Keeper of the Dead Fairies

The weather here in Colorado finally broke - no more 90 plus degree days and no more rain!! I LOVE Halloween (dark & spooky is easier for me than cute & cuddly) and I love the colors of fall.  And, now that my craft room is no longer a sauna, I have started to make some Halloween/fall art.  Please read on. . .

I keep seeing “dead fairies” all over the place – no, not actual dead fairies, but ones crafted out of this and that (maybe it’s the blogs I read. . .hmmm).  I plan on making some as soon as I can get to the dollar store (Dollar Tree in my area) and getting my sticky little hands on some more plastic skeleton garland.  It’s fantastic stuff & you get 4 full skeletons for a $1 – you can even take them apart a bit – you can remove the arms, legs & rib cage; leaves you with a head on a spine, but hey, if that’s your thing. . . Anyway, the planned production of these fairies is what spurned me on to make this tag, Keeper of The Dead Fairies.

I started with a regular #8 manila tag and I used the Black Soot Distress Ink on the background – I first pounced the pad on my craft sheet and then spritzed with water the I put the tag on the watered down ink, just laid it down.  I then saw where the ink didn’t get to and I laid the tag down in the ink in those spots.  You can’t see much of the background except at the very top of the tag.  I colored in the reinforcer around the hole with a black Sharpie and I also edged the edges (ha!) with the same black Sharpie – some of you know how I HATE edges!!

I put the tag aside and knew I wanted to use my flames stencil from Crafters' Workshop somehow on the tag.  I wanted the flames to look really cool & different so I thought I’d use some stuff I’ve had hanging around for years (literally, but in a drawer, not hanging) vellum! Remember vellum? Anyway, I took a piece of regular vellum, put my flame stencil over it and spritzed it with Fireworks! from Imagine Crafts (Fireworks! Is a shimmery, water based spray ink) in Dandelion, Tangelo & Lady Bug.  I let it dry, but wasn’t really pleased because the flames didn’t pop out like I wanted (I really don’t know what I expected being I spritzed them on vellum) and I pondered how to get them to really stand out.  After I showed the spritzed vellum to my honey, he suggested that I outline the flames – TA DA! Sometimes I guess it pays to listen to them, but I don’t plan on making it a habit.  So on the stencil goes and I outlined the flames with a red Sharpie – I LOVE the way they came out!!!  I knew what I wanted to do next so off I went.

 

Here is a close up of my flames

I got my winged skeleton from Meer Image (they make some rocking stamps! Many unusual & cool images) – my skeleton is actually named Sebastian – and stamped him on some plain card stock with my favorite black ink, Ranger Archival in Jet Black.  I then fussy cut him and glued him on the front of the tag.  I computer generated “Keeper of the Dead Fairies”, printed it on a transparency & cut it out.  I also had some leftover Dresden trim in black so I put a bit of that on the tag as well.  Finished off by gluing it all together and there you have it!  My keeper is all ready for some dead fairies (and I finally got some more skeletons, so the parade of dead fairies is on the way)!

And here is the complete tag

I would like to enter my tag into the following challenges:

The Crafty Bloggers Network's monthly challenge is "Anything with Wings"
Punk You Girl's current challenge is "Red & Black"

Thank you & please leave a comment!!