Jacquie Skeleton

Hello my crafting friends, so good of you to join me today, I am a little late today but better late than never!!!

As most of you know by now Sheena Douglass has moved to the HOCHANDA channel and has her first shows on Monday morning at 10 am showcasing her new designs for her Perfect partners  'Day of the Dead'

These have been an absolute joy to work with, so much fun, you can position the skeleton any way you want, so if you want to have a great, humorous card for men then these are just the ticket. Its not just skeletons, there is a lovely skull, skeleton cat and dog, guitar, trumpet, top hat and cane, bridal veil and bouquet, flowers and there are two stamps on their own, one of a Senorita and the other a couple dressed for the Festival. So lots of scope to work with. 

For my Jacquie Skeleton, as I have called him/her I cut some Sheena's White Stamping Card to size then stamped Sheena's Little Bit Sketchy 'Castle Ruins' to the right hand side and coloured it in with Tim Holtz Distress Inks Brushed Cordroy, Crushed Olives and Forest Moss. I then inked up the top of the card with Chipped Sapphire and the bottom half with Seedless Preserve before going round the edge with Black Soot. I added a large moon in the top left corner and faux bleached this to make it brighter. For those of you who do not know what faux bleaching is its just adding water with a paintbrush and blotting with kitchen towel, this takes the ink off the card again, not completely but enough to give it some effect.

For my Jacquie Skeleton I die cut the skeleton body out twice, once with Sheena's White Stamping card and once with Sheena's Black card. The reason for this was I wanted my skeleton to be based on 'Jack Skeleton' from the films by Tim Burton, his skeleton is very tall and has thin arms and legs so I felt it pointless to make my skeleton some trousers or arms for the Jacket when it looked better cutting the limbs out of Black card and painting the White stripes on with a White Gel Pen. So this is what I did, I position the limbs as I wanted then I made the Jacket out of Black card, trimmed the ends so they looked jagged and drawed on the stripes with the White Gel Pen. I made a little collar the same way and added the skull of a little plastic skeleton I had in the center. For the inside of the Jacket to make it look like it was lined I used a piece of Red ribbon and cut the ends as before. I cut off the Black hands and used the hands from the skeleton cut from White card so this made it look more like a suit. The boots are already on the die cut of the skeleton so I glazed these with PinFlair Glaze Laquar to add a shine. 

Now at this point my skeleton still had his head on so I snipped it off and decorated it with  one of the tiny flower stamps from Sheena's Floral Fiesta set and coloured it with Aquamarkers. I then positioned this in my skeletons hand so it looked like he was holding his own head running down the hill.

Before placing my skeleton on my card I made a frame using Black card, I cut this in half at the diagonal corners, this was so it fitted perfectly in Sheena's Taste of India Lattice Embossing Folder so the pattern went straight down the sides of the card if angled in the folder. I rubbed Silver Gilding Wax over this then stuck it in position on my base card.

I made a sentiment using Creative Expressions Foundation Card Plum and stamped the sentiment from Sheena's Dancing Skeleton set using Black Stazon, I cut it into a ribbon and placed it across the bottom left corner of my card. I then placed my Skeleton where I wanted him to be with his one foot coming out over the frame.

There you have the finished card. Please don't forget to tune in to HOCHANDA on Monday morning at 10 am where not only will you be able to view all the other fabulous creations from the design team, believe me they are stunning, you will also see Sheena's wonderful demos too.

Thank you for looking, Jacquie xxx