Whimsy Stamps ~ Halloween Countdown!

Hey crafty friends, I've had such fun creating the little boxes for our Whimsy Stamps 13 Nights of Halloween Countdown, so thought I'd share this make now. I can't believe we have so few nights left! It's been such fun and today there is another super fun treat for everyone! There's been a special discount code for shopping, a 50% Digital Discount and two free Digital Halloween Images! We've also had silly and fun jokes and riddles and several winners of the most gorgeous Halloween Happy Mail. It's been a great deal of fun so far! So I thought I'd share the base creation which kicked off this whole idea. I'm always trying to think of ways to bring some fun and magic to our Halloween events and came up with the idea to do an Advent style Halloween Countdown. Happily the boss loved the idea and embraced it! So we have such a fun line up of tricks and treats for this event and still several nights yet to go!

The first thing I did was choose how to display the Halloween Countdown boxes. There are lots of options, you could stack them like a pyramid, or place them in a circle on a lazy susan. I chose to add mine to a Haunted House cupcake stand. The one I have used is by Ginger Ray.

Once I'd chosen how to display the Halloween countdown boxes, I set the back of the cupcake stand up with Tim Holtz Halloween Tiny Lights in green to add an eerie glow. I'll share a night shot later, as it's quite fun in the low evening lights. Next it was time to diecut the actual boxes. I chose a pink and white theme for the boxes, which I thought would look striking against the black cupcake stand. The boxes were diecut using Whimsy Stamps Mini Treat Box Die from Hammermill 100lb cardstock for the White Boxes (I just used what I had on hand) and for the pink, I bought some Cardstock Warehouse Pink Lemonade 100lb cardstock from their Pop-Tone Collection to create the pink boxes. Both these papers diecut beautifully and made up into the boxes easily and held their shape really well.

We are doing a 13 Nights of Halloween Countdown at Whimsy Stamps, so I needed to have 13 box designs to share, but it would be easy enough to extend the number of boxes to make a 31 Nights of Halloween Countdown. The boxes are easy to put together and only require a little strip of adhesive on the left most tab you see above. The rest of the box fits together in a way that requires no adhesive at all. I scored the lines provided by the die a little deeper to get a really crisp fold. This is easy to do with a good score board and tool like the bone folder above. 

I identified the different days for each box, with a little numbered brad. These ones are from the Tim Holtz Idea-ology Range. I measured the centre point of each box-front and made a mark to easily find it again to make the hole using my needle nose tweezers to then add the brad through. Any sharp ended tool capable of making a hole in the cardstock will work for this phase. Once the hole was made, I added the brad and opened the arms of the brad on the inside to secure it in place and rotated it as needed to line it up.

I used a mix of little watercoloured scenes and diecut scenes to decorate the boxes. I used VersaFine Clair Nocturne Ink for all the black ink work. This stamps with a crisp solid finish perfect for these small scenes. It is a pigment ink, so perfect for watercolouring. I used 3 pink inks from Simon Says Stamp to add the pink gradients on some of the little stamped scenes. I used a white pigment ink to sponge white backgrounds on several of the pink boxes. I used a little sponge dauber from Simon Says Stamp for this. I also used some Distress Crayons shown in one of the pics above, to add the little coloured details to the watercoloured scenes. I scribbled them onto a palette (which was actually just a small stencil scraper, but did the trick) and painted the details with a waterbrush. Each little scene came together on a whim, no real plan, just crafty playtime. I love how these little scenes from the Bramble Wreath and Poe Boy Clear Stamps came out.

There are so many fun ways these little boxes could be decorated. Whimsy Stamps has some really gorgeous smaller stamps and scenes that are just perfect for this small canvas. The Halloween Bitty Borders Stamp Set featured on many of the boxes I decorated. There were 16 cupcake ledges on the stand, so I added a couple of ghost embellishments to fill those extra spots and I created a cute additional detail to complete this make - a tiny cauldron filled with pink bubbles.

I dyed the little Halloween Bubbles from the Idea-ology Range, with Ranger Ink Pink Sherbet and Brea Reese Shimmer Lilac Alcohol Inks. I used an old jar and a disposable wooden spoon for mixing. I added a drop of ink at a time, until I was happy with the colour and coverage. I dried the bubbles on plastic kitchen wrap, so I could move them around to get the ink covering all the sides evenly as they dried. The Brea Reese Alcohol Ink has a pretty shimmer, which added some interesting highlights to the bubbles. I used Diamond Glaze to glue the bubbles together but Glossy Accents would work too. I cut a little circle out of acetate that would be just wide enough to fit over the mouth of the cauldron and I glued the bubbles onto this. The clear acetate lets light through well. I found a little ball light in my stash and used that inside the tiny Idea-ology Halloween Cauldron, which cast its glow up through the acetate and through the bubbles. So fun and very easy to lift off, to turn the light on and off too.

