Repose-itory Part 3 - Til Death Do Us Part

Today is part 3 of the Reposeitory project. I wanted to focus on how to make the wedding portrait and the crystal ball. Both are things found in Disney's Haunted Mansion and since I was inspired by the attic scene when making this piece, I had to add a wedding portrait.  In mine, the husband has his head, but in the portraits in the Haunted Mansion attic, the husband's heads all disappear. Also, the crystal ball with Madame Leota's head is big part of the mansion storyline, so I added one with a ghostly twist.

For the portrait frame, mantle and window frames I used Distress Woodgrain Cardstock and colored it with Pumice Stone and Hickory Smoke and added a few touches of Walnut Stain and Black Soot. I colored a large piece 8.5x11 or you could color several small pieces.

The frame was fairly simple to make but making the photo look old took a few steps.

With a small piece of the wood grain. You want the grain to run vertically for this. Use the second smallest Stacked Label die and the smalled Stitched Oval die.  Line them up like this, tape them down with removable tape, and cut.

This decorative piece goes at the top of the Window Frame, but I thought it would be good to tie the portrait frame in with the other pieces so I cut one decorative piece for the top of the portrait frame.

Again, make sure that the grain is vertical.

I cut the ghosts on this piece out of a mottled (I'm not sure how else to describe it) piece of vellum. I found that they cut through the vellum better if you cut them out on the chrome precision plate.

I also cut some accessories from the Hip Haunts die set.

You need to cut a background piece out of something dark. For the original I used a piece of dark brown stripe from the Dapper Paper Stash. This one is a dark pattern from one of the stashes, I'm not sure which. It was in my scraps. Cut the arms off the one ghost that has the arms in the air. Make sure that they fit properly within the oval on the frame. Also make sure the mustache and bow tie have more color to them. I used a little Distress Ink on a blending tool and it wasn't dark enough on this version.

Put a nice layer of Collage Medium on the paper and then adhere the ghosts into it.

Once that is dry, put a layer of Distress Crackle Paint over it and let it dry so it will crackle. If you used a heat tool it doesn't crackle as well. I got impatient on this sample and you can see it didn't crackle as well as the original.

Once the Crackle Paint has dried and crackled, scribble some dark brown Distress Crayon on it.

Rub the crayon in with a very slightly damp finger.

Then adhere the frame on top and add the little decor piece at the top.

Here you can see on the original that the crackle really showed. I also left more Distress Crayon around the edges where the oval was to go.

Now for the crystal ball. There are two options for making it so it fits within this design. First you can cut a small base and an outer ring as seen above and then a large base by cutting just the large circle again. I cut these from very thin vellum.

Here is the small base on the left, and the large base with the ring on the right.

Cut the arms off the ghost again.

Position the face of the ghost behind the vellum. Peel the adhesive ring off the Dimensional Dome and adhere it to the larger base.

I adhered the vellum ring around the outside edge of the dome with Distress Collage Medium and then trimmed around it so the excess clear part  of the dome didn't show. You can see where to trim.

This is how it looks with the ring around it and the base.

For the other type of dome, which is the one I used on this project, I put the base on the dome and I made a cut on each side of the base as see above.

Then trim the entire outside piece off the dome, leaving only the part that will be hidden underneath the base. Put the dome on the smaller back ground and then put the base over the dome.

As you can see, it fits right around the smaller piece and you don't see any of the outer lip.

I was planning on these two pieces being the last tutorials on this piece, but I've had several people contact me about the crackle background, so I'm doing one more short post after this on how to make that.
Thank you again for stopping by!
Tami

I am an affiliate with Simon Says Stamp and Scrapbook.com so the links below send you to one of those stores depending on which logo you choose.  If you wish to purchase something from either store and use one of my links below, I get a small percentage of your order, at no additional cost to you. This helps me to defray the costs of this blog, the time, the ideas and tutorials I post here. Your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Repose-itory Part 2 - Hitting the Books

 So part two of this project is focusing on the books. This is a super easy little technique. The only thing you need besides the Santa's Helper dies is a little bit of patience.

