A dark Copic background; Darcie stamps and buttons

Whenever I use directions or closely follow an example given elsewhere, I try to credit the source. Life has been full of distractions lately and craft time has been more fractured than usual. I include blog reading and Pinterest viewing as part of my craft time. I thought I had pinned the directions for creating the dark background I am about to describe, but I did not. I'm sure this isn't an exclusive lesson or formula, but I do want to be clear that I didn't come up with this on my own and apologize for not being able to name my source.

This play time began with Copic markers, X-Press It paper, and a few Signo pens. I began with B99, Agate. I used the chisel tip of the marker to color a base coat. I didn't think to take photos of each step but I don't think they are truly necessary. After that base color, I used the brush tip of B69, Stratospheric Blue, over everything. The goal wasn't a streak free blend, this was an experiment and may have resulted in a night sky if I liked the result.

Perhaps not many people have any of the fluorescent Copic colors, but I have a few of them, including FB2 (Fluorescent Dull Blue) and FBG2 (Fluorescent Dull Blue-Green). I would not have thought to use them in this application, but those markers were good for lightening areas of the dark background. I believe these qualify as Super Eaters. This first photo has FB2 in random cloud-like circles.

In this photo, I've added clouds of FBG2 and some dark patches of 100 (Black), and then gone over everything with B69 again.

I wanted to reclaim some of the lighter areas so I used FB2 again.

Now for some colorless blender. The plan was to pour a bit into my palm and flick drops onto the paper. Reality happens. In common vernacular, that would be shit happens and the small mister bottle of colorless blender that I was using spilled. Not once mind you, but twice. That takes a special kind of talent to repeat the same mistake twice in ten seconds.

This is what the back side of the paper looks like. The large blobs are the colorless blender spills. The top one is the long arm of the law (or perhaps a hungry dinosaur?) coming in to pat (or eat?) the profile of Jimmy Durante. Please tell me someone else is old enough to know who he was. if you are too young to know who he was, think of Gru from the Minion movies.

In this photo I've added some dots of white Signo pen and some of silver. I also dripped and misted additional colorless blender. Now I needed to decide what to do with this.

I attended a scrapbooking expo months ago and purchased stamps and tin pins from a company that was new to me. The company is Darcie Heater Designs. Here is a link to stamp that I used Frankly Stamps, and here is a link to the coordinating tin pins Frankly Embellishments.  I decided to cut this down and use it as background on a card with Franky and his bride stamped, colored, fussy cut and glued in place. 

Before adhering anything, I thought I would try embossing some spider webs with a stamp from Inka Dinka Doo and some glow in the dark embossing powder. That didn't work. Either my Versa Mark isn't moist enough or the grainy embossing powder was too heavy for the fine lines of the webs. I heat set the Versa Mark, then re-stamped the webs with silver ink. 

Here is the background, mounted on sparkly silver paper and then onto a black card base. The words Happy Halloween are from a Stampin' Up's Teeny Tiny Wishes.

I colored the faces in to resemble the tin pins. The ghost (an old rubber on wood stamp) was stamped on vellum and colored first with Copic markers and then Prisma Color pencils. Accidents continued....I put glue on the "wrong" side of the ghost. Technically there isn't a right or wrong side I guess, but the pencil strokes looked better on the underside. I wiped off the glue and added some to the back side.

Here is the finished card front with the tin pins in place, held with glue dots. 

I don't know if I will use the card as is or if I will repeat this with a little more care before Halloween. 

There are two more sets of each face in the tin pin package. I think the bodies stamped and  cut out in a sturdier shape (not fussy cut) with magnets on the back might be cute on the refrigerator this Halloween, something sturdy enough for the grandkids to play with as long as I make things secure enough for Princess of Sparkle who will be almost 18 months old at Halloween.