Woo Hoo!
Welcome to the Jacksonville STARZ Halloweeen Blog Hop!
This is the first blog hop that I've ever done and I am so lucky to be doing it as part of the Jacksonville Starz! It also happens to be National Card Making Day so what a day for a blog hop! So exciting! We decided on a theme of Halloween cards for this blog hop and of course the cards will be made exclusively with Stampin' Up! products. If you are hopping along with us then you should have arrived here from
Priscilla Thoreson's Blog. Priscilla is very creative and I always love her cards! If you haven't visited her blog yet I recommend checking it out.
Now, on to my card--I call it, the Monster Card! The short story behind this card is that I initially got a little stumped because I needed to use only CURRENT Stampin' Up! products to create this card. Well, that doesn't seem too hard, but, I kept looking at retired Halloween DSP and last year's Halloween stamps (Yes, I still love them all) and knew I couldn't use them. I recently posted a Halloween card that I made using the Fall Fest Stamp set so I wanted the challenge of doing something totally different. I looked, and looked, and I finally found a fun card design that I could make my own. I sure hope you like it because it was a blast to make!
This is the outside of the card. It's held closed by a belly band. The belly band is 1.5" wide, cut from Basic Black, stamped with Gorgeous Grunge and Mingle All the Way, and, embossed with both clear and white embossing powder.
When you open the card up it looks like this... a Monster!
Here are step-by-step directions on how to make this Monster Card.
First, here are the directions for the card base. At first it seems tricky but it is actually pretty simple.
Cut out all of your pieces for both Layer 1 and Layer 2. Emboss the pieces of Layer 2 any way that you like (or use DSP). I used the Positively Chevron background stamp and some black embossing powder to make my own fancy paper. I also embossed three pieces of Layer 1 (1 of 3.75" x 3.75" and 2 of 1.75" x 1.75"). Those three pieces are part of the inside of the Monster card and the embossing isn't shown in this picture (you'll see that in the next step). After embossing you will cut 2 each of the 3.75" x 3.75" and the 3.5" x 3.5" in half on the diagonal. Then you will adhere the layers together with Layer 2 fitting on top of Layer 1.
After adhering the layers to each other you will adhere the layers to your card base as shown below. The outside back of the card will be blank with no colorful layers. The inside of the card will be covered by those three extra pieces of Layer 1 (pictured in the bottom right corner of the above photo).
Do not adhere the "face" yet! There is work to do before you do that.
After getting all of your double layers adhered you will work on your Monster's face and any embossing you'd like to add to the inside of the card. I used Gorgeous Grunge to add some background to all three pieces of the inside of my card. I used both Clear and Wild Wasabi embossing powder to make those stamps pop a bit. I stamped my Monster's belly with the Halloween stamp from the Mingle All the Way stamp set and embossed that in white.
To make the Monser's Eyes I used the 1" Circle Punch to punch out two circles in Basic Black. This is the first layer of the eyes. Next, using the 3/4" Circle Punch I punched out two more circles in Whisper white (Eye Layer 2), and, one more in Basic Black. I cut the 3/4" Basic Black circle in half to make the third layer of the eyes. The final layer of the eyes was done using the 1/8" Hand-Held Punch. You only need two of these (one for each eye), but, I actually used three on each eye and built those pupils up so they had a little bit of dimension. You can't really see that in the picture but it did make a difference in person.
The Monster's Fangs were punched out in Whisper White using the Petite Pennants Punch. The smaller teeth were made by using the Word Window Punch and then carefully snipping the little teeth out with paper snips. When you glue the teeth in it is really important to glue the fangs in first and to only adhere them to the back of the face (glue them to the Island Indigo layer and not to the card base). This will ensure that your teeth will have dimension and will move with the card instead of tearing or sticking to the card base. Make sure that you place the small teeth above the fold in the card base. If you don't, your Monster will have a serious case of Snaggle Tooth and we just can't have that! Haha!
When you are happy with all three pieces for the inside of the card go ahead and glue them in!
WA-LA! Your card is done! Fold it up and secure it with the belly band. No one will know there is a Monster hiding inside!
Thanks for checking out my card. I hope the visuals helped to show how I put it together. If you're interested in making it yourself I have listed the products that I used below. I'm happy to answer any questions and to hear any feedback so please leave me a comment!
Happy National Card-Making Day and Happy Halloween!
Now you are off to see an amazing creation by the talented
Cari Verschueren. Enjoy!
In case you've gotten lost along the way, or, would like to go straight back to someone's blog:
Monster Card Ingredients: