September CTMH Stamp of the Month Blog Hop: THRILLER!

The September stamp of the month, Thriller, is totally awesome in a not-so-scary Halloween way! Skulls are all the rage now (as I'm sure you know), and this set is so fun without being too cutesy or scary. Check out the thrilling projects a group of Close To My Heart consultants have made by joining me on this month's stamp of the month blog hop. If you're already hopping along, you should be coming from my friend Shirley's blog. You can start here and hop along by clicking on the link to go to Jamia's blog.

My card layout was inspired by the Wishes how-to guide sketch, "On the Ball." The original recipe is for a 5"x7" card, but I modified it to fit a standard-size (4.25"x5.5") side-fold card instead.

To create the focal image, I stamped the skull in black onto the White Daisy circle, then quickly sprinkled black embossing powder onto the image. After removing the excess powder, I heat set the image to give it a bit of gloss, shine, and dimension. If you try to emboss without embossing ink (like I did here) be sure to begin heat-setting your powders FROM THE BACK. If you point your heat tool at the front, you will probably blow off the powder before it can melt. If you point your tool at the back (but look at the front), you will melt the powder and get that smooth, glossy shine. Just hold your heat tool down low, pointing up, and your stamped image above it.

You can probably see both black flourishes that I stamped onto the card front. It looked a little plain, so I added the first (lower) flourish by stamping with black ink. When I got up the next morning, you could hardly see the black-on-black stamping! I was disappointed, but necessity is the mother of invention, right? I decided to stamp the flourish again and emboss it to make a "shadow" effect.

Don't you love those new Sunset Mini-Medleys? The button in the middle of my cluster and the two small "button" brads both came from this adorable collection of accents. You will love all matching the embellies you get for only $4.95!

No card would be complete without a decorated inside, and that is especially true with a dark card base like this black card. I cut a rectangle of White Daisy card stock about 1/4" smaller than my card base, and then I used some of my scraps for the decorative stripe and the saying comes from the September stamp of the month, "Scary Halloween to You." (Unfortunately I don't have a photo right now because I forgot to take a picture before mailing these off for a swap. When I get mine back I'll update this post.)

Thanks for stopping by and reading this long post! Let me know if you have questions about anything. I do read the comments and respond to any questions you might have. Now hop along to Jamia's blog for another thrilling project!