 I named this project the Repose-itory because I was thinking it was a haunted place of REPOSE and then when I added all the books, voila! I had to change the word Repository, like a place with a collection of books, into a Repose-itory.  When you say it you have to hold the O like Paul Frees does when he narrates the script in Disney's Haunted Mansion. Repoooooose-itory.

 If you have ever ridden Disney's Haunted Mansion, (Did I mention that it turned 50 this month?) :-D you will probably remember the attic portion. It is packed full of junk and covered in dust and cobwebs.  I used that as inspiration for this piece.

From the old bricks that I discussed in my last post, to the piles of books, old windows, large fireplace, books, bottles, wedding photo, candles, the Ghost Host raven, and of course, some of the 999 Happy Haunts.

 So the books....they aren't really book dies.  They are the lids to the presents in the Santa's Helper die set.  But I just couldn't stop seeing books. Kind of like when I saw the cauldron die I couldn't stop seeing a Santa Sack.  You know it's one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it.  So I decided to just go with it. When you look at the dies sideways as you see them below, you can see how they look like books with lines on the spine.

To make the books this was my process. I backed some Distress Mixed Media Heavystock with Sizzix Permanent Adhesive Sheets.
Then you can do this two ways, you can cut all the gift box lids from plain Distress Mixed Media Heavystock and color them all individually with Distress Ink and a Waterbrush. If you do this, I recommend cutting and coloring them one lid at a time.

 Or you could color some small pieces of Heavystock with Distress Inks, back them with the adhesive sheets and then cut out the lids. You then mix and match the lines for the book bindings with different colors of book spines.  This is probably the fastest method.

I cut my colored paper into strips and then just cut the lids and the "ribbon" bits. If you use the colored paper method, you need to cut two of each lid with at least two different colors so you can mix and match parts.

Here you can see that I have cut each lid from two colors of paper and switched the "ribbon" bits. From this point I would ink the edges and adhere them together.
Once you have a nice pile of different sizes of books, then you can start arranging them on your piece. Pile them up, lean them against each other, put candles or bottles or skulls or other frightful items on them or next to them.  If you really wanted to go all Haunted Mansion attic, you could make a few old looking wedding gifts out of the Santa's Helper dies and pile those around too for Constance and her many husbands.

You can see from the photos I included that I used quite a few of the dies from the Regions Beyond and Frightful Things die sets to set the scene. I completed the piece with the name Reposeitory, cut out of the new Handmade steel rule alphabet and it is by far one of my favorites!

The next post will be my last on this piece. I will cover the Wedding Photo and Crystal Ball.

Just a reminder that if you have questions or want me to detail anything else, please contact me through the form at the right as I can't reply to comments. I do greatly appreciate them though and read every single one, so thank you to those who take time to leave a comment.

I hope you can find a good movie, settle down with a die cutter, the dies, and paper and have fun making some books!
Tami

I am an affiliate with Simon Says Stamp and Scrapbook.com so the links below send you to one of those stores depending on which logo you choose.  If you wish to purchase something from either store and use one of my links below, I get a small percentage of your order, at no additional cost to you. This helps me to defray the costs of this blog, the time, the ideas and tutorials I post here. Your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Repose-itory Part 1 - All Bricked Up

Sometimes you get inspired the minute you see something and you just have to go with it, and that's it what happened here.  When I saw the seasonal dies from Tim Holtz and Sizzix, this Repose-itory started designing itself in my mind and I was compelled to make it.
I know it uses a LOT of the new Chapter 3 seasonal dies, but I couldn't help myself. I love them all so much and just needed to use them on one project.  So if you only have a few or you have something you can substitute from older dies in your stash, I hope this serves as some inspiration that you can use.

I've broken this project down into several posts so we can focus just on a few techniques used. As always, if you have a question or want to contact me, please use the link in the column at the right. I am unable to reply to comments below.
Let's get started on the brick background technique today.

I used one of the large Etcetera Tombstones from last year's release. If you still have one or if you find one somewhere online, great. If not, just adjust your design to one of the smaller tombstones available this year from Tim Holtz and Stampers Anonymous.
I was certain that I wanted a really soot covered brick wall in the "attic" area of the tombstone, and on the back of the fireplace. There are several options available for making this, but I settled on die cuts since this was a Sizzix project.

