Hi Friends!
Happy Tuesday! The recaptcha is still on but only for guests. So if you use Blogger or Facebook (and soon to be WordPress) to comment then it won’t affect you at all. I hope it doesn’t put you off visiting or commenting but since most are blogger friends it shouldn’t be an issue if you use blogger to comment. There are always some T people who don’t comment and some who have never visited in the years I’ve been joining in, so I don’t need more reasons for people not to comment haha but the spammers are relentless at the moment. Thank you for your patience.
Last week I mentioned this liquorice (I used the empty packet on my journal page) and yesterday I went to FOUR different shops looking for it and they were all out of stock! It is available on amazon but for a ridiculous price that bears no resemblance to the actual retail price so I will to wait for a restock locally. My half-drunk coffee in my kitty mug is also here for T. I use this mug a lot because it’s enormous and holds about 450ml of liquid!
Weather is cold for October, I woke up to frost on the roof this morning and 2.5C degrees. I am using the stove most nights and the kittens are loving it. Miss Lily on the left and Mr G on the right. We went to the vet yesterday for annual check-up and boosters and for once I survived without losing any blood or getting maimed in the process. It was… trauma free. I think I took them by surprise! Also they both have soft carriers now and I think they are happier in those than in a plastic or metal carrier, of course if there was an “accident” they would be very difficult to clean but I think they are more cat friendly. (Miss P still has a hard carrier as she always poops on the way home from the vet 🙁 ) No, no, just no!
Currently Reading . . .
A quick update of October so far… All fiction except I did decide to listen to Matthew Perry’s autobiography. It was narrated by him and was quite candid. Even with all the millions and the fame and being an incredibly funny guy, he was in reality, an unhappy guy who drank alone and took staggering amounts of pills just to get through the day. If you don’t happen to know who this is, he was my favourite Friend. (Chandler from Friends.)
Book 114. Something spooky-ish for Halloween.
A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. Nobody in Eden remembers when Starling House was built. But the town agrees it’s best to let this ill-omened mansion – and its last lonely heir – go to hell. Stories of the house’s bad luck, like good china, have been passed down the generations. This is a romantic and spellbinding Gothic fairytale from Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award-shortlisted Alix E. Harrow.
Genre: Fantasy
TOTAL for 2023
113 books
October Books so far – 12
102. Emma Torzs – Ink Blood Sister Scribe 
103. Robert Thorogood – The Marlow Murder Club 
104. JD Kirk – In Service of Death – DCI Logan #17
105. Benedict Jacka – An Inheritance of Magic
106. Robert Thorogood – Death Comes To Marlow – Marlow Murder Club #2
107. JD Kirk – A Dead Man Walking – DCI Logan #18
108. Adrian McKinty -The Detective Up Late – Sean Duffy #7
109. JD Kirk -The One That Got Away – Heather Filson #1
110. Matthew Perry – Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing
111. Nick Louth – The Body in the Shadows – DCI Gillard #11
112. Nick Louth – The Body in Nightingale Park – DCI Gillard #12
113. Travis Baldree – Legends and Lattes – Legends and Lattes #1
(re-reads if any are in bold)
Today’s Art . . .
Today’s art is some Halloween cards I made for my book group friends. I posted them last week so it should be safe to show them now. I used the same Goth Girl stamp set I used for my October Calendar page.
This stamp set creates an articulated doll, so I started by stamping lots of heads, so I would have a few to choose from and some extras if needed.
Miss Lily was there to lend her support and company. I wanted the Goth Girl to hold little signs in her hands, so I used the bat stamp from the set to create them and a TH Boo stamp for the words. In this photo you can see a lot of little arms and hands all cut out and ready for assembly.
I stamped the bodies on to the card base and cut around one side to create a shaped card, but it would have been just as easy (or easier!) to have made the bodies separately and glued them onto the cards!
Miss Lily is very interested in all the little arms and hands – she kept trying to grab them when I wasn’t looking. Also for T day, here’s another half-drunk coffee (this was day two) and also two other mugs I found on my desk with pens in them that really didn’t need to be there. They are now in the kitchen and the pens are in a drawer.
The inside of the cards look like this. Some are watercoloured like the one on the left and some are painted with acrylic like the one on the right. The little bat comes from the same stamp set and the tree and Happy Halloween stamps are from an old Tim Holtz stamp set.
