Aloha, all!
Can you believe that tomorrow is October already??!!! I can't either, except that I'm on my way to the United States mainland for my October trip there, so I guess I should find it easy to believe it's already here!
And when it comes time to think about October, I think about some of the fun that I used to like to have on Halloween. I was never much into the ghosts and goblins and scary stuff at Halloween. But I sure did enjoy carving pumpkins into Jack-o-Lanters and putting candles in them to light up the night in front of our house. They were always happy little guys and gals, too! None of these scary crooked sneers – it was smiles all the way – just as in the Stampin' Up! Stamp, Halloween Happiness.
The last couple of times that I used this stamp (yes, all four pumpkins and the greeting are on one stamp), I stamped it in several colors and then cut each of the pumpkins out and adhered them to the main stamped image. This time I decided I just wanted to use one color. And if you can't use Pumpkin Pie for Pumpkins, I'm not sure why anyone would ever call it Pumpkin Pie! I decided I wanted the image to be stamped once in the center of the card and then once on either side of the main image. Then I wanted that main image to be lifted up off the card front a bit and then matted with a different color to highlight it a bit.
But first I had to decide on the size of the card so I could decide where I wanted to cut the center stamped image. I ended up with a card that's 6" wide by 4" high. That gave me enough room for two of the pumpkin images to be repeated on either side of the main image. To make the whole look more effective, I wanted the pumpkins on either side of the main image to be only partially on the main layer. I stamped all three images on a scrap of Very Vanilla Card Stock and found that a width of 3-1/4" worked beautifully, along with a height of 2" that allowed a nice bit of space both top and bottom of the image.
To get everything stamped the way I wanted, I cut a good piece of Very Vanilla Card Stock to the side of the center piece (3-1/4" by 2") and adhered that to a larger (5-1/2" by 3-1/2") piece of Vanilla Card Stock with a removable adhesive. Using my Stamp-a-ma-jig for this stamping, I stamped all three images across the center. There was a bit of card stock that didn't get fully inked up at the edge of the top layer. But that was all right as I was going to mat the top layer anyway. I chose Always Artichoke for the mat, as well as for the color of the stems and vines on the top of the pumpkins.
And doesn't that Witches' Brew Washi Tape look nice under that top layer? I have a little secret about that. Originally it was go to more towards the bottom of the card. But I found that, no matter how hard I tried to clean the words, "halloween happiness," from the two outside pumpkin images, a ghost (appropriate for the season) of the words appeared. Washi Tape to the rescue! I kind of liked the nicely tucked look; but now I felt there was too much space on both the top and the bottom of the card. So out came my Paper Piercer to outline that top layer!
No ribbon or other embellishments. BUT I did have a 6" by 4" card, and no envelope to fit it. So out came my Stampin' Up! Envelope Punch Board and in minutes I had the perfect envelope! With stamped pumpkins, of course!
As I've been discussing some of the measurements of this card, I thought I'd share the sketch for the final project. Definitely a fun project to welcome October!