Bookmarks XXXIV: All Hallows Eve

I gotta keep better track of challenge rules. Three of the challenges that went into the design of this bookmark, I can't submit to because they have a low limit on the number of combined challenges. Normally, I note this down and plan around it. This time I did not.

To skip me rambling on about challenges I didn't even enter, you can click here to jump straight to the project picture and the challenges I did enter.

The first challenge that I used but won't be entering is Touch Twin Color Challenge #26, from which the color inspiration mainly came.

Touch Twin only allows five combined challenges. I like the color combination a lot, and the challenge doesn't end for a little less than a week, so I'll make something else to submit there.

The second challenge that I designed for but won't submit to is Frilly and Funkie: Fall into Fall, which asks us to use fall colors and also, of course, to be vintage-y in either a frilly or a "funkie" way. I don't know that I actually succeeded in making something they would consider "funkie", but I sure gave it a shot, smooshing colors around and attacking edges with my craft knife and generally stamping things over other things and all. I spritzed things on already-inked-up stamps and rubbed paper around in the pretty mess left on my craft sheet! I did not adhere odd bits of metal, but this is a bookmark, not a tag, and it has to fit in a closed book.

Frilly and Funkie allows only four combined challenges. As their rules quite reasonably explain, "We are hoping that you will make a card for our challenge, not use our challenge to fit a card that you have already made." What makes me sad is that I did make a project for their challenge: it was one of my primary motivators -- it just also happens to work for a bunch of other challenges that don't mind more combinations. (Shockingly, as it is fall in the northern hemisphere, lots of challenges involve fall colors right now.)

The third challenge that I incorporated but won't be submitting to is Tando Creative: Leaves and or Trees. I wanted to put a bare-branched tree in front of my moon, but that just didn't work out. In the end I resorted to stamping a leaf stamp a bunch of times on the bottom of the bookmark in several fall colors. It looks really neat, but you can't see it in the photo very well.

Tando Creative allows only five combined challenges. To be quite fair, this was a challenge that I was trying to fit in just because I could, so in this case the combination limit has served its purpose. Since the challenge ends in fewer than 24 hours I doubt I'll be making something else to submit. Oh well.

I do want to repeat that I do understand why these limits exist. They may not be the perfect solution if you don't want scattershot entries in your contest, but they are a nice clear easy-to-implement one, and that counts for a great deal. My complaints here are really a result of poor record-keeping on my part, and shouldn't reflect negatively on the challenges themselves.

Of course I just could have submitted it to these three challenges + the sketch challenge I used, but since part of the fun for me is combining as many challenges as I can, I decided not to.

I ended up making a sort of Halloween/Fall bookmark: colors mainly in red, purple, and gold, with a Halloween moon in the night sky and a bat sweeping through some branches. Once I thought of the moon I knew exactly which sketch I was going to use, too, because this week's Tuesday Morning Sketch (#165) has a great big round element in it.

And it is so beautifully bookmark-adaptable! I did not even have to flip it. The big circular element became the moon, of course. The banners became black branch silhouettes, and the collections of embellishments became a bat.

I am entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

• Tuesday Morning Sketches #165 (stamped branches for the banners and used the bat in place of the collection of star elements)
• WOW! Embossing Powder: Halloween + mix your own (Mixed purple & blue powders for the embossing on the moon, and added gold to that mix for embossing the bat. Alas, these are not WOW! powders.)
• City Crafter Challenge 128: An Early BOO!!!!! (you do know that five exclamation points in a row are a sure sign of an insane mind, don't you?)
• Emergency Crafters: Autumn Leaves (I used autumn colors and, if you look closely at the background, leaves as well.)
• Totally Stampalicious: Fall Colors (purple, red, and gold)
• The Crafty Bloggers Network Challenge #3: Purple (not monochromatic this time!)
• Deep Ocean Challenge #35: More Than 2 Colours
• Simon Says Stamp and Show: For the Love of Sparkle (stamped some of the background leaves using gold shimmer spritz)
• Simon Says Stamp: Anything Goes (but no October Afternoon here)

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

Supplies: