Don't Open, Dead Inside

Hey all!
Summer is dragging along at a slow, hot pace and all of a sudden you see that July is half over.
I don't know about you guys, but I am not a fan of the heat. Maybe it's cuz I don't live anywhere near a beach. Maybe it's cuz I'm a bit fluffier so I retain a lot of heat. Maybe it's because our winters are so brutal up here that it's a real culture shock to go super cold to super hot in only a few months.
It doesn't help that I prefer spring and fall and we get about a week of each of those seasons -and never all at once lol.
What have I been doing in all this heat? Keeping busy INSIDE my friends. Inside where the shade and AC and ice water and Coke live :D Making stuff at my desk and watching old episodes of Supernatural cuz that's just how I roll.
When I'm at a loss for inspiration and unsure really what to research on Pinterest I can always count on my loyal customers and friends to push me outside of my creative box.
One of this friends has a love and passion for all things Hallowe'en and spooky. I created a card for her last year that was a nice almost panoramic card that had a graveyard theme and colored in greyscale.
I really wish I kept a photo. I'll have to re-do that some time.
So this year she wanted another spooky type of card and I really wanted to try a zombie themed idea. I have the Beary Birthday Stamp set by My Favorite Things and I figured it would be really cool to try to zombie-fy them.
I had no idea how to do this.

 Obviously we can't color them soft beary colors, so I used green and yellow with a bit of a grey shading. I also used a Copic sketch pen and drew wounds, little stitches and 'bite' marks. I didn't want to take away the cuteness of the teddies and I am very unskilled at creating something grotesque, so I kept it simple and used deep reds on the wounds.
My Gorgeous Grunge stamp set from Stampin' Up! was perfect for creating a bloody, splattery background. Keeping with the apocalyptic color scheme I sponged crumb cake along the edges and colored the details (like the balloons and cake) with greys and browns.
The fun part was figuring out what to do with all my colored pieces. I knew I wanted to cut the bears into panels instead of die cutting the images out. I knew the entire pieces wouldn't fit properly on a card so I layered them on cardstock and thought it would be really neat to make the card a gatefold card. Once I came to that conclusion, the light came on that I HAD to pay homage to The Walking Dead. So I downloaded a free Walking Dead font and made the infamous "Don't Open, Dead Inside" sign. I used twine and 'hung' the sign with what I hoped look like a plank of wood. You know. A plank you would hastily hammer across to keep the zombies inside so you can escape? BWAHAHAHA.
Anyways, carrying on to the inside of the card, I wanted to keep the present peeking bear whole, so I knew he'd be peeking from the inside of the card. I colored the gift with greys and muted earth tones with my copics and created tears with the sketch pen. I found the birthday saying on Pinterest and thought it was the perfect fit for this not-so-cute-cute-birthday card.
The customer loved it :) It's something I never would have thought about doing if I wasn't pushed out of my comfort zone.
With Halloween coming in a few short months (I know I know) hopefully this inspired some of you for new types of Spooktacular cards of your own this year.
Thanks for stopping by.

~Brandie~