Keep Out!

Although we have a great time at Halloween and the kids and I love it so much, I’ve never made a Halloween card before. As I don’t have any Halloween stamps I thought I'd try to make a little Halloween scene. Robin has made wonderful Halloween cards using houses, see here and here, so I thought I’d have a go at a spooky Halloween house too. It took me a while to make but I just had so much fun putting all the bits and pieces together.



Where to start with a description! The gates\fence are embossed in black and after adding a mask for the moon I applied distress inks (shabby shutters, dusty concord, broken china & faded jeans) for the background. I printed the “KEEP OUT” sign from Word, distressed the edges and applied antique linen distress ink. I used a piece of string (with some antique linen on it) and a sparkly brad to attach the sign to the gate.




Now to the inside of the card. I made the background for the house using distress inks (shabby shutters, dusty concord, broken china & faded jeans) and masks for the moon and hill. The path is a scrap (with walnut stain distress ink) left over from another project. I coloured the house with watercolour pencils and added some cracks to the wall with a marker. The occupant of the house has left her broomstick and hat outside – fiddly but fun to make. The tree in the pot has little dots on it so I added an extra dot beside each one to make it look likes eyes peeking out of the greenery. I love decorating our house for Halloween and on the day itself we fill the driveway with leaves so the trick or treaters have to rustle through the leaves up to our “haunted house”. So I had to add some leaves on the ground and on the house like we do at home. Then I just added some googly eyes to finish.



I made this card for Hero Arts’ current challenge “Everything Autumn” as well as Jenny’s Wee Memories Challenge #23 - S.O.S..



The S.O.S. Challenge is to incorporate any 2 of the 3 designs, Scallops, Orange or String into a card\project. So I’ve got the scallops (on the roof), orange (leaves & on house) and string (tied to raffia on broomstick, gold string on witch’s hat & on the keep out sign).


Stamps (Hero Arts) Flourish Grids, House with Plant & Tree, Birds and Messages

The CRAFT CRITIQUE blog is having a HALLOWEEN BLOG CARNIVAL where you can see and share all kinds of Halloween related crafty projects; cards, scrapbook pages, knits, jewellery, clothes, gifts, foods, costumes etc. The Halloween Carnival will run until 14th October so if you have a crafty Halloween project you’d like to share it has to be linked to their blog before that date.

Hello and Welcome!

Well I never thought I'd be saying this, but hello and welcome to my new blog!

I thought I'd start with a couple of cards I made for the June challenge (Summer Fun & 4th July) at Hero Arts

As soon as I saw the Flourish Grids stamp set by Hero Arts, I knew I'd have to get it and this is my first card using this set.



I applied broken china and faded jeans distress inks to the upper part of a panel of white card and spritzed with water. Then I sponged the base of the panel with shabby shutters distress ink. For the flowers I used two pink chalk inks to get a few different shades. The flowers have diamond stickles centres. Originally the background was white card which I sponged with worn lipstick distress ink and stamped randomly with the flourish background using water.

Stamps
(Hero Arts) Flourish Grids, Scattered Leaves, Flourish Background, Birthday Messages, Dolls .


For the second card I used a stamp which is my absolute favourite - Large Flower by Hero Arts. I just saw that the Crafty Angels challenge this week is using your favourite stamp so I'm entering this card.



The flower is embossed in white, covered with distress inks (shabby shutters and broken china) and has four layers. The scallops and sentiment were also embossed in white and covered with worn lipstick distress ink. For the card itself I lightly applied shabby shutters and broken china distress inks to white card and splattered water on it. I just added some machine stitching and beads to finish.



Stamps (Hero Arts) Large Flower, Scallop Borders, Birthday Messages.