Cottage Paper: October 2022

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Welcome to InKing Royalty's October Blog Hop! Boo! Today we are sharing scary and sweet projects perfect for Halloween. We are excited to share our creations and hope you love them! After you read my post, I hope you'll hop over to the next person on the list at the base of this post.

Every year I make Halloween cards for my four granddaughters. They are all now basically almost grown – 2 in college and 2 in high school - but they still enjoy getting fun cards from me at Halloween. I don’t always buy every Halloween bundle that Stampin’ Up! offers but when I saw the Scary Silhouettes dies I knew they would be great for making some really cute cards. Then recently I saw a several examples of fun fold cards similar to this and thought they would be a great design to use with the Scary Silhouettes dies. I combined several ideas and here is my card.

The Front -

The Inside -

(A video is available at the end of these directions.)

This card has a number of steps but it really isn’t hard to make. I started with an A2 Basic Gray card base (4.25” X 8.5” scored and folded in half.) I decorated the front with a 3.5” X 4.75” piece of the Pumpkin Pie diagonal plaid paper from the Gingham Cottage Designer Series Paper and layered it on top of a piece of 3 5/8” X 4 7/8” Pumpkin Pie cardstock. The die set contains multiple bat dies in three different sizes so I cut out a bunch of black bats to scatter on the card.

I decided I wanted to put a large BOO on the front of the card but didn’t have a stamp for that. I got the idea to use a B and an O from one of the stamp sets to make the word BOO. I checked my sets and locked on to the Biggest Wish set. Which is a great set and only $17. I choose the B from BIRTHDAY and the O from HELLO. I grabbed a 1” piece strip (although in hindsight I think a .75” might be better so experiment) of Basic White card stock to try out my idea. In order to only ink my chosen individual letters I used the Basic Black marker to add ink to the letters I wanted and I used a piece of Scotch Removable tape to block off the letters I wasn’t using. You could also use a Post-it note or Post-it Tape. Once the letter has been colored with the Black ink you may need to huff on the stamp in case some of the ink has dried.

I stamped the B and it looked great. I then stamped an O and saw that the image was far from a solid black. I thought - I need to use my Stamparatus so I can stamp a number of times to get a solid black image and then quickly realized that the distressed look I got was perfect for Halloween. Every time I stamped a letter I got a different look. After stamping a number of letters I had a bunch of Os with a look I liked. The B was a little more difficult. After some experimenting I reached several conclusions. I think the O was distressed initially because it was from a stamp that had never been used whereas the BIRTHDAY stamp had been used previously. When the photopolymer stamps are manufactured they initially can have a coating from the manufacturing process which can result in the ink not sticking well the first time or two it is inked up. For this reason Stampin’ Up! recommends that you stamp a new photopolymer stamp a couple of times on scratch paper before stamping on your project. I remembered that a stamp that has picked up oil from our hands will not stamp as solid as a clean stamp. So to get multiple distressed letters each time I stamped I would rub the stamp with my fingers. Then sometimes I would let the ink sit on the stamp for 5 minutes or more. When I looked at the stamp I could see the ink bead up like in the photo below. When I thought it looked “good”, ie distressed, I huffed on it and stamped. I had to stamp several times to get one I liked but it didn’t take long. I would do other things while I let the inked stamp sit. Once you finish you should wash your stamps to remove any oil on them. I then diagonally cut apart the letters on the strips and was very pleased with the results. I arranged the letters on the card and added some bats. Or you can skip all this and just stamp the letters the way you normally would!

For the inside I started with a regular size card base (5.5 X 8.5) in black. I scored it at 4.25 along the long side as you would a standard A2 portrait card and then flipped it over and scored at 2.25 from each end. That way your end scores are indented one way and your center score is another. I then used the branches silhouette die from the Scary Silhouettes die set to cut out a window in the center of the Black piece along the center score mark. Next cut .25” off of the top and bottom of the Black card. (You could have started with a smaller piece of cardstock but I found it easier to start with the standard size piece and then cut some off.) Then fold on the score lines accordion style so the center one becomes a mountain and the end scores are valleys. My Black piece was then divided into 4 equal size sections.

Then I decorated my Black piece. I cut a frame for the window from Pumpkin Pie cardstock using the same Scary Silhouette window die and the outline die that goes with it. This will result in a Pumpkin Pie frame with branches. I used my snips to cut off the branches leaving the frame and adhered it around the window opening. Next I decorated the left and right quarter pieces. I used a Pumpkin Pie 2” X 4.75” layer and a Basic White 1 7/8” X 4 5/8” piece on the left side to create a place to right a message. Then on the right I first cut out the cat from the Scary Silhouettes die and adhered a tiny piece of Cajun Craze glimmer paper from the Metallics and Glimmer Specialty paper behind the opening for the cat’s eyes. The glimmer piece should be cut larger than the eyes because glimmer paper can be hard to adhere so you need more surface area. The Fine-tip glue pen is great for this but Tombow Multipurpose Liquid Glue worked fine for me. Just make sure it has time to dry. I adhered the cat to a piece of Pumpkin Pie 1 3/8” X 1 7/8” and placed it at the bottom of the right side. I then placed a 1 3/4” X 3 1/8”piece of the Gingham Cottage Designer Series Paper on to a 1 7/8” X 3 1/4” layer of Pumpkin Pie and centered it above the cat. I added two Matte Black Dots to the Gingham Cottage paper on the right.

Next I moved to the design for the window. Using the house die from the same set I cut out a Black house and adhered a small yellow piece of Daffodil Delight behind the top left window of the house. Then I adhered the house in approximately the middle of the Basic Gray piece of cardstock. To center the house left and right I placed the point of the roof on the middle score line. To place it top to bottom I measured from the bottom of the Black cardstock piece to the bottom of the window opening and added .25”. I placed a pencil mark there. That should be the distance from the bottom of the gray piece to the bottom of the house but please note for the placement of the house these measurements do not really have to be exact. You do need to center the house left and right but top to bottom you have some leeway since people will be looking through the window at different angles. Next add a Daffodil Delight quarter moon and a bat or two cut with the dies from the same set.

Now you need to put it all together! First I adhered the left quarter of the Basic Black card to the Basic Gray base card. To do this I applied adhesive to the back of the left quarter of the Basic Black piece and placed that piece about .25” from the Basic Gray card on three sides – the top, bottom and left side. Then I applied adhesive to the back of the right quarter of the Basic Black piece and accordion folded the Basic Black piece so it is all stacked up on the left quarter piece and fold the Basic Gray piece over the Black accordion folded piece. This should result in the correct placement of the Black piece on to the Gray card base. Open the card and you should be done!! If you have any trouble you can watch the video above and see me make the card.

Here is a video of me making the card. Sorry it is so long but feel free to fast forward to what you want to see.

Thank you for stopping by today. I hope you'll hop along to the next stop on the blog hop, Jan DuFour at Stamp Me Silly.

I ♥ comments and would love to hear what you think about this Fun Fold and the Scary Silhouettes dies.

Katie

Thank you for hopping along with us. If you get stuck during the Blog Hop, please use this line-up as a guide:

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Scary Silhouettes