Wicked & Cruel Halloween Card

Deep and dark Victoriana.

To my eternal disquiet, no country that I have even lived in (Australia and the United Kingdom) or been very close to (Germany) has even done anything with Halloween on the fun scale that America does. Oh yes, US of A, you know how to throw a national party!

Well, I am wondering how to get around this. I love the imagery around Halloween and I love the ideas and the whole thing - except for the over indulgence in sugar as I said in a previous post. Sugar is wicked in a way that a wicked witch can never be!

Where did all that blood come from - the stuff that Victorian penny dreadfuls are made of!

I have decided (my own opinion so please feel free to disagree) that if we do Halloween at all here in the UK, a Victorian baddie must feature. We don't have the witch culture so much but we do have the Victorian poisoner. The Dracula imagery and of course, that eternal favourite of mine, Steampunk which lends itself beautifully from time to time to darker images. 

All very well to point the finger of blame at the raven.

So I am hijacking these things to make a British Halloween card, the way that I interpret what we do. We don't have the house to house trick or treating so much but we do have living history. You can walk through places that look like a living Disneyland. Except they are not. The magic here is very real and the old shops really were old shops and they have been trading since way back when.

Halloween Britisher style - telling the story.

Halloween is real and it is really happening. And here, without further ado folks, is my take on a British Halloween card!

Ink with Tim Holtz Distress Inks and then blend, blend, blend.

I started with a piece of white card stock cut just a bit smaller than needed and inked it with distress inks in old paper, pumice stone and scattered straw with blotches of shabby shutters and crushed olive. Then I blended them together and added a spritz of water.

Next came the blood splatters which was a liberally watered down DecoArt Americana acrylic paint in a suitable red. Make this really watery and flick at random (being prepared for it to go everywhere).

A Christmas stencil was even pressed into active service for the stars in the background! Nothing is off limits!

I embossed the side with a flourish and then highlighted that with wild honey distress ink. Tying it all together is an application of black soot ink on the card edges. Make this a bit random.

Stamps next with three shady looking gentlemen, some words, text and an accusing finger. Ranger archival ink in this in jet black and boy do those foam stamps (for the word Never) work beautifully! They give such a dense saturation of colour!
I had some remnant rubs too for the 13 and oct.

Always be prepared to mix fonts. Here I could not fit the whole word 'nevermore' with the foam stamps so I swapped to a smaller courier font. You still get the idea and nothing is lost.

Time to bring out the dies next and I resurrected  an old favourite raven. It is a great Tim Holtz one (Raven and Scaredy Cat) and  splatter him too. He is just cut from black card stock.

The raven sings 'nevermore' eternally.

The card needed a sentiment of some sort and for inspiration, I used the classic Victorian shop sign idea of two names which could mean something else. In this case, my fictional undertakers Messrs Wicked & Cruel should have rethought the name of their business!

Wicked was cut from a Halloween words die straight onto brown card stock and cruel was actually the Gothic foam stamps again and this time embellished with Ranger Glossy Accents.

The paper on the word background was a little boring so it was a good opportunity to add some more stamps in the steampunk and Halloween style and a bit of silver glitter paper behind the '&' to draw the eye.

I matted the main picture with some grungy brown paper and then the whole lot onto some more grungy brown paper and added some machine stitching as a nod to my day job.

Brown (Tim Holtz would be pleased to know) is an essential feature of Victorian imagery. It is a great default and works well with black.

Finally, Victorian undertakers and the like were awfully fond of black crepe bows on their hats and bits and pieces so I found some faux silk ribbon (bought for making silk roses way back in the day and never used - see I told you not to throw anything away!). It was a nice shade of dark purple which was almost there but a few drops of alcohol ink made it a nice funereal black.

When I dyed the ribbon, I deliberately left some purple bits. The result is quite sinister.

I tied The ribbon in a bow on the side of the card, reminiscent of the crepe mourning bows on hats and carriages.

All of the elements together add up to a sinister story about back alley proprietors and shady goings on behind closed doors. if ever there is a suspicious body to dispose of....Messrs Wicked & Cruel can be relied upon to not ask questions.

The whole card is very Edgar Allen Poeish. His name appears in the top left corner and Nevermore is the utterance of the bird in Poe's narrative poem The Raven.

I love things that tell a story and are full of imagery so this sort of Halloween card is perfect for me!

Don't want to give it away now!

I hope that you like it too and will be inspired to make something dark and dreadful (in a good way!) for Halloween.
This project has used mainly Tim Holtz and Ranger products although I paid for them myself and no requests or payment have been made to me by either company. I use this stuff because I love it!
See you soon!
Debs
xx