ScrappyShak Design Team: Idea-ology Halloween Perspective

I went “out of the box” for myself on this one, and actually ordered the whole box! I ordered the “I want it all” Halloween Idea-ology August bundle from ScrappyShak! I’ve always admired the other makes from people who seem to have all of the new products, and I wanted to challenge myself to see what I could do if I had all the stuff. I knew I would want to make some kind of lighted holiday display, so I also ordered the square vignette boxes, the vignette display panel, and tiny lights. Other than that, I had no idea what I was going to do.

When my box arrived and I opened it up, I was totally overwhelmed! What have I done?!? I walked away for a bit… When I came back, I just started going through all of the packages, and picking out things that I liked. It seemed like I had 3 different themes going on… candy, bones/potions, and bats/spiders. I started playing with my vignette boxes, and came up with a three sided design that I would attached to the upside down display panel, using it as a base. I made a template so I could remember where I wanted the boxes, but didn’t attached them to the display panel yet. I covered each square with worn wallpaper, and covered the base with collage paper that I had from last year. I liked the darker colors in the paper from last year better for this project.

As I started to gather more stuff for each of my themes, I thought it would be great to have an extra shelf in each vignette box. For the first one, I cut down a piece of wood that had come with a different vignette tray with removable dividers that I used on another project last year. I only had one of those extra pieces, and being slightly lazy and not-so-slightly stubborn as I am, I cut it down with a pair of wire snips, and kinda made a mess! But it worked. For the second shelf, I found a piece of black foam board that I cut down much more easily with scissors and an X-Acto knife. I’d certainly recommend that route. The shelf doesn’t have to be super sturdy just to hold small items. I used hotglue to glue them in to the vignette boxes, then used the thinnest design tape to cover up the edges all the way around the box fronts.

I began by picking out more pieces that I liked, and playing. I had a pile for each “side” of my project. I started with the fun stuff, like finding things to color with alcohol inks that would look like candy, to go in some of the clear glass vials I had. I also used some colored seed beads I had. Then I got distracted with the laboratory beaker. What can I put in there? It should be green. I know people use resin, and I didn’t have any. I do have hand sanitizer to clean my media mat. That’s clear, pourable, and alcohol based. I wonder if alcohol ink will color it? Yes, it does! Just a couple drops is all I needed. So it kind of went like that… I’d be working on one thing, and it’d trigger an idea for a different “side”, and I’d go do that.

I wanted to do something special with the new confections candy corn. While I was working on this, there was a Tim Holtz live YouTube, showing makes for these products. I purposefully didn’t watch it, because I didn’t want to be influenced or distracted by the beautiful makes from his Design Team. However, I did hear about how he used the candy corn with tiny lights. I just had to go peak at that part of the replay! He made it sound so easy! Just drill holes in these teeny tiny plasticy candy corn! If you try this yourself, I’d recommend being very careful. Make sure you hold the corn with pliers, not your fingers! You might want to make a starting point for the drill with an awl or something. Otherwise the drill bit can move. Watch his video here. It’s at the end, around 3:19 timestamp. The corn is only slightly bigger than the 1/8″ drill bit that Tim recommended. I’m glad I added the corn this way, but it wasn’t easy. I messed up as many as I was successful with, but I got enough for my project, and I’m happy with how they look.

Although I was trying not to spend any more on this project, I felt like I did have to get the amber colored apothecary vials. I’m glad I did. I am not glad that I didn’t take the time to do more to them, like distress them more, but I felt like I had to draw a line in the sand as to how much time I was going to spend on this project! I also had some cards to get out, and regular life stuff to take care of! Some of the vials are empty, some have stuff in them, you can’t really see through the glass. I did have a little bit of a time trying to get the labels to stick that come with the apothecary vials. I first tried them out of the package, and then tried them with collage medium. I heard someone suggest to make sure they were clean before you try to apply the labels, which I will definitely do next time. I will probably wipe them off with alcohol first to make sure the labels stick.

