My Dark Secret

You'd think after creating a whole St. Patrick's Day kit I'd have had enough, but no... I still wanted to do St. Patrick's Day tags.

I made myself stop however, and turned my attention to the new "My Dark Secret" mega-taggers kit from Scraps by j0esWife. When "Possum Kingdom" by the Toadies, first came out, I was working radio as a D.J. for WOZN down in the Florida Keys. Like everyone else, I thought was a Vampire song and I still think it has very vampiric overtones.

Lisa Umbarger, bassist for the band said, "They're just these silly stories he's (guitarist Todd Lewis) heard his family tell. Like 'Tyler' and 'Possum Kingdom' are just like stories...In Texas, there's just this big storytelling thing - whenever your family gets together, they sit and talk and tell all these stories. 'Possum Kingdom' is a ghost story."

Lewis said jokingly "Possum Kingdom is a lake. One of the ten best fishin' spots in the U.S. Is it about a ghost or vampire at the lake? I don't know."

"It's not about vampires," Umbarger insists. "Even though we have a big underground vampire following in Florida. They come with their teeth and everything. I'm not lying about that, that's a real story. They'll show up and you'll be talking to someone, and they'll smile and it's like, 'Jesus Christ! You've got fangs!' And they're like, 'Yeah. It's a vampire thing.' So we have this big vampire underground following, and 'Possum Kingdom' has kind of stirred it up."

"It's just a story I heard long ago; it's just a really cool, eerie lake, and some stuff I heard and some stuff I just make up. I tend to do that," Lewis explains about the watering hole where his family used to hang out and barbecue. "They dammed up this big river up there, and it's got all these spooky names like Hell's Gate. It's really cool."

As you can tell, I'm not the only one who thought it had vampiric overtones and well, Tanya agrees with me.

The mega-kit comes with four of Untamed Angel's Goth Posers and aside from over 50 papers and a ton of element, also has a Twilight-themed add on included.

But let's do the Goth first...



all of the mask are from Wee Scots Lass. I forgot that Tanya does large papers - 1000 px by 1000 px, and so I forgot to resize this before I applied it to my canvas. So it's a bit overlarge, but it ended up looking good, in a odd sort of way. There's also a bunch of frames to choose from...I'm sure you can find something you'll like.

I had been playing with that butterfly for inclusion into my kit and didn't like the way it turned out. It appears that Tanya got the same results, so perhaps I shouldn't feel so bad. I'm going to try a different attack plan the next time I attempt to use that butterfly.



This time I resized the background before I started working. The Silver Twilight Alpha is from Amber Gray Designs. After fighting with adding my name to a tag last night using alpha, I got smart and did the name in a separate canvas, merged it down and then added it to the piece, so it would lined up correctly.

I do so love the hair on this girl, if I saw anyone in real life with hair like this, I'd doubt that the hair was real.



I do so like the way this one turned out, and might use it as my sig for a while on Jay's forum. The chains are from Bluedream Designs and the heartlock and key are from the Maltese Scrapper. Bonnie doesn't put terms on her stuff, so I need to find out if I can re-use that piece - which she by request - in a kit sometime.

I'd not planned on doing a goth kit, but I just might, as I have enough ideas about where I'd want to go with it.



The Twilight add on includes a coffin, some word art flairs that are vaguely Twilight and some word art heart charms. It's not a strong Twilight statement but it's there for the fans of the series.

The "Twilightish" poser is from Bit'N'Bobs. I have no idea if Julie plans on a Bella poser or not. She does say it's her attempt at an Edward, and she's not sure how successful she was.

The rose silhouette did not come glittered. I added the glitter myself. Ditto for the next tag which is sort of strange departure from the kit as a whole.



So, say your tagging along in your little heart of darkness and suddenly your daughter walks into the room and demands a pony.

No problem. The add on includes this cute little doll and several of the "My Little Pony" graphics so you can keep her happy. Gothic kids tags, what an idea!

(In retrospect, "My Little Pony" would not be hard to do, I'd just be concerned about copyright issues with Hasbro.)