Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!! Tonight I put my son to bed, cleaned up the diningroom, and ventured into my scary (hey! fitting on Halloween Eve!) stamp room and snapped some photos of the PILE of cards I've been wanting to blog about!! I'm not thrilled with the photos - I bought a new Ott-Lite (my old one had a cord that buzzed and drove me batty! Heh heh, another Halloween pun!) and it's not quite as nice as my old one, so I don't like my card-photography-setup as much anymore. But oh well - I'm forging ahead, but my photos may not be quite as good as they used to be!

So anyway - this is a card I had my hostess club girls do this month. It was completely inspired by this amazing card by the incredibly talented Vicki, aka summerthyme64 - check out her SCS gallery and blog! I think if you click on my photo you'll see a little more of the detail that went into this card. These details consumed a bit more time than my club girls would typically want to spend on a card, but my point was to show them how adding some simple additional layers to a card really makes it POP. I wish you could see this one in person, the photo really isn't doing it justice! "Spooky" was spelled out using the Big Deal Alphabet, then the dashed line and Sahara Sand "shadow" were added for dimension. We stamped the images in the O's just like Vicki did, using the Haunting Halloween set. I showed them how to color with SU markers to add dimension, ie the kitty was colored with Only Orange then shadows added with Pumpkin Pie - I believe I learned how to do this from my stamping idol Leslie, but I can't find the link at the moment! (ETA: Here's the link to Leslie's coloring with SU markers - I didn't actually do her technique justice, check it out! But she did teach me that I can use varying shades of a color to add shadow - yes, perhaps obvious to some, but I need these things spelled out for me!) A little stickles made the witch hat & spider a little more fun. Finally we sponged the edges with Going Gray and used the color spritzer tool to add some fun "splatter". The bat background on the purple panel was embossed with a fun "black sparkle" powder I found at my favorite stamp store. And the background paper, which we also added some dotted line faux stitching to, is from K&Co. I really love this card (if I do say so myself!) so a great big thanks to Vicki for the fabulous inspiration!!!

Ok, one last thing before I post this - I have to be the obnoxious mom yet again and post a photo of my son, just because I happen to think he's adorable! He had a Halloween party at his preschool today, so here he is this morning in his costume. He went as a little 50's greaser! The costume was inspired by his Aunt Laura telling me that there's a Converse factory outlet store nearby, and that I should buy him some hightops and dress him up like a greaser. Thanks for the great idea Laura! Then my mom got wind of this, and had a woman from her theater group (the one who makes the costumes for their shows!) sew a little leather jacket for him! You can't see it with the jacket on, but I also put a temporary tattoo on his arm, a heart with "love" written across it. I thought it would be hilarious if it said "Mom", but sadly I couldn't find that. :-)

Happy Halloween everyone, hope you have a spooky Wednesday!