I did most of my embossing powder and glaze at the same time. I’m happiest with the curtain, which is from the layers pack. I wanted the wood part to be an offwhite color, and the curtain part to be a light pink color to match the flowers in the worn wallpaper. I masked off the curtain pieces with bits of masking tape, then applied embossing ink with the dauber top applicator, and embossed the wood part using antique linen embossing glaze. Then I removed the mask, applied embossing ink with a marker, and embossed the curtain with saltwater taffy embossing glaze. I also used wild honey embossing glaze to color the paper doll’s dress, using both the embossing dauber and an embossing marker. Clear embossing powder was used on the bats.

I wasn’t sure what to put on the bottom shelf of the candy shop. I didn’t have anything that said “Confections”, so I went through the layers and ephemera packs, and found something about a florist. Some florists have candy as well, so I figured that would work. I used the paper “bouquet” idea-ology flowers, and sprayed each small cluster with different fall colored spray stains. I let them dry overnight. I played around with trying to display them, then had the idea of putting them in a flower cone, which I made out of a scrap piece of Tim Holtz paper that had a pretty sage green pattern to it.

On the bats and spider side, I used one of the halloween transparencies for the spider web. I cut it down so it would fit in the corner. I also added a small rectangular vignette box, so it would match the other two sides better. I used sewing thread to hang up the spiders, and rubbed white glue on the thread to stiffen it up.

To distress the bones, I added some grit paste. I had some Crypt grit paste leftover from last year’s Halloween release. After the grit paste dried, I rubbed on some vintage photo, antique linen, and peeled paint distress crayons with my fingers. Any grit paste will do, as you can alter the color of the paste with distress crayons after it dries. If you don’t have distress crayons, you could mix a tiny bit of re-inker in with the grit paste before you apply it to the bones, but it won’t have quite the same look. It will still be cool! Sometimes we have to use what we have!

The Sizzix Mischievous cats were fun. I die cut all of the cats using different black paper – shiny, matte, and glitter. My favorite black paper to use is the Tim Holtz black alcohol ink paper. It has almost a suede texture to it. Two of the cats were cut out with the halloween deco sheets. These sheets are very thin, glittered paper, with adhesive on the back. In hindsight, I might have put the deco sheet black paper on cardstock, then cut the cats out, and popped them up with dimensional foam on the back wall of that piece. I think they get a little lost directly adhered to the box. To make the cats stand up in the middle of the box, I used black foam board. I cut a piece the size of the inside bottom of the box, and then cut it in half again the long ways. I glued one piece down towards the back of the box, then stood up my two cats, and then glued the other piece down, holding them up in place. I wanted it to look like a room full of black cats! I glued three of the cats on the front face of the box. The extra one went into the flower/candy shoppe.

I used a little distress spray stain on the mummy cloth, including a little aged mahogany, trying to make it look like dried blood.

I didn’t start gluing everything together until I had my layout and pieces done. I had to figure out where I was going to put the tiny lights. I put the battery packs underneath the display panel, and drilled holes to string the lights up into the back of the boxes. I also ended up with enough extra that I could add drippy candles to the top of one of the boxes, and shape the tiny lights so that the candles look like they were lit.

One of the hardest parts of this project was getting started, and the other hard part was deciding when to stop! I really enjoyed working on this, but probably could have spent another week adding cool things. One of the great things about Tim’s products is that they all coordinate with each other. It’s hard to go wrong. Just start somewhere, and do what makes sense to you. Step away if you run out of ideas. The ideas will come if you try to relax and just enjoy the process. There will be lots of people who will “get” what you create. Some won’t, but it’s not for them, it’s for you! Thank you for stopping by!

Tim Holtz Idea-ology products used include:
vignette boxes (squares)
vignette display panel
halloween baseboards
halloween layers
halloween ephemera pack
halloween worn wallpaper scraps
halloween deco sheets
halloween transparencies
curiosities sticker book
apothecary vials
corked vials
halloween adornments
creepy eyes
boneyard
halloween confections
halloween confections – candy corn
confections (from 2021 holiday season)
halloween trimmings
halloween design tape
halloween paper dolls
halloween collage paper (from 2021 season)
crypt grit paste (from 2021 season)
black alcohol ink paper
distress embossing glaze in antique linen, saltwater taffy, and wild honey