Halloween votive

Well it's 'Halloween' time over at ATP Exchange for our second challenge which is being hosted by the very talented Annie. 

What does Halloween mean to me? Well it's certainly a 'celebration' that seems to have become more firmly established in recent times, but even when my children were growing up I did have to carve a pumpkin each year (of course, any excuse to craft!) So this is my scaled down offering. An altered votive in that wonderful pumpkin orange colour.

It started out as a plain glass votive and just to make it extra tricky, how to stamp on it's curved surface?

Difficult to see but I have applied a coat of matte medium first so the paint/ glaze would have something to stick to.

I then applied a layer of PaperArtsy crackle glaze before the next layer which was  Luminarte Silk Acrylic glaze in Persimmon . Don't you just love that shimmer? As you can see it gave a lovely crackle effect but I wanted a more dramatic effect. I used some of the new Finnabair clear crackle texture paste and thought it would just give a clear crackle on top, instead I got an even better effect, possibly because it was on top of an existing crackle and a glaze. Whatever the reason I got some fabulous crackles.

Once dry I stamped in black archival on to tissue paper using PaperArtsy HP Halloween 01. I then tore around the images and applied them using PaperArtsy satin glaze.

To finish, Artist Trading Post have these steampunk skull metal embellishments in their Route 52 range which fits in with the theme. I painted them with persimmon and cinnamon brown silk acrylic glaze and adhered with matte medium. 

Love the way the flame shows through the cracks......a bit spooky?

Please hop over to the ATP Exchange and see what the rest of the talented DT have created and hopefully will inspire you. Thanks as always for stopping by.