 Begin by coloring a piece of Distress Mixed Media Heavystock a Brick Color. You can make this plain red or add some brown as well if you want.  I just sprayed the DMMH with Fired Brick Distress Stain for this post sample but in the actual piece the bricks had more brown in them.

 Then I made sure to spray a little water on it and let it dry with a heat tool.

 I had stain left on my nonstick mat, so I just went back in and put the paper, stain side down into the left over bits, then dried, and repeated this until I was happy with the coverage.

The Mixed Media 3 die set has these alpha, crackle and brick portions of backgrounds. I cut out several of the brick backgrounds so I had plenty of bricks to choose from. If you are making a mixed media journal or art piece, you can use either the bricks or the mortar outline.  I wasn't too worried about some of the bricks having the ends cut off on the second cut on this piece because you will see that there are some places where you only see one side of the brick anyway.

 The bricks on the left are as they come out of the die. The bricks on the right are with the edges inked with a brown Distress Ink. You can choose which you prefer.

 This next step I did on two surfaces. For the attic, I painted the Etcetera tag tombstone parts with Black Soot Distress Paint. Then I added a nice layer of Distress Collage Medium as seen above. For the Fireside background, I put collage medium on black cardstock as seen above.

 Then lay the bricks onto the paper or the tombstone "attic" in this pattern. The alternating rows should be off-set so that the lines look like a brick wall and don't line up vertically. You can see that along the outside edges you really only see the end of the brick that faces the other bricks so you can use the part bricks for the outside edges. Once you are done, then cover all of the bricks with a layer of Collage Medium to seal and dry it.

Once it is dry, it goes in two directions. The Fireside piece skips ahead to the Distress Crayon step a little later in this blog post, so set it aside and continue with the other steps. As you can see from the step below, for the actual piece I made, I had some brown mixed in with my Fired Brick. The Distress Crayons age the bricks as well.

For the attic bricks, I have seen attics on home improvement shows where the the bricks seem to have some crackly mortar or something on them, so to get that look I broke out the Ranger Opaque Crackle Texture Paste. I smeared some on the bricks kind of here and there and let it dry.

This is what it looks like dried and crackled. I also added this to the frame on the upper part of the tombstone for added texture and interest, as seen below.

Once it was crackled, I attached the frame to the brick base with Distress Collage Medium and then covered the entire piece with a thin coat of  Distress Collage Medium.

I needed to age the bricks and the crackle paste, so in came the Distress Crayons. Remember, that the small piece of brick needs aged as well.

I scribbled over the texture paste with Vintge Photo brown Distress Crayon, Then I rubbed it into the piece with my finger .

Then I added a layer of a darker brown called Ground Espresso Distress Crayon and rubbed it in.

You can see it is getting darker and grungier.

 The last step is to scribble some Black Soot Distress Crayon around the outside edge and rub it in.

The final result should look something like this.  It might be good to practice this technique on a piece of scrap paper as I have done for this post. Practice makes perfect and none of us are able to get the exact look we want on the first try. We all have to practice, so just try it out and then save the practice runs. You never know when it might be just the right little brick piece for something later on.

 I love how grungy it turned out and think it really looks like an old burned out, haunted house attic.
Now don't forget that the small cardstock brick piece needs to be used. It goes behind the Fireside mantle die and is covered up by the firescreen that goes in front of it, but it is a nice realistic detail to include, and you know, I'm all about the details in my vignettes. It comes from my years of loving all the magical Disney Details.
And speaking of details, now that it's blow up bigger than on my phone, I can see in this photo below that there is a cat hair from my cat Leota Toombs on the mantle. LOLOL! That really couldn't be a more perfect detail because she is named after one of the Disney Imagineers who created the Haunted Mansion.  I love that cat.

I hope this was enough detail for you to be able to give this brick background a go. I really like it! My next post on this piece will discuss how I made all the books.
Thanks for stopping by my Repose-itory!
Tami

I am an affiliate with Simon Says Stamp and Scrapbook.com so the links below send you to one of those stores depending on which logo you choose.  If you wish to purchase something from either store and use one of my links below, I get a small percentage of your order, at no additional cost to you. This helps me to defray the costs of this blog, the time, the ideas and tutorials I post here. Your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you!