Whimsy Stamps Halloweeners Hop with Ranger Ink! (Jack Got The Message Sally)

Hey crafty friends, I'm beyond excited and delighted to share with you the creations I've made for a very special Instagram Hop Whimsy is hosting today with Ranger Ink! I cannot even begin to tell you how much joy this gives me as I love Ranger Ink products, most especially their Mica Spray Stains. I've gone a little crazy buying as many as I could this past year, so imagine my joy when they re-released the earlier colours that I'd previously missed buying! With Whimsy's great love for Halloween and their incredible range of Halloween stamps, this hop is a match made in Halloween Heaven. 

I have created two Halloween décor pieces for our Instagram Hop. I will share the second one in a separate post. The first is a décor piece using a cloche (named after the French word for a bell) which I picked up from a homeware store with just this in mind. Well, not this exactly. I knew I wanted to create a décor piece for Halloween, but the vision for the actual piece came together after our latest release from Whimsy that featured this amazing slimline die set that reminded me so much of the Spiral Hill from The Nightmare Before Christmas! I remembered seeing a couple of images in a cool slimline paper set Whimsy released previously and I knew I had in my stash, so I fished these two elements out and started designing my scene. I knew I couldn't put Sally and Jack on the hill, I didn't have the right things for the iconic scene from the movie, but what I did have could be worked to create a 'hat-tip' piece to that scene. I used 3 dark spray stains to create the mottled texture on the Spiral Hill and the base layer of the design. Empty Tomb, Iron Gate and Phantom Mist gave a lovely shine and texture to the hill, graveyard ground and tombstones of my scene.

This photo I took half way through my process, I hadn't added the tombstone elements or the hill in the back. These took a little working out, how to fit them in the scene. This scene is created with essentially two halves that come together, to make the whole. The first half consists of the moon and spiral hill which are glued together and suspended with a piece of clear acetate to look as if they are 'floating' in the scene. The second half is comprised of Jack, who is standing thanks to an acetate anchor, the pumpkins are free, not glued down, so can be moved around the scene as the whim takes me. I was yet to add the tombstone in front, in this shot, which I adhered to the middle sized pumpkin and moved the placement of the pumpkins around to better fit the scene. So the tombstones stand, propped up against the pumpkin, but free from the Spiral Hill.

Now once I'd set my heart on using the Slimline Nightmare Die and creating Spiral Hill from The Nightmare Before Christmas, I knew I would need to convey the scene somehow and the moon and hill alone were not enough. So this is where the SurReally Cool Halloween Slimline Paper Pack comes in. I knew I'd seen a Skelly boy kind of image in the pack and sure enough, flipping through I found it. That image wasn't a great fit for the scene, but it was 'his head', so I wanted to use it. I then found the image of a Pumpkin Head Man, so I fussy cut this out of the paper pack, and then glued the Jack Skellington like head on top. In the image the pumpkin head man, is holding a hat, which didn't work here, because the Jack head was wearing a hat! So I decided to cut the hat away leaving a hand held up as if we were holding something, so I found a little embellishment from an older This Calls For Confetti set called Messages of Love, I had in my stash that had these little message bubbles with a heart in it. I've decided to call this creation, Jack Got The Message Sally, which hat tips the storyline where it took Jack the entire movie to finally realise how Sally felt about him, resulting in that iconic Jack and Sally scene on Spiral Hill. What do you think? Too much?

I chose to use pumpkins for this make that were already spherical, I didn't have any tiny pumpkins that were symmetrical enough to turn into 3D pumpkins, so I grabbed the Tim Holtz resin pumpkins and set about adding some colour to brighten them up a bit.

The little resin pumpkins from Tim Holtz Idea-ology line were a little pale this year, so I decided to add some colour with Simon Hurley's Lunar Paste. I had the colour Guppy in my stash which is a fun bright orange shade and it's super easy to apply just with your finger tips (which was very brave of me, because I don't like getting messy hands!) But I added the paste to all these wee pumpkins and just after, I sprayed a white card with Harvest Moon Mica Spray from Set Three of the Halloween Mica Spray Stain Sets. I let it dry, then diecut the moon from Whimsy's Howling Night Die Set. This is the same set that I used to cut the little tombstone scenes from the same cardstock I sprayed and diecut the Spiral Hill and Base from. With all the elements ready, it was time to complete the scene.

For the reverse of the scene, I glued a second diecut of the moon and the Spiral Hill so the back would look finished too. I sandwiched the acetate between the layers before adhering that to the top of the cloche. I wanted to add more of a 'hillside' as the graveyard scene in The Nightmare Before Christmas has rolling hills of pumpkins and tombstones. So I grabbed one of the honeycomb rounds that I'd cut off the banner I made previously with the pirates and added it to the back of the hill. I wanted it to be easily removable when the cloche lid was lifted, so I added a magnet under the base and then to the bottom section of the honeycomb, so when the cloche is popped into place, the little hill base 'clicks' into place. Another diecut of tombstones and some pumpkins gave a simple finish to the back to complete the design. 

Sorry about the odd angle of this pic, but it was tricky with the reflection in the glass cloche to capture good shots of the details, but here is Jack holding up the wee heart, letting Sally know he 'gets the message'. I will add a short video here soon, showing how the two halves of the scene come together, I just need to finish some editing. 

Here is the banner for our current hop with all the details. I hope you're able to come and join us for this fun and fabulous celebration of Halloween and of Ranger and Whimsy's wonderful Halloween ranges. Just in case you're not familiar with Ranger's Halloween Products, here's an image of their fantastic Halloween range.

Please note, the hop is an Instagram Hop, so comments here, sadly won't count as an entry for the prizes, so if you have an Instagram account, be sure to comment over there! It should be great fun and the whole Halloweeners Team will be joining in. There are 12 stops in the hop counting Whimsy and Ranger themselves and it will be filled with lots of amazing Halloween inspiration from our powerhouse team of designers. I hope my creation today inspires you if you love Halloween too, to create some of your own Halloween décor. Thanks for popping in to visit. I'll be back very shortly, with my second Halloween creation for the Hop. Hugs and happy crafting, Wends xoxo

(I use affiliate links where possible, which helps the companies I design for to improve their marketing practice. I receive a small commission, which costs you no extra whatsoever, but helps these companies see where their marketing efforts are most effective and is a way they can say 'thank you' to and support their hard working affiliates and design team members. I only design for companies whose products I absolutely love and buy for myself. My opinions are always my own. If you're new to Whimsy please feel free to use the Whimsy Stamps discount code in my sidebar if you're doing some shopping and remember to check out their retiring section, the deals are phenomenal!)

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