Spooky Spiders

This week's Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge is brought to you by the letter "S". The idea is to be inspired by the letter "s" or to use a product that starts with the letter "s". As you have probably guessed from the title of this post, I've gone for a Hallowe'en theme with Spooky Spiders :-)

"Spooky Spiders"

I know, I know, the sun is shining and it's Summer and there are all sorts of other esses I could have chosen, but "Spooky Spiders" it is! Oh, and there's the Scary cat, the distress Stickles, the Stamping with Stampers anonymous Stamps, the black Soot distress ink edging, Stampendous embossing powder, Sizzix diecuts and Seasonal paper Stash too :-). Plus, I love that the background stamp has "spooky" written in it (does anyone else think "spooky Mulder" from the X-Files when they hear that word?) :-)

"Stamped and Embossed Panel"

The main panel is coloured with various red and orange distress inks, then overstamped with white brilliance ink. You could get a similar result with a resist technique if you preferred, but I like the grungy matt effect of the white stamping over an inked background. After stamping, I lined up the words with the matching embossing folder and embossed to raise the lettering, making the letters pop even more. The panel is matted and layered onto black, and placed onto a card blank decorated with patterned papers and more matting and layering. Then the whole thing is overstamped using the spiders' web stamp from the IndigoBlu stamp set to tie all the panels together.

"Spider diecut"

The scary cat and spooky spiders are diecut, coloured with distress inks and decorated with a good rubbing of black soot distress stickles. The eyes are added with white pen. The diecuts are shaped and adhered to the card with Pinflair for some added dimension.

"Sizzix Iron Gate diecut"

 This iron gate from Tim Holtz is one of my all time favourite dies, it's so versatile and can be used on cards with lots of different themes. Decorated all over with black embossing powder as it is here, it reminds me of the black iron railings that used to surround our school. They used to get the odd new coat of black gloss, but the rust would always come through. I've made as rough a job as possible of the black embossing so it would look like the paint was chipping off. The edges were gone over with a versamark pen before adding some rust-coloured embossing powder and heating again. The railings outside our school always used to bring to my mind impalings so they are quite appropriate for a Hallowe'en card. I blame it on all those gothic novels I read as a teenager, I never really saw anyone impaled  :-)

Well, the Sun is continuing to shine here in Sunny Northern Ireland and long may it continue. It was actually warm enough for shorts today - woohoo!!

Ingredients:

Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz stamp set Halloween Silhouettes CMS115

IndigoBlu stamp set Hocus Pocus HP1

Sizzix Texture Fades Tim Holtz Halloween Background and Borders Set

Sizzix Bigz Tim Holtz Candlelight Fright

Sizzix Originals: Cat, Scary and Spider #2

Sizzix Tim Holtz On The Edge Iron Gate

Tim Holtz Seasonal 12" x 12" paper stash

Brilliance ink pad Moonlight White

Distress Ink pads (various oranges and reds plus Black Soot)

Versamark Ink pad

Versamark pen

Inkssentials pen White Opaque

Distress Stickles Black Soot

Stampendous embossing powder, black

Cheap embossing powder, earth colour

cardstock: 300gsm white (for card blank), 160gsm black (for matting & layering)

adhesives: PVA, Pinflair

Entered for the following challenge:
Simon Says Stamp and Show - brought to you by the letter S