Various Departures

Hello friends,

Super excited to share another Halloween project with you today. I had so much fun making this one - I think my nail beds are still black from all the messy black paint! 

I started with spraying the trees (because why not use Christmas trees for Halloween?) and then began building from there. Funny how things come together when you have no plan other than "use some trees", lol.  Let me show you how I made a couple of the things and then I'll share some photos of the finished sample. I love it, so I hope you do too!

As I said, the project all started by spraying some idea-ology Alpine trees. They are a sister product to Woodland Trees, but skinnier! I sprayed a full package of the trees because I just wasn't sure how many I would use in the project. 

NOTE: I ended up using two large and one small.

I dried the trees with a heat tool, then twisted the base off the bottom (I also used wire cutters to cut off the wire at the bottom). 

Next, I gave the trees a haircut using my Recoil Scissors (so the trees have a flat back).

Then I sprayed three of the Alpine trees with Distress Spritz Rusty Hinge to give them an orange color. The shine of the Spritz does not show up in the tree but the color was perfect.

I needed some kind of structure for my trees, so I chose the Vignette Divided Drawer. I did test the trees in the box before I started adding the paper to make sure they would fit. The cool thing about the Divided Box is that you can choose to to use both shelves, one shelf or none. I chose to use one shelf in the slot that created a 3.5 x 3.5" space at the top.

1. Paint the outside of the box with black paint.
2. Once paint is dry, sand away some of the paint to reveal some of the wood below.
3. Add Halloween Backdrop papers to the inside of the box with Collage Medium.
4. Once dry, add the Design Tape on the lip edge of the box.
5. Once I was done, I painted a thin coat of Collage Medium over the painted wood on the outside of the box to give it a much more finished look. Let dry completely.

I wanted to add a base to the Divided Drawer so my trees could be at different levels. So I dug around in my drawer of vignettes and wood pieces to find an old vignette panel that was 2 3/4" x 4". This was the perfect size for what I had envisioned.

NOTE: If you don't have something like this in your stash, you could make it by cutting pieces of heavy chipboard or book board and sandwiching them together with Collage Medium.

I had a leftover piece of a Transparency on my desk and I thought that maybe I could somehow use it. The piece was chopped up but I thought, "I'm going to give it a go! I started by cutting away some of the plastic between the ends of the web.

TEST RUN: Then I tested the web in the top compartment for fit. I am a big proponent of using Transparencies in a "bended situation" sorta speak, meaning that the edges bend around the corners (like a real web would do). 

Because the box is laying down, you can clearly see missing chunks of web, but I know that once the box is standing up, it will fade into the background and you will never even notice the missing web. Just because it's chopped up, doesn't mean you should throw it away!

I used a piece of Scor-Tape on the back of the web to hold it in place inside the box, then used dots Collage Medium on the web "arms" that I previously cut out.

Once dry, I clipped the web "arms" that were sticking out beyond the box. The "arms" on the left side were never even glued down because they were back inside the box. Really, the 1/8" Scor-Tape that is hidden by the design of the web is holding everything in check! It's not going anywhere.

So if you are a Tim Holtz Halloween fan, then you probably recognize this Baseboard window. It was used on multiple projects (especially journals) in the idea-ology Halloween Live. Well I decided to cut it up to use in my project...because why not?

I ended up with 4 separate pieces - the double window at the top, the boarded up part of the window in the center (that I cut in half), and the skinny piece at the bottom. Set these pieces aside so they will be ready for use.

I also needed some bats. I have multiple dies that have bats, so I picked one called Moonlight. You can use whatever die you might have to cut at least 5 bats from black cardstock.

Moonlight #666386

I was just going to use them as is, but then I decided to add some glitter so the bats would stand out from the trees. 

I took that cheap spiderweb stuff that you can buy at any craft store and wrapped my trees with it. Not too much, but just enough to make the trees look a bit spooky.

I painted 2 wood blocks (1' and 1/2") with black paint and added my trees to the wood blocks (hot glue) to give them a bit of height in the bottom compartment. *Adding that Spritz in Rusty Hinge gives the trees a bit more depth, rather than being all black! The smallest of the trees was hot glued directly to the base. It sits out in front of the other trees, leaving a space for the skull embellishments to come.

I also painted the medium sized Toadstool with black paint and added it to the right side. You can see one of the Baseboard pieces was added to the right of the trees at an angle.

You can see here how I added the Toadstool to the structure. I cut a piece of chipboard (painted it black) and hot glued the Toadstool to it. I added Collage Medium over the top of the hot glue (I trust Collage Medium more than hot glue for longevity) and added the Toadstool to the box with more Collage Medium. That base gives stability to Toadstool so it will always stand up straight!

Next, I decided to colors some bones. I have a bunch from not only this year, but past years so I could afford to color as many as I wanted. Something about things in bulk is just my jam!

I quickly painted the bones black, leaving some areas untouched. Basically, I painted the bones then rubbed the paint all over making it thin in some places. Yes, I used my hands. Yes, it was messy. Yes, I would do it again. While the paint was still wet, I sprayed Gathered Twigs Distress Spray Stain over the bones and dried them with a heat tool. 

NOTE: if you use a hand sanitizer right after you rub the paint on the bones, the paint will come right off your hands.

Then in one last step, I picked up the entire pile of bones and rubbed Collage Medium over the entire thing. This gave me just the color I was looking for.

NOTE: If you are ready, at this point you can just thrown the bones into the top box like I did and move them around while they are still wet with glue.

Top Section

For the top section, I divided it visually into two sides. We already have the spiderweb in the back, so I just needed to work on what was going on in the front. I added the cut window on the left with Collage Medium. Once it was secure, I used Cello Tape Stickers to suspend the Poison label in the window. The words various Departures came from the Halloween Sticker Book. And the bones, well you know where those came from. I just made sure they were hanging out the window just a bit.

The Trick or Treat pumpkin seemed like a good idea to add to the right side since it fit perfectly. I did a little work on him before he was added though. I wanted the bones to stick up inside the pumpkin so I filled the bottom with some hot glue...and as you would imagine, the hot glue came out the mouth and gave him a tongue! I decided I had to go with it (because I thought it made him super cute) so I gave him a quick once over with Collage Medium and a layer of Rock Candy Glitter. He's sparkly, but old world sparkly because of the dark orange color underneath. Anyway, I love the way it turned out and now all I can think about is putting Rock Candy over all my other Trick or Treat pumpkins!

Bottom Section

The bottom section almost needs no explanation since I already talked about the placement of the trees but this is an excellent shot of the section as a whole. 

You can see I added the bugs (Layers pack) in the background with 3D Foam Squares, so the skinny Baseboard piece could be glued to the back of the box and slip just under the edge to cover the cuts.

I also added a metal tag to the second Baseboard piece. I glued the Baseboard piece to the right side wall and the bottom Baseboard. Kinda like a swinging dutch door that someone left open.

I added two Mini Skulls (painted with black paint, then rubbed off) to that space I created in the trees. The base of the Toadstool and the trees has been covered with moss and shredded Mummy Cloth. Think subtle, so not too much of anything.

Here is a good shot of the compartment so you can see all the layers of Baseboards, Layers ephemera and trees.

I sure am happy with this one! That sparkly pumpkin just makes it for me!!

Thanks for stopping by today. More next week as we wind up our celebration of all things Halloween!

Now carry on,

paula