Oil pastels and Halloween week with Helen Chilton

Hi, 
This is going to be an amazing week... 





First of all because we have for this week and next week a fantastic guest designer joining us: Helen Chilton.

Many of you would know Helen for her contributions in the Craft Stamper magazine, for the bright colour schemes she uses (her blog is called "A Splash of Colour" for a reason), and some of you would have been lucky enough to have met her at the Extravaganza or during a class. 

The second reason is that we are going to talk about Oil Pastels and show you different ways to use them, with simple to more advanced projects. Helen will start the week with a fantastic step by step, and once you have read it, I'm sure you will want to give it a go. 

And finally, as we are in October, we thought that we would make it a Halloween week too. Now not everyone is into Halloween, even some of our  DT members, but some of you (us) are really looking forward to it each year.
It's my daughter's favourite holiday and she was asking mid-September "when will we start putting the Halloween decorations up?".
So for those who are Trick or Treating or who just enjoy Halloween samples, you are in for a treat (no pun intended). 

Let's start with Helen's step by step and let us know what you think in a comment below... 

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As many of you know, I love these oil pastels: the colours are intense and you can lay down a really vivid background in a trice. Make it extra thick as I have done here, and you can scrape back into it just like Stampbord. I've chosen one of the new Lynne Perrella stamps for my image, because they have such great detail, and added a witch's hat to tie in with the Halloween theme.

Cut out a large cream tag and start colouring with oil pastels. Lay them down thickly.

Blend them together with your fingertips.

Stamp the large lady stamp in black and then use the waves on the lady and ship stamp to create a border.

Using your scraper tool, etch in highlights. You can create thick lines or very fine lines. Heat to set.

Cut out a magenta hat and draw on black stripes. Add in folds for depth.

Cut lengths of copper wire and curl round a cocktail stick for hair.

Add embellishments and layer up onto turquoise and magenta cardstock.

Helen used:

PaperArtsy: Lynne Perrella Collection 010

Faber-Castell oil pastels: orange; red/orange; magenta; turquoise

StazOn inkpad: Jet Black

Stampbord scratch tool

Copper wire

Embellishments

Our special off this week

10% off the Faber-Castell set of 36 oil pastels

enter the code PASTEL10 at checkout

See you tomorrow