The Crafter's Workshop BlogCreeptastic

Hero image showing the completed 10" round skull and bugs artwork, close up. — “Creeptastic” mixed-media artwork measuring 10″ diameter on round watercolor paper

The countdown to Halloween is on… only a few days left. Do you have your costumes and candy ready for your little trick or treaters? In the ‘spirit’ of the season, I decided that the one thing that creeps a whole lot of my friends out is bugs (sorry Cindy!). So I decided to make this creepy crawly skull artwork with loaded with bugs. I had stenciled the background a couple of weeks ago, when I couldn’t decide what to work on, so I just started playing with the new stencils from The Crafter’s Workshop, and voila, a pretty cool background was born.

The Crafter’s Workshop provided me with some product to create this project. The opinions I share are solely my own.

Art foamies skull stamp was printed with my @GelPress gel plate, then cut out and glued down with Matte Gel Medium. — Using one or two stencils, layering them, and using multiple mediums gives a great background effect.

To create the background I used multiple layers of TCW940 X Trail and TCW941 Rainbow Montage using Paper Artsy Chalk Acrylic Paints, TCW9001 white gesso, TCW9002 black gesso, and Uni-ball Signo UM-153 acrylic paint pens in gold, black, and white. This watercolor paper is 10″ in diameter, circular, and 140 lb weight, which is the perfect weight to hold all of the details I had in mind for the finished artwork. I took a recent Art Foamies skull stamp gel print that I made on my GelPress gel plate and collaged it on using TCW9011 Matte Gel Medium.

Image showing TCW Leaf stencil that was created using the warm shades of our ColorSparx powders. — Close up image showing TCW953 Skeletal Leaf using Colorsparx Powders in warm tones.

Next, I wanted to create some autumn leaves as the base for the bugs to crawl over. I laid TCW953 Skeletal Leaf stencil over 8″ x 8″ watercolor paper, sprinkled with warm tones of Colorsparx Powders and sprayed it lightly with our water spritz bottle. Isn’t it a beautiful effect? I love it!

Close up image showing the Tim Holtz leaf dies laying upon the Skeletal Leaf page, ready to be die cut out. — Tim Holtz leaf dies by Sizzix were used to die cut the Colorsparx stenciled leaf into smaller leaf shapes.

Next, using Tim Holtz leaf dies by Sizzix, I cut the stenciled Skeletal leaf image into multiple leaf shapes to use for the background for the bugs to crawl across. I also stamped and die cut the bug shapes out using Tim Holtz’s Entomology stamp and die set on colored papers. I now had a pile of leaves and a pile of creepy crawly bugs waiting to be used.

Image showing the piles of cut out bugs and leaves waiting to be collaged around the skull image. Black gesso has been used to paint a leaf shape around the top and sides of the skull, almost in a leaf shape. — TCW9002 Black gesso was used to paint an outline for the leaves and bugs to be collaged to.

I used TCW9002 Black gesso and a paint brush to paint a semi maple leaf shape to attach the leaves and bugs to. This ensured that some of the background would still be visible, yet not compete with the images and die cut outs of the leaves and bugs.

The evolution of the leaves and bugs being added around the skull.

Image showing the fully completed artwork, there is a spider and webs filter overlaying the photo edges for effect. — Image showing the completed creepy crawly Creeptastic artwork.

Here are some close images so you can see the background in closer detail.

Close up images showing the completed work in greater detail.

And here’s the completed artwork for you to enjoy!

The completed artwork is framed in a round black open frame. — Image of the fully completed skull and creepy crawly artwork.

If you’d like to watch a super quick fly-by video (51 seconds) of this process, please hop on over to my YouTube Channel @TealHareCreations.

Michaela Butterworth
The Crafter’s Workshop Design Team Member

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