Phyllis Macaluso is the reigning queen of creative cards and fabulous calligraphy. She combines the two to add festivity to every season! This autumn, she’s done it again with spooktacular card and envelope design concepts. In this tutorial, she’ll show us how to create a card and envelope that’s been taken over by (illustrated) spiders. She also has a playful mummy card and envelope motif to share!
Before You Do Anything …
Download Phyllis’s Printable Halloween Bundle. It includes fun design ideas and spooky lettering exemplars to help you make the cards in this tutorial. You can also use her ideas and exemplars to come up with your own motifs!
Spider Motif Tutorial
1. Gather Your Supplies
To create these simple spider-themed paper goods, you will need:
- Sheet of dark cardstock
- Dark cardstock cut and folded into a 5″x7″ (127 mm x 178 mm) card
- Regular (white) printer paper
- Bleed Proof White ink
- White mechanical pencil
- A7 envelope (Phyllis used a black envelope)
- Basic tools (ruler, eraser, pencil, scissors)
2. Make a Web
Once you’ve got your supplies, trace a circle that’s approximately 3.5″ (89 mm) wide onto a piece of dark cardstock. Then, cut the circle out. Fold the circle in half, then fold it in half again in the opposite direction. Continue to fold the circle in half until it has eight panels.
Next, use your scissors to cut a straight edge at the end of each of the eight panels. Then, use your white pencil to start drawing subtle semi-circles as pictured below.
Continue to draft a web with your pencil until you have something that resembles one of the webs in Phyllis’s Printable Halloween Bundle. Then, trace over what you drew with metallic watercolor (Phyllis prefers The Creative Kinds watercolors, or you could use Finetec Pearl Colors). Put a dot of glue in the back center of your web, and glue the web to a card! You can decorate the card with additional webs and/or spiders and a fun Halloween greeting.
3. Decorate the Front of the Card
For the front of the spider card, try drawing two halves of a web with fun Halloween calligraphy in between. Phyllis has some phrase suggestions in her Printable Halloween Bundle!
Mummy Motif Tutorial
To make a mummy card, use your white pencil to draw a few jagged lines to signify torn cloth (step 1). Next, glue googly eyes to a patch of negative space (2). Finally, tear printer paper in a similar pattern to your jagged lines. Use a glue stick to secure the paper strips to the card (3).
You can use the instructions from page 5 of Phyllis’s Printable Halloween Bundle to learn how to draw a mummy like the one on the envelope below!
If you’re feeling ambitious, draw a close-up mummy like the one shown on Phyllis’s envelope here. Doodle spiderwebs around your mummy to festively fill up space!
Don’t Forget …
The back of your envelope can be Halloween-themed, too! Feel free to use one of the lettering styles that Phyllis provided in her printable bundle to make an envelope and/or an envelope liner.
I hope you enjoyed this fabulous tutorial, which is Phyllis’s third here on the TPK website. (Read her Matchbook Valentine’s Day Card Tutorial here and her Teapot-Themed Mother’s Day Card Tutorial here.) You can enjoy more of Phyllis’s work on Instagram (@fpmmac)! Many thanks go to Phyllis for taking the time to show us how to make some amazing Halloween paper goods. 🎃 For additional spooky goodness, you can check out other Halloween tutorials here on the TPK site. Happy autumn, and have a wonderful weekend!
Warmly,
