Have you ever wondered what makes people so excited about Halloween? Is it the costumes? The time of year?
One thing we've noticed is that it's a time when our papercrafting can take on a whole new level of expression. Usually, our artwork and sample cards tend to be a little more streamlined - customers and storeowners often refer to this as the "Seattle style". Not too much going on - a little glitter here, maybe some interesting shape punch. But in general, the composition tend to be more reserved. During Halloween, however, it seems appropriate to go a little over the top - and we decided to showcase the entire Halloween collection for 2010 inside of a printer's tray (7 Gypsies Black printer tray #12568).
We have sent these trays out to be on exhibit at select stores - you can see a list of who has one here. When I first saw the tray I thought immediately about how to fill it - and envisioned all of the different patterns of the Blackbird 6x6 paper collection decorating the many little spaces. A focused scheme of oranges and blacks (and of course some glitter) would make a great piece of art for the home - and would be a very satisfying project to do.
We have had lots of emails asking us to show the printers tray up close, so I've created some little diagrams and close ups to get you started. There are a million ways to do this, but here's some guidance.
First up, you'll need:
Alcohol Reinkers in yellow, orange, red and brown
Glossy Accents (a glaze product, comes in a bottle)
Black ink - I prefer Brilliance Graphite Black
Glitter
Adhesive and various pieces of black and orange papers
You'll also need the following Memory Box products, (you can get these products at the stores showing the trays or you can go to Impress for web order):
6x6 Blackbird Paper pack
Spider Jewel Stickers
Fright Night Design Adhesive
D1381 Swirly Tree Border
G1395 Halloween Collage
G1387 Spooky Collage
B1391 Happy Halloween
F1394 Distressed Crows
E1392 Old Fence
B1389 Crow
D1393 Bird In Flight
E1403 Night Cat
Our studio made just 2 dozen of these trays - each one was a little unique and different, depending on if we used a metallic black paper as a backing or a flat orange. We wanted each piece to be a little special - so we took some artistic license as we were putting them together. Of course we encourage you to use these ideas as a jumping off point - and make the project your own!
The first portion of the tray includes some stickers from the Fright Night Design Adhesive pack. These rub on, double sided stickers were sprinkled with glitter - just black glitter for the spider web and a combination of purple, gold and copper glitter on the flourish (apply one color to a portion of the sticker, dust off excess, then add a second color to another portion, dust off excess, etc.). The Bird in Flight is stamped in black and we added a canary yellow jewel in his beak. A black jewel spider sticker embellishes the web.
The Spooky Collage image was created with a glaze and alcohol ink technique - to see how you to do this technique, go to my post here. The Night Cat was shaded with black ink to create a cool shadow and then a line of stars from the Fright Night Design Adhesive pack was glittered - it looks like a little shower of stars.
The Distressed Crows stamp fills in another space with the alcohol glaze technique - make sure you put plenty of dark colored alcohol reinker around the edges for some drama! It's mainly some 6x6 paper decorating the other spaces - but we did include the Happy Halloween stamp in one portion - as well as a little line of jewel spiders crawling over the message.
Just the different patterns of paper next to each other make the spaces visually exciting - but including little charms, buttons or photos of Halloween past could be really fun!
We added more 6x6 papers here (there are 10 patterns in the pack) and used one of the crow images from the Design Adhesives pack (sprinkle with glitter). I stamped the Halloween collage on a piece of Eggshell paper and embellished with glitter glue to make the spiders really stand out!
For the last portion, we used three stamp images to complete the tray...
The Old Fence, stamped in black ink, is an easy addition to a 6x6 paper. Likewise, the Swirly Tree Border is colored in with orange and yellow Copic markers and glittered for some eye-catching sparkle. The B1389 Crow, shown here, has a special technique:
Stamp and emboss the image with white embossing powder on black paper. With a dauber, apply a small amount of yellow alcohol ink to the embossed image (wait until it is cool, and leave some white showing) and then apply some orange alcohol reinker to the wings.
So there it is - a Halloween project that lets you go a little over the top on a project (hey, you'll probably pass this printers tray down to the next generation in your family!). Enjoy - and when you complete your project, send me a picture!
Also, you might want to become a fan on Memory Box on Facebook for the latest ideas and updates - click here!
