A Bewitching Card

Hello friends!  Back again with another card idea for you to try.  You know how much I love autumn.  I think I might have mentioned that once or twice.  Today I thought I'd go with a Halloween card.  I know lots of people go all out for the holiday, but that's not really my thing.  I do have to make several cards every year, so here goes with the first one.  I bought the new Bewitching stamp set found on page 57 of the July - December 2022 Mini Catalog for this year's cards.  For some reason I like just the witches' feet and hats.  How weird is that?  Please don't tell me I have some weird fetish.  I'm sure I don't.  At least I don't think so!

Here's my version of the wicked witch of the west kind of melting down to her shoes.  Well, maybe not that exactly.  My idea started with Smoky Slate cardstock as the base.  I wanted just gray and black tones with Fresh Freesia as an accent.  I think it worked out pretty well.  At least in real life.  I've taken 27 pictures with different backgrounds and different lighting, and nothing worked very well to show the cool Fresh Freesia accents against the gray.  I love the subtle differences between the Smoky Slate and Fresh Freesia colors on the card.  Well, I better explain what I did in case you really can't tell from the pics.

There is a 3" x 5 1/2" layer of Basic Black cardstock that is attached to a 3 1/4" x 5 1/2" layer of Fresh Freesia cardstock.  A 7" strip of the Metallic Mesh Ribbon is wrapped around this and attached in the back.  The mesh ribbon reminds me a little of spider webs, so I thought it would be a great addition here.  This is all attached to the folded Smoky Slate card base using adhesive.

The witch's hat was stamped onto Smoky Slate cardstock using Memento Tuxedo Black ink.  After punching this out with the Witch Hat Builder Punch, I used Smoky Slate Light Blends to shade the spider web on the hat, and Smoky Slate Dark Blends to shade the left and bottom sides of the hat.  Using Wink of Stella, the web was lightly traced for just a bit of shine. 

The legs and shoes were stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink onto another piece of Smoky Slate cardstock.  Fresh Freesia Dark Blends was used to color the stocking stripes. Wink of Stella was colored onto the shoe buckles.   I actually colored three layers of this so it would show more, but the pics don't show it at all.  Bummer.

Since there's no punch for the legs and shoes, these were fussy cut.  I left them attached at the top for ease in placing them, but maybe I should have cut them out separately.  Something to think about for next time.

When the hat was punched, it also punched out the gray hat band and three stars.  I knew I didn't want the hat band to be Smoky Slate, so I punched just the hat band from a skinny strip of Fresh Freesia.  Then I thought I'd also prefer the stars in that color, so punched them also.  The hat band has some 'wrinkles' colored in with Fresh Freesia Blends.  The hat and legs were attached to the card front using Dimensionals.

Now I ran into a problem.  I didn't own any current stamps that have a Halloween sentiment.  Okaaay, time to go checking into my retired stash.  The first set I found was the Banner Year set from last year.  I liked the 'Happy Haunting' and 'Boo!' stamps and decided to look no further.  The sentiment for the card front was stamped onto Fresh Freesia with Tuxedo black.  Then was trimmed a little closer to the sentiment.  It was attached with Dimensionals over the ribbon at the bottom.

To stay with the layering on the front a little, I cut a 3" x 5 1/4" strip of Basic White.  There are two skinny strips of Fresh Freesia added to top and bottom this time instead of along the sides.  I placed it on the middle of the Stamparatus for my next step.  The spider from Bewitching was stamped to the left side.  It required two stampings to get the face of the spider to show nicely.  Then Boo! was attached to the Stamparatus.  It was stamped once with Tuxedo Black ink.  Then the cardstock was moved 1/2 grid square up and to the left.  Boo! was then stamped with Smoky Slate ink.  The cardstock was moved 1/2 grid square up and to the left again.  Then Boo! was stamped with Fresh Freesia ink.  I really liked how the wording turned out!  It sort of reminds me of a spooky echo. 

Last look at the card and you can see the addition of a knot of Mesh Ribbon added with Mini Glue Dots to the top of the card.  And multiple Fresh Freesia and Smoky Slate punched stars added to both the card front and inside to finish it off.  They were also attached with Mini Glue Dots to make it quick and easy.

So that's my first Halloween card for the year.  It's amazing what can be done with just a hat and some shoes.  I'll have to give this one a whirl again.  So sorry I had to use retired sentiments on the card.  I try to stick with current items, but every once in a while, that just doesn't work as planned.

Thanks for stopping by again.  Let me know what you think of the card.  I always appreciate your comments!

If you're placing an order soon, please use the Host Code shown at the top of the blog post.  I really appreciate it!  I've already got some goodies planned for sending out to all of you that order.  I think you'll like them!!

Happy spooky stamping and creating,

Sharon