Pumpkin boo!

Okay, who stole the end of October? How did I go from having a week to write up this Halloween card to it being November and I’m having to dash out to post my mum’s birthday card? In typically organised manner, I have already written up that card but didn’t want to post until I’d got this one done…

This was one of those designs that popped almost fully formed into my head the moment I saw the theme of October’s challenge set by the IG Crafty Crew. Of course, as with many of the ideas I have, I didn’t actually have the stamps or digis to make it. So, to the drawing board — literally.

I roughly sketched a pumpkin and, once I had a shape I was happy with, photographed it and created a clean digital version on the computer. I didn’t feel like drawing the leaves, so I adapted some from a digi stamp set instead.

I could have just printed the finished design onto card and coloured it, but I wanted to try out my new glass dipping pen. I used my light pad to lightly trace a pencil version of the image onto Neenah card and then went over that using a Copic-safe ink.

The Copic colouring was deceptively simple; there is very little blending involved apart from on the leaves and even that doesn’t require a smooth finish. The pumpkin is coloured with lots of fine flicking lines, with just a final light coat of colour to even it out a bit. The background is just dots. Lots and lots of dots. Oh so many dots…

I did colour the face features with Copics, but I didn’t like the result. After staring at my supplies for a while, I eventually settled on using a gold paint pen to flat colour them, which looks much better.

I was quite restrained with the glossy accents and only used it to cover the lettering. I kept the card design simple, just layering some starry patterned paper between the image and the card base. A scattering of gold sequins finished it all off.

Challenges:

• IG Crafty Crew Easy Challenge – pumpkin

Supplies:

• digital stamps:
  Isabel Cristina – fall mouse
• Copic markers:
  pumpkin – Y18, YR15, YR18, E19
  stalk – YG95, YG97, YG99
  pumpkin shadows – W3, W5, W7
  leaves – YR23, YR07, Y17, E07, E35
  ground – E42, E43, E44, E47, E49
  sky – BV20, BV23, BV25, BV08, BV29
  BOO!!! – Y08, Y19
• ink:
  J Herbin – black china ink
• pens:
  Uni Posca PC1MR metallic gold (eyes, mouth)
  glass dip pen
• embellishments:
  Pretty Pink Posh – 4mm sequins – metallic gold
  Ranger glossy accents
• paper and card:
  Neenah solar white 216gsm
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable – black
  Hunkydory – paper pad – monochrome background