Halloween Garland

It’s my turn on the Visible Image blog today and I’ve made a Halloween Pumkins & Cats garland using the fabulous, new Happy Halloween stamps and dies together with That Lovin’ Feline stamps and dies.

Since I would need about a dozen large pumpkins and a few small ones, I thought it quicker to colour my card first, so I opted for an ‘inky mop-up’ technique.  I used a large plastic bag and smooshed Distress Oxide ink pads onto it.  The main colour was Carved Pumpkin but I also added Mustard Seed, Barn Door and Wild Honey. 

The bag was liberally spritzed with water then I pressed my card onto the bag, lifting dabbing until the sheet was coloured.  There was still a lot of ink on the bag so I spritzed with water again and mopped up with another sheet of card.  I used Daler Rowney Mixed Media card which copes with water very well and didn’t buckle.  The sheets were set aside to dry completely.

The pumpkins were stamped onto the coloured card using Versafine Clair Nocturn ink using my Misti stamping platform so that I could stamp twice to ensure the images were nice and dark.  The pumpkins were then die-cut using the coordinating dies.  I really love the organic look of the pumpkins!

Using black card, I stamped and gold heat-embossed three of the cats from That Lovin’ Feline and die-cut them with the coordinating dies.

I wanted the Happy Halloween sentiment on my garland so I cut 3 pieces of white card 7cm x 8.5cm and blended Twisted Citron ink all over each panel.  I added Villainous Potion ink through the Supernova stencil and around the outside of the panel and then dragged the Black Soot ink pad around the edge.

Whilst adding some of the inky splatters stamps, the large one reminded me of a hairy spider body so I converted a few into spiders, adding legs and eyes.  I then used a black fine liner to draw a cobweb in the corner for the spider to hang from.

Each panel had the ‘Happy Halloween’ sentiment gold heat-embossed and then the cats were glued in place.

At this point, I realised that I had no fabric glue – doh! I had die-cut the pumpkins from black card to adhere to the back of the coloured pumpkins (for neatness!) so Mr. L suggested stapling these onto the ribbon and then gluing the coloured pumpkins on top.  This worked a treat!  It also made the hanging elements more sturdy.

You can obviously make your garland as long or as short as you want and use whatever ribbon you like but I recycled some ribbon from Jo Malone perfume boxes.  My ribbon was actually three pieces but it was easy to join invisibly behind the pumkins.

It also transpired that garlands are quite tricky to photograph so here are a few close-up shots!  The full garland is on the header at the top of the post.