Hi, friends! Welcome back to the blog!

Today I’m sharing two Halloween cards—my first of the season, and hopefully not my last. This post was originally just going to be one card, the one on the right, but a burst of inspiration struck and I made one more with the extra background stripes I had. Yay for using background dies in alternative ways haha!

Trick or Treat Card

The focus of this card was on the Simon Says Stamp Spooky Icons stencil, which is so fun to use! I love all the little illustrations, and the stencil makes for easy mass production of Halloween cards.

I decided my color palette for this card would be focusing on Concord & 9th inks since I could picture color combos in my head while waiting for my order to arrive. The pumpkins, largest candy corn bits, and one portion of the suckers were blended in Marmalade ink. The stars, smallest portion of candy corn, candy bar and a section of the sucker were blended in Buttercup ink. The remaining sections of the sucker were blended in Sprout and Eggplant inks and the small candy bars also had Eggplant ink details on them. The sticks of the suckers, centers of the candy corn, and the skulls were blended with Dove ink, and the skull details, bats, spiders and jack-o’-lantern faces/stems were all blended with Mushroom ink. This stencil leaves you with such a cute pattern, and I still have some leftover to play with!

For the greeting on this card, I die cut the Trick or Treat dies from CZ Design and Simon Says Stamp. The shadow layer was die cut with Eggplant cardstock, and the words out of 2 layers of white cardstock and a top layer of holographic cardstock. To finish the sentiment off, I decided to use a CZ Design Reverse Halloween sentiment strip that played along well with the trick or treat greeting. I love Cathy Zielske’s wit and humor!

Lastly, the background. I knew I really wanted some texture to it, and I wanted Halloween colors, so I decided to die cut the Stitched Stripe card front from Concord & 9th out of black, Eggplant, Marmalade, Buttercup and Sprout cardstocks. I cut each color into strips by cutting down the middle of the double stitched lines. These cuts aren’t perfect, but I did my best! I glued the stripes down in a repeating pattern and trimmed off the excess. I popped my stenciled panel on the stripe background and called this card done.

Jack-o’-lantern Card

Now to the bonus card! This card was inspired by the background of the previous one because I had fallen in love with the trick or treat greeting on the stripes. While I was assembling this card front, I got to idea to use the Outside In Stitched Pumpkin die set from Lawn Fawn that I had in my stash from last year but never used. It’s perfect for this background, and for an easy Halloween card!

I glued the stripes on this card horizontally and in the same repeating pattern as the previous card. I can’t get enough of the Sprout and black stripe pairing— it’s the perfect Frankenstein vibe, and makes me wish I had Frankenstein products haha. The tones of the C9 cardstock colors are absolutely perfect together, it really makes me want to make more cards similar to this!

I die cut the pumpkin out of Marmalade cardstock and took a light orange alcohol marker (I use and recommend Ohuhu markers, you can get them on Amazon, and they have a great price point and color variety) and ran it around the outer edge of the pumpkin. I decided to add some curved lines in the pumpkin to really define its shape with the same marker. I die cut the eyes and mouth out of black cardstock, and the pumpkin stem out of Wheat cardstock. I took a cool brown alcohol marker and gave the stem some shading by making flick marks at the top and bottom of the stem, as well as along the right side of it.

I glued the pumpkin down on the card front and got to work on the sentiment. I planned to use the ‘Happy Halloween’ sentiment from the same CZ Design set as the last card, but since the scale was a bit smaller, I needed an extra greeting. I decided to use Oliver’s Stitched ABCs from Lawn Fawn to make my own sentiment, but I kept it simple with ‘eek!’. I die cut the letters out of a layer of white cardstock, and the top layer out of Concord & 9th white glitter paper. It really pops with the card background, and I love the subtle green and red duo chrome the glitter cardstock has. This card turned out so cute and I like how the ‘eek!’ pairs really well into the ‘Happy Halloween’ sentiment strip.

So what do you think of these cards?! I think the jack-o’-lantern one is my favorite; I love the stripes and the jack-o’-lantern is just so cute! Thanks for stopping by today, I hope to catch you next time! 😊