Something New

I know, I know, it isn't that close to Halloween. However, I recently received a new shipment of images from Impression Obsession that have got me already thinking about fall and winter. For today's card, I used the new Halloween collage stamp by Leigh Hannan. Her stuff just rocks!

There are a couple of things I want to point out about the card. First, it really is just one stamp. I didn't have to do any aligning of images. Second, I colored all of the Halloween items with various Copic markers and highlighted the inside of each frame with a light gray marker (C1). Grays are hard to photograph, but I think you can tell in places that the frames are shaded.

I colored each of the bones with a slightly darker gray (C3) and then went over each bone with the Copic blender pen. When you use the blender, it washes away some of the color underneath. I hope you can tell from the photo that the bones have a bleached look to them. I thought it ended up looking more interesting than when I just used the gray marker alone. To add even more dimension, I added a second layer of gray around the joints of the bones to create some shading.

The cauldron was colored using darker gray markers (C5 and C7). When I started coloring with the Copics, I bought the black marker. However, it is almost too black. (Uh oh, now I have a This is Spinal Tap quote going through my head..."how more black could it be?" But I digress.) By "too black," I mean it is just a solid pitch black that is hard to use to get a gradient of color. I have started using the dark grays more to get a black look that isn't too black. Does any of this make sense?

I can't wait to show you more of the new images, but I think I will space them out a bit so that you don't have to be inundated with Halloween and (gasp) Christmas images so soon!