The finished cards took way longer than expected but at last they were finished. Her head and arms can be repositioned and the sign she is holding can be removed or repositioned as it is held on with sticky dots only. I had to bend the heads in towards the cards for posting so she didn’t get bent. Made some envelopes to fit the cards and then off the went in the world’s most expensive mail. I was comparing prices to post a card with my friend in Holland and with my friend in the US and we are nearly twice as expensive as Holland and nearly three times more expensive than the US! If they keep this up no one will be posting anything anymore and the Royal Mail will be out of business for good. I can’t imagine they want that to happen but that’s the way it’s heading.
Let me know what you think in the comments. As always, thanks for reading and Happy arting!
Ingredients
watercolour paper, cardstock, pitt pens, watercolour, acrylic, brads, glue dots, distress ink, TH stamp set, Paperartsy stamp set, Halloween paper, white pigment ink, black stazon ink, black pigment ink, Poscas,
Challenges
T Stands For – decaf coffee, extra mugs,
Creative Artiste – Challenge #98 – watercolour paper, cardstock, pitt pens, watercolour, Fresco chalk paints, brads, glue dots, distress ink, stamp sets x 2, Halloween papers, white pigment ink, black stazon ink, black pigment ink, Poscas, glue,
Try It On Tuesday – Halloween – it’s a set of Halloween cards
Wow these cards are fabulous, a lot of effort but worth it.
Thanks for sharing at Try it on Tuesday.
Avril x
A fantastic set of Halloween cards. The dolls look suitably spooky, the papers are fabulous and the backgrounds are wonderfully atmospheric.
Thank you for joining in with our October challenge “Anything Mixed Media Goes” at Creative Artiste Mixed Media. Good luck x
Elle, I love your cards. They look like a work of art and labor of love. They have so many components that I would not have guessed until you showed the process in pictures. How fun for your book club to receive such a treat.
I love black licorice! The soft kind is the best, not the Twizzlers. I used to love the “Panda” brand growing up. They had them in packages or single serve sticks the size of a candy bar. I would savor them as they were quite expensive. Now you have me dreaming of licorice! I hope your local shop gets it back in stock soon.
Happy Tea Day,
Kate
You asked about the Spice Merchant spices. Here is a link to just a few of the many they sell. These are the ones they sell online:
https://spicemerchant.com/shop/spices/
How awesome to have a trauma free vet visit. Win-win all around,
I LOVE those Halloween cards. They are clever and so well designed. I love how the arms move. You are a paper engineer.
Postage goes up every so often here, too. I agree it is pitiful we can hardly afford to send items like cards through the mail anymore. However, I was delighted you shared the Halloween ones you made.
That is one CUTE mug, I love any cat mug and that is adorable. I like the blue ones to the right of the cat mug, too.
Thanks for sharing the kitties, the cards, and your half drunk coffee with us for T ths Tuesday, dear Elle.
Love the Halloween cards – they are different and fun, and done so well. I love a spooky cool card and these fit the bill.
Your kitties are so cute. Glad you survived the vet trip well.
I use a big cup most the time too and only drink half the coffee a lot. Years ago I still drank it cold but my ability to do that is now gone.
Matthew’s biography sounds interesting. There are so many people we see today and think are living perfect lives when, in fact, they are not perfect lives at all. Very sad. I am glad he has written this and is happier now.
Happy T-day and hugz to you, Elle.
Love the cards! Happy T Tuesday 🙂
Your Halloween cards look gorgeous, but seem to have been lots of work. I’m surprised Royal Mail is so expensive – I always thought the US Postal Service is so expensive. Prices go up every year, it’s ridiculous.
I hope you will find the liquorice again. Happy T day!
Halloween cards are a neat idea. I haven’t looked at any card stores recently but I guess they are available. though I don’t know how many people send them = it’s very neat that you do.
About postage: I might be wrong but here’s how I understnd it (and would love to be corrected) — Mail prices are set internationally but not very often. I think they are equal in different countries when the new pricing is introduced, and then diverge as the value of the currency changes. If you are in England, you are suffering another consequence of Brexit, which decreased the pound by 20% against the dollar.
best, mae at maefood.blogspot.com
Wow, I absolutely love your Halloween-art!
Cold here, too, but not THAT cold, brrrr.
Have a happy T-Day!