She Whom Thou Namest Death

This beautifully creepy card showcases one of the new Geo Halloween dies from Tim Holtz and Sizzix. This set comes with the four dies seen below, but I wanted to focus on just the spectacular spider.

I'm not a spider fan by any stretch of the imagination. In fact I'm pretty frightened of them. Snakes, mice, frogs, other rodents are no problem, but eight legged arachnids send me screaming. So when I saw this one, I decided I wanted to make her beautiful.

This started by making the card background. I did this by cutting a bunch of them out of Distress Mixed Media Heavystock.

I adhered them to a solid piece of Heavystock with Distress Collage Medium, making sure they were all going in different directions and cutting the excesses off the edges of the paper and using them in other areas if there was enough of a cutoff piece.

Once the Collage Medium was dry, I scribbled several different colors of Distress Crayons on the background and then rubbed them around and into the crevices.

When you do this you need to use a clean blending tool (aka finger) for each color or you get mud.

I went around the outside edge with a bit of Black Soot Distress Crayon. You can also soften the colors by lightly wiping over them with a very lightly dampened cloth, leaving the color in the depressed areas and lightening the color on the raised spiders.

Before I made the gorgeous, shiny, black widow, I first needed something that would showcase it. So I cut an arched background from smooth black cardstock out of the Stacked Archway dies, and made an arched frame from the same sized Stacked Archway and the next smaller one to cut out the center.
On the background arch I colored it with Distress Oxide Spray in Antique Linen and Pumice Stone. Then I stamped the cobweb onto the top of it with Distress Archival Ink in Ground Espresso.
The frame I painted with Distress Rock Candy Crackle, let it dry and sprayed with with Distress Oxide Spray in Peeled Paint and Walnut Stain. Then I added a little more color on the edges with Distress Crayon in Black Soot.

Then I cut one Geo Halloween spider out of a piece of smooth black heavy cardstock and a second one out of a piece of metallic black paper from the Ideaology Jewels Metallic Kraftstock.

 I carefully reconstructed the metallic spider inside of the cardstock outline on a paper towel in the Splatbox.

It's easiest to line up the metallic spider over the cardstock outline and to pop the tiny pieces out exactly where they go.

Then to keep all the pieces in place, I sprayed it generously with Distress Resist Spray (I LOVE that stuff!) I gave it a couple of coats.

Then once completely dry I turned it over and sprayed the underside. That way there was adhesive on both the underside and on the top.

I adhered it to the arched frame by securing it to some pop dots in the center and then tacking the feet down to the background.

Another one of the new Chapter 3 releases is the Large Funky Floral set. I cut several of the spruce piece and one of the berry pieces see in the bottom right corner above, out of Distress Mixed Media Heavystock. Then I watercolored them with Distress Inks in Black Soot and Old Paper with a toch of Seedless Preserves on the berries.

I cut the berries and spruce pieces apart and arranged them like an old funeral spray.

I finished it off with a little machine stitching and a quote from the 2018 Ideaology Halloween Clippings.

This technique doesn't have to be a card. It could be on a small Etcetera tag, or in a frame or on a canvas. The card was just an easy way to present the techniques. In fact, I think it would be cool to make two decor pieces the same way but maybe have the spider on one and and the owl or bat on the other.

I hope this inspires you to give at least one of the techniques in this post a try.
And watch out for spiders!
Tami

I am an affiliate with Simon Says Stamp and Scrapbook.com so the links below send you to one of those stores depending on which logo you choose.  If you wish to purchase something from either store and use one of my links below, I get a small percentage of your order, at no additional cost to you. This helps me to defray the costs of this blog and the ideas and tutorials I post here, and your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you!