Saturday 15 October 2011

Guest Post: Halloween Card Tutorial

With Halloween fast approaching, I'm really pleased to be able to share this cute Halloween Greetings Card project, designed by Sara Hobbs. Take it away, Sara!


My name is Sara Hobbs and I'm a 13 year old living in England. I love to bake, sew and paint furniture, and I have an Etsy shop selling the things I have made. I also love to swim, play with my cats and draw.

Today, I am going to show you how to make a Halloween greetings card, which can later be turned into an E-card to send to all of your family and friends!

To make the greetings card, you will need:


* A piece of A4 paper (preferably from a sketchbook)
* Orange, Yellow and White (optional) watercolour pencils
* HB pencil
* Pencil sharpener
* Eraser
* Small paintbrush suitable for watercolours
* Pot of water
* Black fine liner pen

1. Using a sharp HB pencil, draw a rough outline of 3 triangles with rounded corners (see picture below as a guide). These will be your candy corn. Then roughly divide each candy corn into thirds.


2. Take your eraser and lightly rub it over the three candy corns, so that you can still just see the pencil markings. Then take your yellow watercolour pencil, and outline the bottom third of the first candy corn.


3. Colour in the section that you just outlined. Don't worry about how neat it is, you won't be able to tell when it's done.


4. Take your orange watercolour pencil and outline the middle section of the first candy corn, then colour in that section. Then outline and fill in the top section in white (this is optional as you're using white paper).

5. Colour in the second candy corn in the same way, with the same colours.


6. Repeat these steps for the final candy corn, except colour the bottom third white, the middle third orange, and the top third yellow.


7. Take your paintbrush, and dip it into the water. On a scrap piece of paper wipe off the excess water. Paint over all of the white sections, taking care not to go over the lines. Then repeat for all of the orange sections, and finally all of the yellow sections, washing your brush between colours.


8. Using the black fineliner pen, draw two lines, one from each of the first to candy corns, and below write 'Happy Halloween!!'. Draw another line near the top of the third candy corn and put a '?' next to it (as shown in the picture below).


9. Then outline the three candy corns, and their dividing lines in black fineliner. Finally, draw happy faces on the first two candy corns, and a sad face on the last one. Now you have the picture!


To turn your picture into an E-card:

1. Scan your image onto your computer

2. Using a program like Photoshop (if you have it) or Picnik (free) upload your image, and add a background, some text and decorations.

3. Save your image and email it to everyone you know to spread some Halloween happiness!!!

I made this using Photoshop:


And I made this one using Picnik:



I hope you like it!!!

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Check out Sara's Etsy shop, Paintbrush and Thread, or like Paintbrush and Thread on Facebook.

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7 comments:

Unknown said...

Sara, well done - a really good tute! xx

Sara said...

Aww thank you, it was an honour to post here!!!

MARIA JOSE GONZALEZ said...

It is a very nice card.
Thanks, Mª José (majogonga)

Lynn said...

Excellent tutorial. Love the card.

Alex - The Interior DIYer said...

This is so cute Sara! I am a huge fan of candy-corn. Thank you for sharing :)

Bugs and Fishes said...

Thanks again for the tutorial, Sara!

I think this design would also be fab for Halloween party invites - you could draw the design in pencil and black pen first, scan+print or photocopy as many copies as you needed and then colour them all in ready to hand out to your friends :)

Rachel@oneprettything.com said...

What a super tute card and tutorial Sara! Thanks so much for sharing, I'll be linking.