Melange Team Challenge; Wee Witches - and an interview!

(Available on Etsy)

This week's Melange Team challenge is "Wee Witches."  I decided to do a collage on a small 5 x 5 canvas.  I thought I'd include some instructions this time.

I painted the canvas first with black gesso, then I loosely  painted some strokes across the top 1/2  with Navy acrylic paint.  Then I took a template I made with a circle punch and used it as a stencil.  I used a make-up sponge to lightly fill in the circle with light yellow paint and then a small brush to lightly stroke some moonlight onto the sky.

For the house, I used ink to distress some paper and printed my wee witches onto transparency.  They didn't show up enough against all the printing on the white paper, so I stamped a design on some orange paper (I thought some kind of design was necessary to confirm that they were transparent) and glued the transparency to that.  I thought the rectangle shape would suggest a door.

I made my wee witches' hats out of scrapbook paper that had a black and white photograph on it.  Obviously this is from a large swath of black.  I like it, rather than black paper, because it wasn't as flat and dark as black paper.  To suggest roundness, I used a white charcoal pencil and then smudged walnut ink over it.

I wrote a little mini poem in honor of the subject, printed it out and started distressing it with ranger inks.  It immediately smeared all over the place!  Humph!  So I printed it out again (This time multiple times - just in case!)...and smeared it 2 more times - no matter how careful I was.  I do this all the time, using this exact same printer!  Someone suggested it might be the paper I'm using, and I am using a different paper than usual.  Anyway, I ended up taking some matte spray finish and spraying the 2 remaining printouts, letting them dry for 2 hours (!) and then distressing them  It worked out fine.  Geez! What a process.  Of course it wasn't over.  When I scanned it, it washed out the words so they looked pure white when they are actually quite distressed.  So I tried to use photoshop to make them closer to reality - but I think I got a little carried away!  Oh, well.  Sometimes you just have to call it done.

Check out the comments section on the Melange Team Challenge post  to see other responses to the challenge.  There are some great entries!

And on the exciting news front; see my interview with Jodi Ohl on Saturday's post!  (Perhaps I should have said Jodi Ohl's interview with me?  See for yourself and let me know...)   I'm very honored to be featured.