Halloween Banner

Cats and Bats and Ghosts (no Rats or Elephants)

My sister and nephew love to celebrate Halloween.  I made a banner for them to help decorate the house, but I forgot to post it in October.  Better late than never! 

The Lawn Fawn Stitched Party Banners are perfect for a project like this.  I used the smaller banner and the circle included in the set.

Halloween Shadow Box Tunnel Card

Ghosts, Bats and a Black Cat

The Spellbinders Large and Small Die-of-the-Month Kits for September 2018 had a Halloween theme.  Yay!  I used the dies from the Small Die set, along with others in my stash, to create this card.

All of the panels for the card are ink blended using Distress Oxide inks in Seedless Preserves, Dusty Concord and Black Soot.  They were then given some texture using water, a Distress Sprayer and a paper towel to blot the sprayed water.  On the front of the card, the bats and the ghosts are from the Spellbinders Small Die set.  The fence is a die from a recent release from Lawn Fawn.  The spider, spider web and the sentiment are stamps from the Everything But the Broom stamp set by Catherine Pooler Designs.

In this close-up of the inside you can see the layers in the box card.  On the layers I added die cut embellishments, including the sentiment, from the Spellbinders Small Die set.  I tucked the spooky cat between the fences and added the cute little ghost to the side of the panel to make it look like he's peeking out.  The tree and headstone images on the back panel were stamped using Midnight ink from Catherine Pooler Designs.  I used two sizes of circle punch by Stampin' Up! to cut the moon out of gold glitter paper from the Lawn Fawn Autumn Glitter Paper collection - after the larger circle was cut, I used the smaller circle to cut the crescent shape.  It took a couple of tries to get the look I wanted.

Isn't he a cute and happy looking ghost?  That's why I like him so much!

Above is a panned out view of the card.  Notice that I added the ornate skull-topped piece to the top of the card.  I wanted it to look like the entrance to the graveyard.

Halloween Tea Light Boxes

Spellbinders Large Die of the Month Club

The September large dies are fantastic.  I love the Halloween theme for the Spellbinders September large die of the month. It includes dies to create a tea light holder with four different Halloween themed plates.

This is the pumpkin plate used four times, shown lit up with a tea light in both light . . .

. . . and dark settings.

The second of the four design plates is a trick or treat sentiment. Again, photographed in the light (left) and dark (below).

They look so nice lit up, don't they?















And a black cat! My nephew has a black cat and he's going to love this!

And ghosts, too!  How adorable are these little guys?

 Little "ghosteses" all lit up!

My parents aren't as into Halloween as my sister and nephew, so I made just one tea light holder for them, but I used one of each plate so they can turn it around to whatever design they want to look at (above and right).

I hope Spellbinders does a Christmas version of this die set.

Birthday Cards for Kids

A Variety of Card Styles and Colours

I am making some cards for my sister's stash.  My nephew is at the age where he attends quite a few birthday parties for his friends and I said that I would make some cards for him to have on hand.  I started by using some dies from the June 2018 Spellbinders monthly die subscription.  The set includes a candle and a cupcake with some flower embellishments.

Candles

I created the same version of this card several times, but added a different number of candles to the front of each thinking that the card could be used for a person the age of the number of candles on the card.

My scrap bin came in handy for making the candles for these cards.  I used my Momento Tuxedo Black marker to colour the wicks of the candles. 

I kept the cards fairly simple.  I used patterned paper on the base of each card from the Swirly Fun 6 x 6 paper pad (by Your Next Stamp).  The card bases are made from Neenah Solar White 80lb cardstock.  I popped the candles and flames up using foam squares and the sentiment is from the Altenew Birthday Builder stamp set.

Cupcakes

I made a couple of cupcake birthday cards in traditional masculine colours, blue and green.  Of course, there had to be a candle on the cupcake for a birthday card.

I like that the dies have embossing detail in them.  In order to take advantage of this option, after die cutting the image you run the die cut image through the machine again,  using an embossing mat instead of the bottom cutting plate.  The pressure from the machine essentially squishes the paper into the embossing areas on the die and you wind up with an embossed pattern.  Easy peasy.

You'll notice that there are embossing line details on the cupcake wrapper, swirls in the cupcake icing and (although it is hard to see) curved line details in the candle and the flame.  The embossing creates extra dimension in the images.  Next time, I think I'll blend a bit of distress ink over the images to make the embossing lines more visible.  

I created a second version of the card using traditionally feminine colours.  This is the same design as the masculine version, but I added the decorative flowers to the pink and red(ish) versions of the card.  The flowers also have embossing detail, which adds to the image.

Again, I used patterned paper from the Swirly Fun paper pack by YNS.