All that remained at this stage, was to add some little treats or decorations inside the boxes. If I was doing this for my kids, I’d add in little sweets, some Halloween jokes and maybe some coupons promising a night at the movies etc. But I was decorating these for our Whimsy Stamps 13 Nights of Halloween Countdown. So these contain boxes contain treats better suited to crafters! But I still added in some fun little trinkets for added interest during the box openings, little witch hats, tiny ghosts, incy spiders, tickets, and even teeny handmade cards.

I used the new Terrific Tickets Die Frame to diecut the tickets for the boxes. I used the centre ticket so it had nice ticket ridges on each side. I printed the items for each day out on a PDF sheet with enough space between each to then diecut them with the tickets die. I trimmed them out and then diecut each one for that lovely ticket finish. The tiny cards, I made so there was a representation when the item for that day was one of our Handmade Happy Mail prizes. I made the tiny cards from offcuts during the box diecutting process. They measure a diminutive 1 1/4 inch high by 3/4 of an inch wide once folded on the long edge. I used a mix of brads and tiny Halloween embellishments to decorate these. The cats are little brads and the bats and ghosts are tiny flat back embellishments. I thought they were sweet to finish these designs. I kept the background quick and simple with a scribble of Scrapbook.com Glitter Brush Marker in Raspberry Pink. The perfect touch of colour to match this pink and white themed Halloween Advent Calendar. 

I wanted to add a little extra interest to the cupcake stand, so I pulled out the Cutie Batootie Stamp Set and coloured up one of the adorable flying bats with some Distress Crayon I had left on the plastic palette that I’d used for colouring the boxes. I wanted him to stand out against the black frame, so I made him an albino bat. I added the bat to a little strip of clear acetate and stuck him to the frame, so it looked like he was flying beside it. Then I coloured up the sweet little witch on her broom and her kitty cat from the Halloween Magic Clear Stamp Set. These two remind me of Kiki and Jiji, from Kiki’s Delivery Service. I adore this sweet image so much and feel they add a really sweet touch of charm to this piece. I added them to a narrow strip of acetate and adhered it to the right hand side of the haunted house frame.

This creation has been such a labour of love and I’ve really enjoyed putting it all together. I’ll be pulling it out again next year and will have to think of ways to reinvent the contents of the boxes, so as not to become predictable, but there’s always candy!

One final touch to complete this creation was to light up the frame for night time. I pulled out my green Tim Holtz Halloween Tiny Lights and wound them up the back of the stand in strategic spots, so it would add a cool eerie glow when switched on at night time. I chose the green lights rather than purple, as I wanted them to be a contrast to the pink boxes. Also, the cauldron glows pinky purple, so I didn’t want them the same colour or you’d miss that the cauldron had its own eerie glow! I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing how this creation came together and if you decide to try making your own Halloween Advent-style Countdown Calendar, please do come back and share it with us in the Whimsy Stamps Facebook Group, we’d love to see! I'll be getting a head start on my Halloween creations for next year, because it creeps up on me and I can never get all my ideas made up in time! So I'll be starting plenty early for next Halloween. we still have a few days left of our Halloween Countdown, so join us if you're able. We have had some really fun 'group' prizes, that everyone got to enjoy. So well worth the visit to Whimsy's Facebook Group to follow along with the rest of our Halloween Countdown adventures.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, I have used some lovely Cardstock Warehouse papers in my Advent Halloween Countdown creation. We have two fantastic prizes from Cardstock Warehouse to be won by random entrants and two from Whimsy Stamps, in our last event of October which will be an Instagram Hop, so come and join us for a chance to win! We're kicking off the hop on Halloween at 3pm EST, so do join us for a wonderful celebration of all the crafty fun we've had in the lead up to Halloween. We have four wonderful prizes up for grabs in this hop, so we hope you'll join us!

Cardstock Warehouse are offering a special discount code currently too. It finishes in early November, so if you've been enjoying seeing the makes we've been creating with their gorgeous papers, do go and check out their store and wonderful collections whilst the coupon code is valid. Details in the banner above. Thanks for popping in to check out my post, I hope you've enjoyed reading about my creative process. I will be back again soon with another crafty adventure. Until then, I wish you a magical and creative week! Hugs, Wends xoxo

NB: I share thumbnails to the elements I design with in order to make your search for them easier, in case you like something I've used. I do use affiliate links where possible, although some of my affiliate links are not currently working due to changes in the affiliate platforms. I share my links mainly to help you find elements you may also enjoy crafting with. I am proud to design for the companies I do and always feel happy to share where my inspiration and where my crafty stash comes from. I am occasionally gifted products to use, but I only design for companies whose products I absolutely love and buy for myself. My opinions are always my own.

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