Welcome to Spooky!

Welcome to InKing Royalty’s October Blog Hop! This year’s Blog Hop themes are inspired by a single word – and this month our projects are centered around SPOOKY. With Halloween just around the corner, we are excited to share our spooky, fun projects with our neighbors, coworkers and family – and we’re excited to share our creations with you today! After you read my post, I hope you’ll hop over to the next person on the list at the base of this post.

But First……Color Throwdown #564 Quickly

One of the challenges I really enjoy is the Color Throwdown challenge.  It’s even better when I can pair it with a sketch challenge, in this case the Fusion card challenge.  Last night I was over the top honored, floored, bewildered, surprised, and awestruck that my card was chosen for this week’s Color Throwdown featured stamper.  What?!?!?  I earned a place as the guest stamper on the October 23 challenge, and I am so honored.  You can see that card here. 

Spooky??

I have to admit I didn’t think I would be able to create a card worthy of this blog hop since I didn’t purchase anything specifically for Halloween.  Therefore, I had to get very creative with what I already had in my possession.  

I’ve used the pumpkin from Harvest Hellos quite a lot for Thanksgiving cards.  At least I had a pumpkin, and a Jack-o-Lantern face from that set.  While looking for a sentiment, I came across my Everything Festive stamp set.  

Here’s my card:

A Spooky Card was Born

I gathered the cardstock and DSP colors I thought I would use and got busy….. having so much fun!  The bottom base is Basic Black cardstock, with a layer of the Gorgeous Grape gingham from the Brights DSP pack.  SincemI knew this card really wanted to be a collage, I knew I needed to leave some open space.    When I started putting pieces together, I decided to use a Stamping Write Basic Black marker to color just the bats from the sentiment.  This card really needed something subtle, so I stamped the two bats four or five times before recoloring the stamp.  I didn’t want a pattern for the bats, so all my stamping needed to remain random.  

The Stamparatus really saved me when I stamped the sentiment.  With that stamping done, I cropped both the Whisper White and Gorgeous Grape using the ovals from the Stitched Shapes die set. I also used it for the Jack-o-Lantern face on my colored pumpkin and I am so happy I did that.  Because of the coloring with the light and dark Pumpkin Pie blends, I really needed a dark face so it would pop.  Using the Stamparatus allowed me to have the face as dark as I wanted and still be perfectly lined up.  

The punch from the Harvest Hellos bundle saved me from fussy cutting.  I used the Shaded Spruce DSP for the stem and leaf, then outlined each with the black marker.

Let the (Messy) Fun Begin!

When I started dry-fitting all my pieces together, I just knew something was missing.  I stamped and cropped two of the pumpkin sets from the Gather Together bundle and placed them behind my cute as a button focal pumpkin.  I still wasn’t satisfied, and thought about adding a black mat.  This did get me closer to a spooky look, but plain black cardstock didn’t seem right.

Therefore, I used the splatter stamp from Gather Together and some of the silver ink and splattered the whole piece of cardstock.  It still didn’t  it look cute and spooky, so I went another step further.  

Wink of Stella added the sparkle I really wanted. I made sure the brush end had a full load of the glitter ink, and started tapping away to create a really sparkly black base without having to use glitter (which is not really allowed in my blue/craft room).  I continued to load the brush and tap/splatter until I had an abundance of sparkle on the black.  LOVE!  

I really though I moved all of the other card elements out of the way before I started splattering.  However, the stray splatters of Wink of Stella all over the other pieces indicated I did not succeed in moving them out of the splatter zone.

Finishing Touches

Once again, I dry-fit all of my pieces,and tied a square knot in the ribbon,  then popped up the pumpkin and the sentiment using dimensionals.  After I adhered all the pieces down, I decided another little touch needed to be added.  I grabbed my dark Basic Black blend and colored three of the smallest epoxy droplets, waited for them to dy, and placed them within the collage so they made sense.

I created a coordinating envelope using a piece of the Gorgeous Grape DSP on the flap and stamped pumkins and bat on the front.  With that, I’d completed my spooky card without anything specifically purchased for Halloween.  Yeah!

Thank you for stopping by today.  I hope you’ll hop along to the next stop on the blog hop, Linda Krueger at the Stamp Coach. There’s lots of inspiration to be found in this group – and you don’t want to miss it!

Have a Peachy day!

Sue

1. Brian King at Stamp with Brian
2. Shawn de Oliveira at Shawn Stamps
3. Ann Murray at Murray Stamps Ink
4. Robin Myren at Songbird Designs by Robin
5. Kelly Kent at My Papercraft Journey
6. Robbye Hamilton at Miss Hammie’s Crafts
7. Jackie Beers at Blue Line Stamping
8. Sheryl Abernathy at Elegant Sentiments
9. Sue Jackson at Just Peachy Stamping
10. Linda Krueger at The Stamp Coach