HAPPY FALL Y'ALL CHALLENGE OVER AT CRAFT HOARDERS ANONYMOUS

Hello and welcome to my blog!  

I am sooo super excited and honored to be doing a couple of Guest Design spots for

 Gloria Stengel's Craft Hoarders Anonymous Challenge this month.  This is such a fun challenge and who among us is NOT a craft hoarder???

I am a HUGE craft hoarder and no, I'm not in any sort of treatment program!  I don't want help, I want more space!  haha  Seriously though, when I saw the theme for the first challenge... "Happy Fall Y'All", I was in love! 

I absolutely LOVE the fall season.  It is my favorite time of year with all of it's splendid color, that unmistakeable crispness in the air, the rustling of fallen leaves, the hearty soups and stews, the multiple craft fairs, all sorts of pumpkin bars and pies and particularly Halloween! I love Thanksgiving, too but Halloween is ... other than Christmas, my favorite holiday to decorate the house.  So, this was an easy challenge for me to come up with a theme!

I promised to create and share a Halloween Assemblage Clock when I wrote my blog post for my Christmas Assemblage Clock. I adore these little Assemblage Clocks and am fast becoming addicted to them!  Yes, I am a hoarder and I have a few more of these on hand. My Halloween clock sitting next to my Christmas clock just makes me smile!

Everything that I used on my clock was mostly out of my "Halloween stash". I have a couple of big plastic containers full of things I have collected over the years that I figured would come in handy when I create vintage Halloween pieces to decorate my home.

I began by painting my Assemblage clock with a basecoat of white gesso to give the shiny silver metal finish on the clock some "tooth" to grab the paint I would later be using. (Some people take their clocks completely apart before they paint them.  I don't). When the gesso was dry, I brushed over it with black acrylic paint. When that was dry, I added a middle coat of Americana's Crackle Medium and when that was dry, I added a top coat of an acrylic vintage pumpkin colored orange paint.

I added some Renaissance Treasure Gold Guilding Wax to the edges and randomly over the orange crackled surface of the clock.  You can see it glistening in this photograph. Then I hot glued the vintage black and orange beads (a garland I tore apart and restrung to fit) around the clock face. Finally, I added the vintage gold tinsel garland behind the bead garland.

Moving to the interior of my vintage Halloween clock ...

I created this "false back" just in case I decided to add Tim's little lantern or something to it. I used some scraps of paper that I save after making projects, put them together and used orange and black Distress Inks to colorize them.

Using Ranger's Black Diamond Embossing Powder, I heat embossed the numbers from Tim Holtz' Mercantile stamp set.  Then I simply cut them out and glued them onto my clock background.  I did not use the "6" because it would be covered up with other things.  I also added Gold Paint Dabber then Platinum Stickles to Tim's Mirrored Stars and let them dry. Once dry, I glued them in place on the background. (I later drew in a few more starts on the left side using the Platinum Stickles after my girls were in place). 

I found these darling little vintage children in one of my many vintage images folders that I have on my computer.  I sized them to fit in my clock and printed them out. I couldn't decide which one to use so I colored all of them and then waited to see which one emerged as the one who wanted to be a part of my clock.  

~ The Progression Of The Little Girls ~

The two little girls won. Their clothes are colored with Scattered Straw, Wild Honey and Spiced Marmalade Distress Inks using a Detailer Water Brush. Their little cheeks are blushed with Tattered Rose Distress Ink. I had decided to add dimensional witches hats to them, so I developed a pattern to fit their heads. (The girls were backed with kraft cardstock before I cut them out and edged with a Black Soot Distress Marker).

Here are the little girls with their little witch hats going on. They are cut from black cardstock and glued in place. The hat brims are elongated ovals that are slit in the center and slipped in place on their heads.  There is a small bead of glue on the back sides of their heads, holding them in place. The rest of the hats are actually rounded in the front and glued to the back of their heads.

