Anatomy of a Halloween Card

This week's party continues here.

For my Halloween cards this year, I went with a color palette of black, purple, silver and gold and for my focal, used an image from The Hungry JPEG. 

I printed the image on photo paper and then trimmed to the size I wanted. I used a stamping technique called masking, where you closely trim a copy of your image, lay it over top of an image you want to color, and then apply ink so you color everything but your focal image. 

The image on the left is the one I want to color ; the one on the right is my trimmed mask. 

I used a purple ink and then randomly applied a black ink to my image. Once I was happy with my inking, I randomly sprinkled some gold embossing powder and used my heat gun to set the embossing powder. 

Once I had all my focal images done, I mounted them to purple glitter paper and then silver glitter paper. 

To make the cards, I used black metallic card stock cut to 5x7, and papers from a Recollections paper stack I'd picked up a couple of years ago at Michaels. Ironically, I didn't use it at the time but knew I would sometime!

I accented with a Halloween washi tape and a spider punched from scraps of the silver glitter paper. 

For the interior of the card, I digitally colored one of my hand drawn doodles to match my color palette,, bordered and layered the image onto a black and white background paper in PicMonkey and then added some text: 

As always, I have scraps of paper I can't bear to part with so I used those to make some tags I sent to friends to use for their treats etc. 

Lettering Practice: Coffee Humor

I've noticed I have something in common with all of the hand lettering artists whose work I love. We share a love of coffee. 

My preferred drink is iced mochas. Doesn't matter what time of year it is, it's an iced mocha for me. 

So, I attempted to sketch one out ( can you tell my home away from home by the green straw? )  and then scanned in and added a marbled paper background. 

But then I couldn't decide if I wanted to leave it alone or add something more so I played around and added a watercolor "splat" .  Graphics are from The Hungry JPEG. 

Mocha time! 

Happy Monday! Be Fierce: Lettering and Graphics Practice

Happy Monday ( I'm trying to convince myself of that). Hope everyone had a great weekend and is off to a good new week. 

Sharing some more lettering practice combined with digital graphics. 

I started with this quote I lettered last week. I go back and forth between coloring my lettering pieces and leaving them black and white so I can play with them once they're scanned in. 

If you are  not familiar with the site The Hungry JPEG, you should be! They have premium design resources ( combination of free and fee). I grabbed a Floral Megabundle one week when it was free ( it's fee now) which is what I used for this graphic. You definitely want to get on their email list or follow them so you'll know when they offer free bundles! 

Using PicMonkey, I changed the background and added a couple of digital elements from the Floral Bundle and done. 

I haven't yet decided what I'm using this graphic for ... most likely it will appear on a future card but one more for my "stash".