Happy Owl-oween

As Halloween approaches, it’s time for witches, bats, pumpkins and Frankenstein so I thought I would get creative and have some fun with owls, which are one of my favourite birds, they are wishing you all a “Happy Owl-oween”.

I started by painting the spider web patterns using masking liquid and leaving it to dry thoroughly before adding the pumpkin coloured acrylic paint. I blended three hues of orange paint using Liquitex acrylic applying them in horizontal stripes to the page and blending the joins using a brush and a baby wipe, I like the way this makes the colour graduate down the page. I then stenciled stars using two different colours of purple ink and splattered the page with black acrylic paint.  Next I removed the masking liquid with my finger to reveal the lovely white spider webs. The owls, branch, leaves, spider, robin and wording are all hand drawn, they are made from coloured paper and stuck to the page using matte gel medium, I think a UHU Stic would have been better for this as the coloured paper leaked pigment into the wet gel medium. I passed the branch through a paper crimper to give it more texture and used three colours for the leaves, shading them with Distress Ink. I made templates for the owls and their costumes then cut them out from coloured paper, their eyes are cut from a paper pad and their feet are made from pieces of a paper punched flower. I then decided to add a couple of friends for the owls; the spider was made using some white multi-media paper for his eyes and the robin was created the same way as the owls, although I used yellow acrylic paint for his beak and black marker for his eye. I used inks to shade the coloured paper to add greater depth and dimension before they were stuck to the page. Lastly I used a Uniball Signo white gel pen and a black Uni Pin marker to add further details to the page, such as outlining the wings and letters and drawing patches on their clothes. I think this worked really well.

Halloween is about the only time we can buy pumpkins so my hubby always makes one of my favourite yummy beers – Pumpkin Beer! I hope Bleubeard and Elizabeth and the rest of the T Gang at T Stands for Tuesday will join me today for a pumpkin beer – Happy T Day! As you will see we have quite a few bottles and here’s how we made it …

So on a sunny October day the beer was brewed. First the pumpkin is roasted in the oven to make the puree.

Then the grains (malted barley) are weighed and the water is heated. Once at temperature the grains and pumpkin puree are added to the water and stirred to release their sugars.

Once the natural sugars from the grains and pumpkin have been released into the wort (as it is now called) it is drained and then boiled for 90 minutes with different hops and spices being added at different times.

After the wort has finished boiling the cooler goes in until the wort is cool enough to add to the fermenting vessel, where the yeast is added. Once fermented (around 2 weeks) the beer is bottled and left somewhere warm for 2 weeks to condition and then somewhere cool for 2 weeks for further conditioning. It is then ready to drink!

As Halloween and pumpkins are synonymous with Autumn and October I am so very pleased to be able to join Valerie over at Art Journal Journey with this month’s theme “Indian Summer – Golden October – Autumn”.

I am also delighted to be able to join the challenge over at Moo-Mania, who are currently throwing a HALLOWEEN PARTY!

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Here is a list of all the materials used to create this art journal page:

• Liquitex Artist Color Acrylic (Cadmium Red Medium Hue/Lacquer Red, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Apricot, Ivory Black)
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Black Soot)
• Hobbycraft (Assorted Ink Pads)
• Uni Pin Fine Line marker (Black 0.8mm)
• Uniball Signo gel pen (White)
• Art Discount (Blue Mask)
• Star Stencil
• Leon (X-large Colour Paper Pad)
• Creative Rox Craft Asylum Paper Pad (Into the woods 480326)
• Daler-Rowney Mixed Media paper
• Fiskars (Paper Crimper 6.5 inch – Straight)
• Flower Punch
• Winsor & Newton Matt Gel
• Zig Memory System 2 Way Glue (The Dual Action Glue Pen)