Fall is here and it is time for some Halloween cards. My favorite seasons fall and winter are almost here. Well, fall is here and we actually had a little bit of cooler weather for a few days. Though the day I am writing this post the weather turned hot again. Still, coolness is on the way, I have hope.
The house is decorated for Halloween and Thanksgiving. As I have mentioned before I group both as fall décor. That prolongs the season for me and the celebrations. Then the day after Thanksgiving it is all packed up and Christmas decorations get their turn.
I had some vintage papers left from past years so the cards with those themes I will not be posting, you can see them in previous years’ posts on the blog.
Here I chose a couple of cheerful pumpkin stencils for these two Halloween cards.
The leaves and stem are painted directly rather than stenciled because I like them connected to the pumpkin and not showing the stencil gap beneath them. Shading and highlighting add dimension. The grass is added with a fairly dry fan brush to ‘ground’ the pumpkin so it is not floating on the white background. Liner brush vines finish the design.
For these I decided to paint them on patterned paper instead of the white cardstock. The leaves, stems and vines are painted using the same techniques as on the larger pumpkin. I also added a bit of shading around the outer edges of these pumpkins so they do not appear as if they are floating.
Stencils are fun and easy. They work well especially if you need multiple cards for kids to exchange at school. They are also easy for kids to work with. No drawing or painting experience is needed.
I stamped the script and mushrooms. The side stripe is fabric tape. When making this card I discovered that the tape works well with the rubber stamping. The large mushroom blended into the fabric well resulting in a shadow effect. It is a happy accident. A skeleton sticker completes the card.
I plan to also use the large pumpkin stencil for Thanksgiving cards, just the pumpkin without the face. We’ll see how that turns out. And, now that I made the fabric tape discovery I am looking forward to trying it on other projects.
What are your favorite cards to make? Drop a comment and let me know if there are other card themes you are interested in seeing.
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