Valley Oak Paper - Cardmaking designs by Cecilia Huster

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Blue Halloween

Cecilia Huster

Promotion for Kat Scrappiness

Today’s card is a watercolored Halloween card with a witchy little quokka. The palette I’m using is palette 256 from Volume 2 of the Color Catalog. It includes two blues, black and two browns:

  • Ash Gray

  • Dark Teal

  • Black

  • Caramel

  • Marigold

Mixing Paint

I’m starting by mixing the paint I need. Today I’m going to use my artist-grade watercolors. I’ve written down the paints I’m going to mix on this little palette and I mostly followed my plans. The exact list is in the image gallery below.

For each of these I’m mixing more than enough. When I’m done, I’m putting away the watercolor tin and only using the mixed paints. That’s the easiest way to stick to a limited palette.

YouTube Hop

This video is part of my monthly YouTube cardmaking hop. The theme for October is obviously Halloween. Here’s the playlist. My friends have lots of Halloween inspiration for you. Some of it is scary, some of it cute, and some is both.

Watercoloring Stamped Images

I’ve stamped my images twice with brown waterproof ink on watercolor paper. The quokka is from the Kat Scrappiness Dress-Up Quokka Stamp Set. The witch’s garb is from the Halloween Costume Add-On Stamp Set. So is the skull and bones. The pumpkins, acorns and leaves are included in the Thanksgiving Add-On Set. 

I’m starting by coloring the star of the show, the quokka with my caramel shade that I’m diluting with more water. I’m also coloring her front paws. Then I’m adding an ochre wash to the skull and bones. I’m also coloring the pumpkins, leaves and acorns with an all-over ochre wash. 

When everything is dry, I’m adding shading to the quokka. Then I’m shading the pumpkins. 

The cheeks on the quokka got a bit dark, so I’m trying to walk it back with some water. Then I’m adding some detail to the leaves and acorns. 

I’m using the two blue grey tones for the witch clothes. First I give the skirt and hat a diluted all-over wash of dark teal. Then I add shading to the broom. I work some more on the other accessories before returning to the skirt and hat with more dark teal. 

Then I add some ash gray to the top. I use raw ochre on the hat band and caramel on the quokka’s nose. Finally I add a little bit of shading to the quokka’s upper body in case it shows under her costume. Then it’s time for a cat break.  

Not much left now. I apparently colored in the broom handle without filming it. Then I color the quokka’s hind paws.  

I color the spider with black and add some shading to the hat band. Then I make the skirt darker, add some more shading to some accessories and color the patch on the quokka’s skirt with black. 

My final step is to add Kat Scrappiness Pearl Powder in the color Gold to the buckle in the hat band. 

Background

Behind the quokka, I’m going to place a fence and some trees. These are all from the Kat Scrappiness Crafter’s Essential Halloween Dies. I’m also going to watercolor a background behind everything. Naturally I’m going to color the die cuts and background with the same colors that I’ve used for the foreground objects. 

I’m starting with the background and adding a light ochre wash at the bottom. 

While I wait for that to dry, I colored the fence with a gradient with the lightest color at the bottom. Next I add some washes of black to the top of the background. I keep adding blacks and blues to the background until I’m satisfied. 

Turning to some of the trees, I’m painting them haphazardly with blue and black paints. I keep adding color to them and drying them until I feel they’re done.

Then I paint the moon with more Gold Pearl Powder. 

When the background has dried, I’m die cutting it with the second largest die from the Kat Scrappiness Cross Stitched Frames Die Set. 

Then I cut a layer of heavy cardstock with the same die 4099 and glue it to the back. I really like this background!  

Die Cutting

I’m die cutting the stamped and colored images with the three coordinating die sets:

I’ve also die cut one or two layers of heavy white cardstock to stack behind the flimsy watercolor paper. But I’ve learned my lesson, so I don’t automatically add heavy cardstock behind layering pieces. For instance I glue the witchy costume directly to the body of the quokka.

I give the hat a bit of a haircut, so I can use the slit to place the hat behind the left ear. That’s super cute! Next I add the costume behind the quokka, to give the broom extra stability. 

Once that’s dried, I’m giving the heavy cardstock hat a little haircut, so it doesn’t show under the watercolor paper. Then I glue it to the back of the quokka’s head and the back of the hat. Now this little figure is like a hard chipboard piece, so I can easily glue it to an uneven surface. 

Sentiment

Before I cleaned my temporary palette, I used some of the leftover paint to color a scrap of watercolor paper. That’s what I’m going to use for my sentiment. 

The die I’m using is called Kat Scrappiness Happy Halloween Word Dies with Shadow. This is what the shadow die looks like. Although I’m not using it today. I’ve already cut out the word die twice from heavy white cardstock and stacked it for stability and dimension. 

I’m placing the die so the darkest color is at the bottom of the sentiment. That’s the opposite of the background. When I’ve die cut it, I’m adding the watercolor layer to the white cardstock layers. 

Assembly

Now that I think I have all the pieces I need, I’m starting assembly of my card. First I glue the moon to the top right corner. Then I place the first tree in the top left corner and another tree at the same level and partly in front of the moon. 

Next I glue down my two skulls near the base of the left tree and the bones in front of the right tree. I also add some oak leaves next to the bones. Although they don’t really show behind the quokka. Finally I add the third tree in front of the other two. 

I add some more leaves on the left, so it looks like there’s a little hill that the two background trees are standing on. 

Next I want to glue down the fence. I have to add more have cardstock behind parts of it, or it would look very wavy. 

I’m going on a bit of a journey when it comes to framing and matting this card. I did not like the way the card panel looked against a white card base. I tried it against a Kraft card base, but the Kraft was too yellow. So I found some brown cardstock in my stash and die cut it with the largest size of the Cross Stitched Fame Dies. 

I glued the brown matte to the Kraft card base. 

I was going to place the sentiment near the top of the card, but I felt that it got lost among the tree branches. So I cut out another Happy Halloween from watercolor paper and colored it with more gold pearl powder. I really like this pearl powder. If I heat embossed this in gold, it wouldn’t have this pretty shine! 

Then I’m gluing the gold layer offset behind the other layers. That will help it stand out from the branches. Finally I glue the whole shebang onto the tree tops. 

Originally I was going to add the card panel directly to the brown matte. But then I thought about how pretty this gold pearl powder is. Maybe if I added a gold matte between the blue background and the brown matte, that would tie the card together. I tried it  and it did indeed tie the card together. So I added gold pearl powder to the edges of a piece of heavy white cardstock. 

When it was dry, I glued the card front to the gold matte and the gold matte to the brown matte.

Just a few more die cuts to go! We’re on the home stretch! I glued two pumpkins to the bottom of the fence. Then I glued down the star of this card, the witchy little quokka. I added another pumpkin in front of the other two. Finally I added two acorns to the left of the pumpkins to finish the visual triangle created by the witch with her tall hat and the pumpkins.

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