Carey Burns

I've been absent again from Blogville but I've wandered back on this lovely Friday afternoon. The day started off gray, with a dirty frost covering everything but by noon the sun was shining and it felt warmer. Recent events in the world have left me without words, feeling lost and sad, so I plunged deeper into crafting sea to release some of my sadness. Holiday cards, jewelry, decorations and even batches and batches of cookies seemed to help. You can see some of my recent creations over in my Etsy shop . The cookies are long gone, sadly... With the end of the year flying up on my heels, I'm thinking about a comprehensive plan to get back on track with writing and balancing everything else I enjoy. A little internet break might be a good jump start too.

I ask this question too often lately. On Saturday, I overhauled the Halloween Room (office) and there's still some fallout that needs attention. In total, I think I spent over 12 hours cleaning, moving, purging, and organizing over the weekend and last night I couldn't do it again. I was tired and stressed out from the day job. But I had new orange ink to try out. This trio of tags are clipart from doverpictura.com and I used Tim Holtz® Mini Distress Ink Pads in Dried Marigold, Frayed Burlap, Forest Moss, and Stormy Sky. I also used Ranger® Archival Ink, but I cannot remember the color. Bad crafting form, I know… I also used Tim Holtz® ChitChat stickers.  I printed up the images and cut them out, running a black marker along the cut edge of the paper so it didn't look so "new."   Next, I high jacked my Tim Holtz ® Alcohol Ink Applicator to apply layers of inks. I used the same felt pad for all of the colors, again, bad crafting form. I liked h...

I had yesterday off so I did a bit of crafting while waiting around for an appointment. I had a to-do list with all of the steps left to finish my Handsome Devil and for Step One, I added the rusting agent to the iron-painted skulls. They took hours to dry and when they dried...no rust. So I waited. This morning there's only a tiny bit of rust. When I get home, I'll need to add another coat of the rusting agent I guess. Sadly, that threw off completion of the rest of the steps. While I grumped about it, I kept busy making another Halloween tag. This one was super easy--just dabbed on Ranger's Distressed Stain in Hickory Smoke on both sides and let it dry. It had a cloudy look to it because the blobs of stain bled together. The moon and skeleton are both Tim Holtz epehmera and I just added black marker to the cut edges of the paper so it didn't look so "new" and put a few foam mounting dots on them to give them a little depth. I might stamp something on the t...

Happy October Eve! My Halloween senses are running on overload and I've begun to start really decorating at home and at work. There are sketches. Oh, are there sketches! I even took a little field trip at work to the room our party will be held in and my gruesome ideas should work out perfectly! Rather than doing a Creep-a-Day Craft Challenge this year, I'll be posting decorating ideas. There may be a 'how-to' or two as well. Time to get busy! May your pumpkins stay solid, your spiders be plastic, and your tricks be outnumbered by treats!

Last night I finished another project which will be a raffle item for our annual Halloween party at work. This piece started out as a way to justify buying the Tim Holtz® Regions Beyond Mini Stash of paper. (like I really needed a reason...) Originally, I was just going to make cards but then that weird magic happened when pieces of other things found their way into the mix and something wonderful emerges. An experiment with Tim Holtz® Adirondack Inks by Ranger® and bubble wrap led to an interesting scrap I didn't know what to do with. Stacking it on the lovely orange paper just seemed right. And then I remembered I had black glitter paper... That led to a Tim Holtz® 'Wicked' charm which needed string which needed to be tied to something different and dark...black cheesecloth drapery was the perfect choice. Discovering Tim Holtz® Ephemera Pack led me to the beautiful Tim Holtz® Tree Branch stamper. I attempted two stamping techniques on a tag stained with Ti...