Halloween Cards 2019

I started making some Halloween cards on Saturday.

Punched a circle to use as a mask for the "moon". Then sponged distress inks onto the paper: chipped sapphire, fossilized amber, peeled paint. Used hickory smoke to add cloud streaks in the moon and sky and also along edges of the paper.

Pumpkins stamped in distress carved pumpkin and colored with coloring pencils.

Used Versafine onxy black for the sentiment.

Stamps from:

Michael Strong-cloisonne alphabet (Boo), and pumpkin harvest (large pumpkins)

Posh Impressions-tree

Hero Arts-Halloween sentiment

Bat and tiny pumpkins are unmounted stamps from my stash given to me by Lynette.

Trees are from Lynette's Sizzix Branch Tree which I had in my stash.

I made six more cards on Monday.

This time I drew trees on brown cardstock and cut them out. 

After dry embossing a Darice tree, I sponged it with fall colors using distress inks:

wild honey, fired brick, peeled paint, fossilized amber, rusty hinge and gathered twigs for the tree trunk.

This tree was created with the embossing folder stamping technique.

 I like to refer to these two tutorials for the embossing folder stamping technique:

Heidi Wegman's Embossing Folder Stamping
and
Audrie Magno-Gordon's Embossing Folder Stamping

Onto the raised side of the embossing folder, I dabbed distress inks: rusty hinge, wild honey, fired brick, peeled paint, fossilized amber on the leaves and gathered twigs on the tree trunk and branches of the embossing folder. Spritzed with water. Placed a piece of watercolor paper in the embossing folder. Closed it and pressed it down with my hands. When I opened the embossing folder the tree image was transferred to the paper.

I decided to add color to the white space using a paintbrush, distress ink and water. I transferred distress ink to my craft sheet by dabbing it. In another spot, I spritzed some plain water. I wet my brush with water then grabbed some ink with the brush. In that way, I added color to the paper. It was fun playing with the color. After it dried, I added some lines  with a black XS Faber Castell PITT pen. With distress carved pumpkin ink, I stamped the tiny pumpkins on a separate piece of watercolor paper. Then added some distress inks with my paintbrush: spiced marmalade, carved pumpkin and peeled paint to color in the white areas.

Variations on a theme...hope you are not bored! I switched to faded jeans for the sky and used a favorite Penny Black tree stamp, fantasy 3880K. Used mowed lawn and my home made curvy hills templates. 

I made a Birthday/Halloween card for my friend's daughter who was born on Halloween!  I was heavy handed with the sponging of color on the dry embossed Darice tree. Cut apart a Hero Arts Happy Birthday sentiment and the Halloween sentiment combining them.

Thanks for visiting!

Hope you have a very fun Halloween!

Stampfest with Lynette October 16, 2019

Lynette and I had a great time stamping last Wednesday. We started by looking at ideas Lynette had pinned on Pinterest. The mountain scene card was not one of her pins. We were in search of Heather Telford's Lilac card and ran across her Lake Wanaka mountain scene card! It looked so dreamy and beautiful we wanted to play with that idea.

We used a pencil to draw the basic lines of the mountains. Then we decided to use inks and a water brush to "paint" them. We smooshed distress inks onto an acrylic block and picked up the color with a water brush. We used the distress ink colors Heather listed: faded jeans, stormy sky, weathered wood, frayed burlap, rusty hinge wild honey, tea dye, vintage photo, early espresso and forest moss.

Lynette used markers to color a tree from a Stampin' Up set called Artistically Asian.

I tried to paint in the tree and shrubs. I found the distress forest moss to be too dark, so I used peeled paint on the shrubs.

For our flower card we used a stamp set called Blossoms Abound from Stampin' Up.

Lynette found a Pinterest Pin showing a Lilac card made by Heather Telford. However the link went to a page that had many cards made by various people. Not helpful when looking for details about a specific card. After some web searching, we found the actual blog post for Heather Telford's Lilac card. Since we did not have the ink colors that matched Heather's beautiful lilacs, we substituted Stampin' Up's lavender lace and distress wilted violet for the 2 step flower stamps in the Blossoms Abound stamp set. We used Stampin' Up mellow moss and  old olive for the leaves.

We had fun trying to make a wreath card after seeing Karen Day's card here.
We made many samples and ended up using a 1-1/2 inch circle mask in the center. However we did not like the very defined circle look. So, we started with the mask but then removed it to get some stamped images into the circle area.

We used leaves stamps from Altenew's Wildflower Garden,  Judith stamps, Stampin' Up Yay You and an old foam SU set from 1996 that had a pumpkin in it.
Ink colors:
SU old olive, mellow moss, and close to cocoa
distress crushed olive, aged mahogany, fossilized amber,

Thanks for visiting!
Hope you make today a special one!