Haunted House Card

This is a card I made using a stamp from the Elusive Images Spookylicious themeplate.  The background for the house was made by randomly blending Dusty Concord, Faded Jeans and Pine Needles Distress Inks over some white cardstock to completely cover the card surface.  I stamped and embossed the house using Cosmic Shimmer Arctic Black Aurora embossing powders, then highlighted the house using a faux bleaching technique.  

The faux bleaching is done by simply painting clean water over the areas you want to remove ink from, then dabbing the area with a kitchen towel to remove the water and as much ink as you can.  Because the stamped image has been heat embossed the inked background becomes slightly heat set and you don't remove quite as much colour using this technique as you would from unheated card.  For that reason I used  real bleach to take almose all the colour away from the moon area.  Once dry the card was dry, I blended Black Soot Distress Ink around the edges then mounted the finished image onto a mat cut from dark green foiled card.

The base card is a deep purple foiled card and the corners are chipboard pieces from Maya Road which I inked with more of the Black Soot Distress ink then covered in UTEE, two coats of clear UTEE followed by a top layer of the Cosmic Shimmer Arctic Black Aurora embossing powder.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

This card was made using Hallowe'en themed stamps from Elusive Images.  The the toadstools, the spider web on the corners and the greeting all came from the Halloween Candle Themeplate.

To make the card I stamped the toadstools onto white card using black Adirondack Dye Ink.  Next I added spots over the tops of the toadstools using a Versamark Pen, then sprinkled clear embossing powder over the image and heated it.  With the spots of clear embossing in place I coloured the image using Copic markers then coloured over the whole image with the Versmark pen, coated the image with clear embossing powder and heated it up.  The clear embossing was to provide a resist so I could ink the background around the toadstools. 

The background was inked first with Pine Needles Distress Ink, blended right up to and over the image.  Next I blende some Dusty Concord around the outer edges of the image, then wiped the ink away from the clear embossed area.    I stamped the branches of one of the trees from the Arboretum Design-A-Tree themeplate around the edges and inked up just the spider dangling from it's web on the large Candle stamp in the Hallow'en Candle set and stamped it in to look like it was dangling from one of the tree branches.

I made a card blank from some black card and added mats and layers in orange and purple card. On the purple layer I blended Dusty Concord and Black Soot Distress Inks around the edges and stamped and embossed the greeting with black embossing powder.  The corners were cut from some of the orange card and stamped with the spiders's web stamp.  Finally I added some Black Diamond Stickles Glitter Glue around the corners and around the edges of the mat and some black brads.

Halloween Card

The challenge this week on Daring Card Makers is to make a Halloween themed project. I hope this card counts, I actually made it about a week before Halloween for a Secret Swap over on Craft Telly Forum. The card had to be sent annonymously and the swap recipients posted pics in the forum on Halloween, then over the weekend we have had fun trying to guess who each "ghostly maker" was. Because of this I could not post pics on the blog until today, after we had all owned up to our cards.

Before I tell you how the card was made I need to give credit to 2 people, firstly my freind Fabyon who kindly sent me some halloween themed images stamped onto white card for me to use to create my swap as I don't own any Halloween themed stuff. The ghostie, pumpkins and spider web corners all came from Fab and are from stamps by The Angel Company. Secondly my inspiriation for the background - for that I must pay tribute to the amazing Michelle Zindorf, and in particular this fantastic card. If you have never visited Michelle's incredible blog then may I suggest you get on over there because her work is something else, and she posts the most wonderful step by step tutorials.

To make the card I created the background by very softly sponging on light orange ink from a Kaliedacolor ink pad in a rough circle to create a moon. I used a circle punched out from a post-it note pad to mask the orange area and sponged on dark inks - Adirondack Stonewashed, Denim, Aubergine and near the bottom of the card, Bottle. I removed the mask and sponged some streaky bits in the dark colours across the moon to simulate wisps of cloud. The tree and the small twiggy bits were stamped with black using stamps by Elusive Images which are from the Arboretum Themeplate and finally I sponged some black ink round the very outside edges and corners.

Next I coloured the stamped pumpkins with marker pens and then covered them and the ghost with Glossy Accents. Once the Glossy Accents was dry I cut these out and adhered them to my background with foam pads. I had chosen some lovely dark purple card stock from my stash to make my main card and I was really pleased to find Dusty Concord Distress Ink was a near perfect match for my main card when blended quite heavily onto white card. This let me first trace over the stamped outline of the spider web corners with a Sakura Clear Stardust pen to make them shimmery and then colour the white card on which Fabyon had stamped them so that the spaces between the strands of web would match my main card - these were cut out and adhered to the corners on the right hand side of the card.

I blended more of the Distress Ink onto white card and then using the Elusive Images Sketchy Alphabet stamps created the word "BOO" by spritzing the letters with water then stamping that onto the blended ink and after a few seconds blotting off the water with some kitchen towel. I then sponged a little more of the black ink round the corners and edges of this piece of card. Stamping with water onto distress ink, then blotting it off removes a lot of the ink and results in the misty and, I hope, ghostly look of the letters.

I had a lot of fun making this card, and kinda scared myself in the process too because the background I made turned out to be very sinister indeed, but thankfully Fab's jolly ghost and the brightly coloured pumpkins lighten the mood quite nicely.