand out well when you take a picture with the flash on -- as you may have noticed.

This bookmark is also a fairly successful example of using a wide sketch to make a skinny bookmark. I used this week's Sketch Saturday sketch (#225) and turned it on its side, which is my go-to first attempt at using sketches.

I interpreted the skinny strip pretty faithfully. For the wide strip, I stamped the boo! sentiment all the way down the side of the card -- so it is both the strip and the sentiment. I took the liberty of placing the focal element at a bit of an angle, because with this much smudging and fraying going on it felt better that way than straight and square.

I'm entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

I'm also linking it up to DL.ART's 1000-post Linky Party.

Supplies:

6 comments:

  1. perfect for the Stampotique challenge! :) glad u joined us!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great bookmark! Love the embossing on it. Thank you for joining us at Stampotique this week. XOXO

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, what a great bookmark. Thanks for sharing your technique (I love how you created the navy - genius!) Thanks for joining us at Stampotique. Kate

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fab creation, thanks so much for sharing with us over at Willow Sketchie Challenge.

    Kelly x

    ReplyDelete
  5. Fabby cretion! Great JOB!~
    Thanks for joining us at WSChallenge. Good Luck!
    -Sony WSC-DT
    sonia-studio60.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. this is a great take on the sketch!!!
    TFS and playing along with this weeks Inspired By Challenge over at Creative Inspirations Paint! We hope to see you join in our next challenge beginning on Sunday!
    Jessica
    CIP~DT

    ReplyDelete