V is for Flaggermus

Hello Crafty Friends.  It's a cold day here in Norway but the sun has been out and there was blue sky so really quite lovely.  Now the sun and the chickens are going to bed and it's -7°C outside so I am going to stay cosy in my recently tidied crafty place.  See, New Year and miracles do happen.

A couple of weeks ago The Craft Barn launched a fabulous year long challenge, which I may have already mentioned, and I can see from the number of entries that I wasn't the only one who was excited and inspired by this one.  It's called the Alpha Challenge and basically it's a letter from the alphabet every two weeks.  Now for the mathematical geniuses amongst you you will be realising that I am posting up to the wire.  Again.  Actually, that isn't due to lack of planning this time but maybe more a case of too much!  As if having to do a project every two weeks for the whole year isn't enough I have decided to make it a little bit more challenging for myself.  Having completed the first project my self imposed ideas have actually made it even more fun I think so I shall be eagerly awaiting Izzy's post tomorrow for the next letter and any little twists. 

I decided I didn't want to alter a dictionary.  Books are special and I would find it dificult to write or paint in one or rip out the pages and it would probably end up in a pile at the end of the challenge!  I thought I would scan the words I wanted, but from the first time Izzy mentioned this challenge I had an idea to make an animal alphabet for my great nephew.  Then Izzy said about using foreign language dictionaries and I thought wouldn't it be fun to do an English/Norwegian animal alphabet.  Yeah, fun but difficult.....  Plenty animals in the English but Norwegian often substitutes C with K, V with W, Z with S, doesn't use Q and has three extra letter Æ, Ø and Å (and if you now have a lot of digi squawk on your screen you obviously don't have a Scandinavian keyboard)  I was still quite keen on the idea.  I was visiting some friends and explained it all.  They pitched in and by the end of the evening, coffee and hotdogs a list of animals that start with the same letter in both languages was in my hand.  Then Izzy started with 'V'.  OK, here it comes......FLAGGERMUS, also known as BAT.  To qualify for V we had to get a bit more specific and use our blood sucking friend the vampire bat.......

The format was another detail requiring much thought.  The book was out of the question.  I did contemplate a whole alphabet of 17cm high paper mache letters but the idea of having to file them in a large box was a sobering thought.  Inchies? too small.  Old CD's? too round........  As I said too much thinking.  So I have settled on a 15cm x 15cm format using printed cardstock.  This allows me to cut 4 pages out of a 30 x 30 sheet and I don't have to worry about the back if I decide to have them as a book later cos it's double sided cardstock.  Sneaky eh?

So here is 'V is for vampire bat/vampyrflaggermus'  The My Minds Eye card has this lovely red hatching on it.  I have used Tando Creative Haunted House mask and stencilled the bats with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.  The big V little v have been cut using Ida Lou's Flowerbox alphabet dies from Sizzix.  The bat was stamped and coloured with distress inks and then I used glossy accents.  The words were computer generated with the help og Wikipedia and Dictionary.com and some doodling.  The 'blood' is a mix of various paints splattered on with a toothbrush.

   

I would like to thank Mark, Elin and Henriette for the help with the list and my man for advice on blood splatter techniques and for having even more paint than me.  

This is my entry for The Craft Barn Alpha Challenge - V

Happy Happy keep warm and cosy.  Thanks for dropping by.