I added black tulle to their hats as hat bands and a spooky shawl around the one little girl. The other little girl received her bat wings.  These were heat embossed onto manila cardstock using Black Diamond Embossing Powder and then outlined with Platinum Stickles.

Finally, I added a magic wand to the little bat girl.  This is a toothpick that I colored with Black Soot Distress Ink and added another of the gold and Platinum Stickles covered Mirrored Stars. I cut a slit at her hand and glued the toothpick in place in the back.

I made my own little spooky picket fence out of little pointy craft sticks (found at Hobby Lobby), painted white and then distressed with Gathered Twigs Distress Ink. I joined the pickets together with a thin wire.

Here is the completed picket fence, cut with a rounded bottom and ready for it's placement inside the clock.

Here are most of the interior things that I made out of stash of stuff. I stamped the vintage half moon from an Oxford Impressions stamp set that I have had for a long time. It is stamped onto Specialty Stamping Paper and colorized with Scattered Straw, Mustard Seed, Vintage Photo and blushed with Victorian Velvet Distress Inks.  I also added Platinum Stickles around the edges for a more vintage look.

I added the orange and black "31" Bingo piece to one of my little witches. Since I decided not to use a false back to add the Tim Holtz Lantern, I glued my completed circle onto the metal back of the clock and added a Platinum Stickles edge around the rest of the metal backing.  Once dry, it was ready to pop into place.

But now I needed to create the foreground scene of my clock.

Back to the plastic containers I went to dig out some miniature pumpkins and skulls.  I also added a little greenish mossy stuff for some color and I hot glued everything into place.  I added the picket fence and pulled it apart a little bit so when I got the back in place, you could more easily see the little girls and the magic wand.  The moon is held by a wire glued to the upper side of the clock interior.

I snapped the clock back in place and started working on the exterior embellishments.

I created these three charms from Tim Holtz' Charms Fragments and portions of vintage Halloween Post Cards that are saved on my computer.  I sized them to fit, glued them in place using Glossy Accents, cut off the excess paper and sanded them on the back side. The chains are some junk chains that I have and they are joined onto the charms by Tim Holtz Jump Rings.  I added them to the bell portion of the clock with larger Jump Rings around the handle.

The two vintage tags hanging on the one side of the clock.

The vintage witch tag hanging on the other.

The bats are heat embossed onto Manila Cardstock using Black Diamond Embossing Powder. They are edged with a Black Soot Distress Marker.  I cut out the bats and cut out a manila cardstock backing for them as well.  I distressed the backings and slipped a wire between them.  The wire is then wrapped around the handle on the clock so make the bats appear to be flying.  The Happy Halloween Banner is also heat embossed on Manila Cardstock using Black Diamond Embossing Powder.  I made my own banner and distressed it with Gathered Twigs Distress Ink, edged with Black Soot Distress Marker. It is hot glued in place. Finally, I added the spider webbing from my stash of spooky stuff stored in my good ol' plastic container.  The Happy Halloween stamp can be found on Tim Holtz' Mini Halloween 3 stamp set and the bats are from his Retro Halloween stamp set.

 Here is a photograph of the back of the clock.

Here is a closeup of the scene in side of the clock. These are sometimes hard to photograph with the glass clock front ... but you get the idea. 

As I was sifting through my stash of stuff, I ran across this little piece of metal fencing that was already rusted and everything! So I just hot glued some mini skulls (from Michaels) onto the prongs, bent the sides around and created a scary little fence that I could set in front of my clock if I so desired.

And here it is ... 

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog and checking out my vintage Halloween Assemblage Clock.  I hope that this tutorial has helped you and that you're all fired up and ready to create something to celebrate FALL!  Then link up to the challenge over at Craft Hoarder's Anonymous where you might win a fabulous prize from this challenge's sponsor,  POLLY'S PAPER STUDIO.

Good luck everyone!  See you again soon!