Halloween card: Mouse on a broom

What:

A cute little mouse flying off on a broom is the centrepiece for this card made for Gerda Steiner’s September challenge.

How:

First I had to come up with a layout that was sufficiently different from the cards that had already been entered into the challenge; having the mouse flying in front of the moon was going to be the central piece, but it needed something to balance it out… spooky trees!

Spooky trees were also the perfect thing to test out my new Brother ScanNCut. I went in search of a suitable tree as a starting point and adapted it until I was happy with the result (I am rubbish at drawing from scratch but I can tweak and edit and produce something I’m happy with). I used the online ScanNCut Canvas to convert the finished image into something the machine could use, downloaded it, and cut one tree from vellum and one from black card. I coloured the vellum one by sponging on black ink.

The moon was die cut from a piece of watercolour paper and the colour was built up by finger-painting with pigment inks.

I printed the mouse onto watercolour paper, coloured it with Zig Clean Color Real Brush pens and fussy cut it out. The blending looks a lot better in real life. The spider’s legs didn’t survive the scissors so I replaced them with some short pieces of black thread. I added a little glossy accents onto the buckle on the hat and on the spider.

I wanted to add a bit of interest to the background so I die cut a cloud edge shape and used that as a mask for sponging some die ink onto the card base. It’s not hugely obvious on the finished card but I think it’s better than leaving it as a flat colour.

I glued the moon and trees in place with multi medium matte; it does show through the vellum, but I quite like the mottled effect for this subject matter. I added lots of black foam tape on the back of the mouse and popped it up over the moon.

The final touch was to add the stars with the Imagination Crafts detail sparkle.

Lessons Learned:

Black card on pearlised blue card is really hard to photograph well and also get a decent photo of the other elements.

Challenges:

Gerda Steiner Designs September challenge

Supplies:

• digital stamps:
  Gerda Steiner – Halloween mouse on broom
• dies:
  Sizzix – circles 2
  Mama Elephant – landscape trio
• inks:
  Avery Elle – pure white, silver fox, fog, daisy, sea glass
  Ranger – archival – jet black
  Lawn Fawn – dye ink – black licorice, deep sea
• pens:
  Uni-ball – Signo 307 – black
  Memento – dual marker – tuxedo black
• colour:
  Zig – clean colour real brush markers
• embellishments:
  Imagination Crafts – detail sparkle – gold gilt, silver gilt, white shimmer
  Ranger – glossy accents
• paper and card:
  Craftwork Cards – kings blue pearl
  Derwent – black drawing paper
  Anita’s – white vellum
• miscellaneous:
  Brother ScanNCut