Thursday 4 October 2018

Vampires and Poor Dental Hygiene

Suddenly, just as he was about to carve his fangs deep into the screaming victim's neck, a strange thing happened...






The idea for my ATC was sparked during a die cutting session with the Tim Holtz Village Graveyard die set. There were these tiny left overs from the fence piece (visible in the black area on my glass mat)...



...and to me they looked like teeth lying there ( I guess I should mention at this point that I had a root extraction and two implants done last week and am still on recovery from that... ;).

Lost teeth....Halloween....that quote on the fab Monstrous stamp set...and there it was - my idea of what happens to Count Dracula, when he doesn't take good care of his teeth (you know...like brushing them twice a day night,  thorough flossing, using mouth rinse and having them looked at by a dentist at least once a year century). 





Can you imagine anything more horrible than loosing your teeth...I mean: several (or even all) of them at once ...out of the blue...just when your thinking your life is good and things are all going forward and you want to take a bite of that yummy bartender cupcake you've brought home...there simply IS nothing more horrible, right?




I created my toothless vampire by simply removing the stamping ink with a Q-tip from the fangs before I stamped the image onto white cardstock. See? They're gone!

I stamped and painted the image directly on the stamp platform. I used Distress Stains salty ocean and antique linen to mix a pale green for the vampire's skin. To create some shading for a more dimensional look I simply painted over the according areas (under the eyes, on one side of the nose, one cheek and one side of the forehead and neck) two or even three times with the same colour. It's like you're doing a watercolour painting: the more layers - the darker the tone.





Then I mixed fired brick and salty ocean to create a dark red and a pale violet.



The "teeth" were done by cutting the scraps from die cutting the metal fence into slightly different shapes with my fine detail scissors. This way I created two fangs, an incisor and several back teeth. I painted their roots with fired brick and added antique linen for a subtle shading.


Then I got fiddly and blended the edges with black archival ink (using the pointy end of a drop shaped cosmetic sponge). I messed up the molar to the outer right as you can see.


One is already showing first signs of caries. Uh oh!


I used the ATC & Corners Alterations die to cut an ATC blank from heavy grey cardstock and added shabby shutters and dusty concorde Distress ink using the blending tool. Then I stamped it with a background image from the Mini Halloween 5 stamp set.


The corners were blended in fired brick Distress Ink and glued in place. For shocked and toothless Count Dracula I used large sticky foam pads, for the falling teeth I cut tiny black sticky foam pads in halves. I had to use tweezers 'cos the foam pads were so small...



Done!
I must admit I feel sympathy for haughty Count Dracula. Having to feed on blood bottles instead of warm, living prey definitely is in bad style and very undignified, isn't it?




I hope my little fun Halloween ATC has made you smile a bit. ;)

Hugs and happy crafting!
Claudia
xxx

1 comment:

Thank you so much for your visit and especially for taking the time to leave me a short comment! This is highly appreciated! xxx