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:

Emergency Crafters likes Rainbow Pennants!

My Rainbow Pennants bookmark won third place in Emergency Crafters' "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" challenge!

It took me a while to remember that the emergency number in Britain is 999, not 911 as it is in the States. Then the badge made sense. Unfortunately the type on the badge is a little small (especially once I shrunk the badge to fit in my sidebar), but it says "THIRD PLACE!!" and has the link to Emergency Crafters.

Bookmarks XXX (30): Rainbow Pennants

I've been a bit worried about this bookmark. Even when I didn't know what it would be, or when I would make it, I worried. Because this is the 30th bookmark, and I am numbering them with Roman numerals... and XXX doesn't always mean 30 in our modern world.

This bookmark is so family-safe it doesn't even have any images on it! Just triangles! I guess if you have serious issues with triangles that aren't quite isosceles it could be annoying to look at, but that's the most danger your eyes will encounter here.

This bookmark came together very simply based mainly on two challenges: Emergency Crafters' "Somewhere over the Rainbow" and Frosted Designs' "Triangles!". Apparently I wasn't feeling terribly interpretive, because I made some triangles in rainbow colors.

I don't have all the nice bright primary/secondary learned-'em-in-kindergarten colors of paper, but I do have them in embossing powder. So I made my triangles by free-hand-cutting some white cardstock, took an embossing pen to them, and used the embossing powder to create color.

I am glad I decided not to try to get perfect coverage with the embossing pen. The advantage of an embossing pen is that as long as you keep re-inking the paper and re-sprinkling the powder and hitting it with the heat gun, you can eventually achieve full coverage no matter what your level of heat embossing proficiency. But by choosing not to try for perfect, but to leave my embossing deliberately streaky, I saved a lot of time and created a bit of an interesting effect. The rest of the bookmark is so simple that solid blocks of color might not have worked as well as my imperfect ones.

I couldn't decide whether my triangles ought to go on black or on white. So I put them on a nice pearlescent grey and called it good.

I'm entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

• Emergency Crafters: Somewhere over the Rainbow
• Frosted Designs' Fabulous Friday: Triangles!
• Simon Says Stamp: Emboss It!
• Simon Says Stamp and Show: For the Love of Sparkle (pearlescent grey base)
• Robyn's Fetish Challenge #126: Book Marks (you betcha!)
• Ladybug Crafts: Anything Goes
• Anything But A Card Challenge #2: Anything Goes (it's a bookmark)

Supplies: (white 110lb. cardstock is from Staples)

(Edited 9-26-12 to add supplies list.)