halloween in july

It does seem a bit early for Halloween. But I took a great class at my LSS last week using Memory Box's new Halloween stamps and papers. Neat techniques and a lot of fun! Here they are....

#1: Spooky Collage

This first card was the first and most complicated one we worked on. The owner of the store and the class teacher experimented that day to try and master the techniques for this card. They found a way to do it that came out really interesting. We started with copper/gold-like piece of cardstock that we rubbed with yellow acrylic. Then we applied Alcohol Inks in yellow, red and brown. I had never used them and LOVED them (but can't afford another new set of supplies)! Next was the fun part. We sprinkled a pile of clear embossing powder on the bottom, right corner of the inked (dry) cardstock. Then we heated it from below with a heat gun until we had a puddle of wet embossing powder. The stamp "Spooky Collage", was inked up (black ink) and ready to go and we stamped it onto the cardstock (and into the wet embossing powder). This was the result! A dimensional look. Really cool in person.

#2 Distressed Crows

This card is shades of black, orange and yellow (the photo gave it a bluish tint). This card was pretty simple - the stamp has so much visual interest on its own. We distressed the edges of a piece of Memory Box's paper with black ink and a sponge first. Then we stamped (in black ink) the "Distressed Crows". Added some black glitter to a few of the small crows with a glue pen. I have never used black glitter before and really like the effect. Obviously it has a Halloween-like appearance but I think it could be kind of elegant too. Finally we stamped & embossed the "Elemental Damask" stamp several times along the top of the card using a light orange ink and clear embossing powder. It mimics the slight damask pattern in the Memory Box paper we used. Finally we mounted the image with dimensional tape on top of a piece of black cardstock and the yellow card.

# 3 Old Fence

This was my first time using an embossing machine! We dry embossed a piece of black cardstock for the background with a spider web image. Very cool. Also used an iridescent white cream lustre on the embossed spider web - another product I had never used. The image "Old Fence" was stamped with black Stayz-On onto a shiny piece of white carstock. The edges were distressed with an edge distressor and black ink. The image was mounted onto bright green paper and mounted onto the other layers. A spider was cut with a die-cut machine (another first for me!) out of sparkly black paper and mounted with dimensional adhesive.

#4 Halloween Collage

Another simple card but I think this is my favorite of the stamps. These are nice stamps because they look like you have layered several stamps to get this appearance. But all the imagery is on one large stamp. We stamped the "Halloween Collage" stamp on a piece of inked, edge-distressed cardstock. The two spiders were colored in with a Copic marker and iridescent glitter was added with a glue pen. Finally we stamped the "Vintage Scroll" stamp across the top with light orange ink and embossed with clear powder. The imagery was mounted onto a piece of glittery cardstock with a strong adhesive.

#5 Night Cat

This last card was a little tricky but clever and a really nice effect. We started with two pieces of Memory Box patterned paper cut into the size we needed. Then on one piece we stamped the "Night Cat" image. We drew a line down from the light of the lantern down in a cone shape mimicking how the light would fall onto the cat. Using an xacto night we cut out that cone shaped portion of the paper (including the cat). We layered the second piece of patterned paper under the first (with the cut out portion and stamped image). Carefully we inked and stamped just the image of the cat into the place it needed to be (on the bottom layer of patterned paper). I'm sure my explanation is confusing but you can kind of see how it was put together if you look at the photo carefully.

So that's it! Fun cards and really nice stamps!

Happy Sunday!