My Danse Macabre Piece for the Smeared and Smudged Design Team Throwdown

Getting in at the 11th hour (well, not quite) I just finished this piece for the Haunted Design House Team for the Smeared and Smudged Design Team Throwdown.  We're one member short, but Creepy Glo and I didn't want the fab theme "Danse Macabre", chosen but last month's winners, the RSD Airless Chambers Team, go by without at least an attempt.  The bad news is, it doesn't photograph well because I didn't have a hanger on the back to hang it on the wall so it's on a niche in our entryway on a plate stand.

In case you can't tell, it's a wooden plaque that I painted and decoupaged with torn and distressed sheet music (Handel's Messiah, to be exact).  A skeleton hand  (more on that in a minute) is holding  dimensional marionette made with Smeared Ink's Dead Dancer Pointing. 

The hand started out as paper mache.  As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to make it a skellie hand.  Easier said than done.  First I painted it with Gesso and then started to sculpt bones on top using paper clay.  What I didn't count on was how freakin' FAT and heavy the hand got once I started sculpting.  Used a full 8 oz of clay and had to cover the whole thing for fear of the stuff separating from the base.  When I was done (forgot to take pix) it looked more like the Incredible Hulk's hand.  Thought I should just paint it green and give up a that point.

But I persevered and tried shading with Distress Inks until it somewhat resembled bones.

A bit of an improvement, at least, but a new set of problems.

I'd started to do my dimensional dancer and after I saw how HUGE the hand turned out I had to start over because the scale was all wrong.  I wanted sort of a "Tiny Dancer" look, but here's the size I started with, and next to it the size she ended up.

I wanted her not only 3 dimensional, but complete on both sides so I did 12 layers all in all, half of them flipped.  Have scissors, will fussy cut, and fussy cut and fussy cut and... 

Removed the hand above her head because with the flipped images, that actually gave her 3 arms.  LOL

Ended up refilling my Copic red twice because I colored each image on both sides before attaching them together and even drew in the lines of the tutu because they were visible.  Attached some tulle as well.  After all, what's a ballerina without tulle, eh?  Even a dead one.  Be sure to visit HDH to see the fabulous work by my teamie, Creepy Glo and the fabulous work by the rest of the participating teams HERE.  Voting starts tomorrow on the Smeared and Smudged Forum and you must be a member to join, but it's free and fun and you know you wanna.

I'm also entering this in the Simon Says Stamp Anything Goes challenge and the Stampotique Anything but a Card Challenge.

VOTING NOW OPEN HERE!  Vote for your FAVE team.  Best of luck to all.