It’s Halloween, and I have a trick and a treat.
Last week, I wrote what was meant to have been my final Halloween post for the year. Well, that’s not true. I have a “bonus boo” for you.
Whether you have a die-cut machine or pre-made items, this card is easy to create. I chose to have my monsters exclaim, “OOO!” “EEE!” and AAH!” with “BOO.” on the inside of the card, and wrote these in black ink. Don’t forget to add some “bling” for the eyes!
Happy Halloween!
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.“Macbeth,” William Shakespeare
It’s the final weekend of October, which means this is my last Halloween card for the year. Time to bid farewell, holiday o’ spirits and costumed foolery.
My final patterned paper design is vellum adorned with green bubbles. I added glittery paper, a shiny die-cut, plenty of “bling” and silver cardstock to complete this card. Don’t have silver cardstock? If you have metallic ink, swipe it on light-colored cardstock and rub it in with a paper towel.
So grab a cauldron, some crafty ingredients and gather ’round to cast a creative spell. Happy Halloween!
As Halloween approaches, I’ve been finishing up my secret DIY costume and my final two cards. One of the papers I’ve made has stripes in green, gray, black and white. At first, I thought the design just looked cool. When I began pondering how I’d use it on a card, the pattern made me think of an eerie, foggy sky.
I bought a stamp featuring a stylized image of a cat. With steady hands, I carefully stamped her onto a die-cut fence and embossed her with black powder.
A large brad for a moon, some tiny rhinestones for stars and a distressed metal tag with “BOO” in silver give the card a rocker-chic feel.
This feline has attitude.
Apothecary labels are popular for Halloween, and this year I wanted to make my own for a patterned-paper design.
Out of the six Halloween-themed designs I’ve created, I had the most fun making the apothecary labels. There’s something about concocting strange names and ingredients … (insert witch’s cackle).
When I found a stamp set with images of old-time apothecary bottles, my card idea was in place. I used my patterned paper as a background and cut out a few labels to use on the bottles. Though I gave the design a bit of distressing in Adobe Illustrator, I took it a step further on my cut-out labels by stamping on them with a metallic-beige ink for a long-past-expiration-date look.
You have a brilliant idea for a paper-craft project. You round up the supplies and begin. The process is going smoothly … until something goes wrong. The stamp didn’t leave a clean image, or the die-cut machine flubbed on your last scrap of metallic-violet cardstock, or your paint/glue/drink spills onto your work. The damage is not pretty. Do you start over?
I’ve had my fair share of instances like these, and sometimes I trash my work and begin again. Most of the time, though, I reassess. I find creative ways to work around the problem. I call these events “happy accidents.” This story is about one such event. The facts are real, the crafter is real and the damage was very real.
I haven’t done much embossing with my trusty Slice. I’ve successfully embossed on foil cardstock, and I know from a past experiment that plain cardstock is not the best material. The machine tears through it.
Exhibit A
A good friend of mine celebrated her birthday this week. For her card, I wanted to make something colorful: a background of cardstock strips in a gradient of one color to another. I decided on fuchsia to very light orange.
I wanted an embossed “happy” in big letters on the gradient. Based on my prior experience, I decided to adhere my cardstock strips to a piece of copy paper in hopes that it would add enough thickness for the machine not to tear through it. I cut the strips, adhered them to the copy paper and placed the piece, copy-paper side up, under my Slice. The machine was set to embossing mode, “happy” was set to a mirrored effect (so the word would be in the right direction), and I pressed the button to begin embossing. Things seemed to be going well … until the process was done, and I lifted the machine.
What I saw was not a perfectly embossed “happy.” The embossing tip went through the copy paper and tore into the strips in a few places. As I discovered the damage, one of the Halloween decorations in my house, a “Grimm Hotel” that plays sound and music, let out its scream. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” Good timing.
I’ll spare you, dear reader, an image of the horror. Refer to Exhibit A above, and find comfort in the fact that the damage was not as bad. Also, I didn’t think of taking a photo; I was too preoccupied with thoughts of “Oh, no! No! What do I do?”
Overall, the embossed effect was not as raised as I would have liked, anyway. Maybe the embossing tip I used, the smallest one, was too pointy. I wasn’t willing to risk using a larger tip on a recreated piece. I weighed my options: trash it and start over, or, as Tim Gunn would say, “Make it work!”
Using my Slice in cutting mode, I made die-cuts of “happy” and its shadow. I rubbed out the embossing with my bone folder, then used dimensional adhesive to stick my new “happy” piece over the damage. I think the result is far better than my initial plan. The recipient can’t see the chaos beneath the creation and never would have known about it had I not shared this frightening tale.
Happy World Card Making Day, everyone!
