Bombshell's June Pin-Up Challenge: Skulls!

The talented and lovely Cheryl Valadez has returned to the Bombshell fold in the role of Ms. June! As a guest designer, she got to select the challenge and chose "Skulls"!

I love me some skulls, so this one was a lot of fun, though my project went to visit Cheryl in Albuquerque, where it took a left turn.

Here it is!

I decided to use the Muertos Doll Digital stamp set for my project. I'll admit that I saw a "See no evil" skull thing somewhere on Pinterest and decided to put my own spin on it, so this digi set was perfect for it. The Muertos Doll Digital set contains two full skeletons and skulls 'n body parts. I took the skulls 'n body parts, manipulated them in Photo Elements, until I had a "See No Evil", "Hear No Evil", and a "Speak No Evil" doll. These were saved, reduced, printed out onto Neenah cardstock using my laser printer, then colored using Copic markers. I put a yellow Copic background around the dolls, then had a bit of a mishap with Antique Linen Distress ink and ended up having to add some Squeezed Lemonade Distress ink as well. This was put aside while I created my background.

While I was creating my "No Evil" trio, I realized that "No Evil" backwards was "Live On" and I went with that idea.

I dug deep into my stash and found ginormous slide mounts. I die-cut the title (Top Dog Dies), some skulls (BossKut), heart lockets, keys, pointing hand, (QuicKutz), flames (Die-Namics) and then punched some hearts and flowers. I dug up some old Jolie's flowers as well. All of the die-cuts and punches were adhered to the slide mount and coated with a layer of gesso. Then I went to pick up my CSA share.

When I got home, the gesso was dry. I decided to try out my new DecoArt's new Media Fluid Acrylics, which are part of the new DecoArt Media program. I painted the entire piece with Medium Grey Value 6 because I wanted to have good coverage in and around all of the die-cuts. I then blended Dioxazine Purple into Phthalo Blue from the bottom to the top and Cadmium Red into Quinacridone Red from top to bottom. Some watered down Titanium White was sponged onto the lower left hand corner and a few other places. The skulls were painted with straight up Titanium White and Carbon Black was dabbed into the skulls' eye and nose holes. The flames along the right side were painted with a combination of yellow, orange, and red (I forgot to mark the color names down, bad me). 

My first impression of these paints is that a little bit goes a long way, that they blend really easily, and that they dry quickly. I really like that their relative opacity is on the label, so I knew which were opaque and which were translucent.

But I digressed. When the paint was dry, I added White Fire, Pewter, Indigo, Rose Quartz, Onyxite, and Florentine Treasure Gold to all the die-cuts to make them metallic and shimmery. Jet Black StazOn ink was sponged through a skull stencil by Andy Skinner for Tando Creative. 

I adhered the two parts and decided that adding metallic charms was overkill, so I proclaimed it done. I'm not sure how I feel about the project, but I did have fun making it, so I guess that's what counts.

Thanks for visiting today!