Smeared Ink Skull Appreciation Day Blog Hop

Welcome to the Smeared Ink Skull Appreciation Day Blog Hop! If you've arrived from the uber talented Lady Brayton's Blog, you're on the right track. If not, you may wish to click HERE to find out all about Skull Appreciation Day and the fabulous prizes up for grabs for those who participate in the hop. The Smeared Ink Smeared and Smudged Forum is a fabulously supportive and fun community of artists, specializing in alternative, vintage, and Gothic rubber stamping. Normally for an event like this I'd be using some of my fabulous Smeared Ink stamps, but all types of crafting are welcome in this hop, so I decided to do what I do best and create a shaped card using Cricut Design Studio and my Cricut Expression. I've used the skull border feature from Wall Decor and More welded the shadows along with a flourish from Cindy Loo (to balance the bottom of the card) to create the shaped card base. Then I cut the regular layer 3 separate times in white to create the dimension. The flourishes and skulls are all connected so I colored only the flourishes with Copics and glued that layer to the card base. I added some stickles to the orange flourish and adhesive gems to all for some bling.

The next 2 layers were cut apart manually so I could pop the skulls with foam. The second and fourth skulls have 3 layers while the first and third have two for added depth. To give a bit of shadowing, I outlined the cuts with Copics before running them through my Xyron, right side down and glittering them with fine crystal glitter. They are obviously thrilled as all get out to have a day dedicated all to THEM, don'tcha think?! Now hop on to the amazing Black Dragon's blog to see what skully goodness she has created. I promise you'll be glad you did. And if at any time you get lost along the way, you can click HERE for the full hop list. So hop along, and enjoy!