Halloween Card Rats and Bats Oh My!

Rats and Bats!  What could be better?  Halloween comes once a year and you can celebrate all the things that creep and crawl by the moon.  Little A2 cards are quick to make and fun to send.  Most of this card is scraps, and as with all A2 cards, you can get 2 per sheet.The small Crush, White Corn A2 Envelopes, come with as few as 50 in each pack.

Start with Shine, Iron Satin, 92 lb cover and cut the 8.5″x11″ sheet in two, scoring and folding it in the middle.  From here it is personal preference: this is focused around Martha Stewart’s Rat Border Punch.  Notice the FAV Shimmer, Orange Gold Fusion, 107lb. cover works in the punch.  Sometimes her punches do better with lighter weight paper, but this one takes the heavier paper just fine.  There is nothing special about the angle of the Orange Gold Fusion on the card face; just cut a few large holes, punch the rats along the border, and layer it onto some Curious Metallics, Violette, 80 lb text. Refer to the photo and make the changes that suit your taste.  Remember that except for the base card of Iron Satin, the paperweight is a matter of convenience; the base card does better in the heavier weight.

The design is about 2/3 of the way up the card so the Iron Satin is the dark of the night.  A little Shine, Gold, 107 lb cover, is the moonlight helping the rats find their way around the tombstones. The Gold lines are about .25″ wide. The bats are from Jolee’s Boutique, as most cute little things are: the little dots add a little more shine. The dots are simply leftover scraps made with a hand-held hole punch. ScorTape it all on the front and trim the sides. Too much fun and way too simple. It is a fast card and if you just keep punching the border rats, you can have all 50 cards in no time.

The Shine Gold and Iron Satin are made with combined natural minerals with organic pigments. It is not just luminous, it is recyclable, biodegradable, acid-free, lignin free, elemental chlorine free, manufactured without metals or foils and FSC certified and archival. The Gold shines gold and the Iron Satin shines with a white sheen as if moonlight is crossing a dark night. The Curious Metallics, Violette, is also luminous and iridescent from naturally occurring pigments that are produced using the elemental chlorine-free pulp. It is lightfast for a keepsake card.  The FAV Shimmer papers are always in a class of their own as they have crossed the orange with a gold sheen. They are beautiful metallic papers created with intelligent mixtures of pigments and iridescent particles. The Crush, White Corn envelope is also unique: the paper is made from the byproduct of corn residue, replacing up to 15% of virgin pulp along with 30% post-consumer recycled waste. It is one of the greenest papers you will find.  Oh! Rats! with some bats tossed in. Enjoy!

The products used in this card:

• Crush, White Corn A2 Envelope
• Shine, Iron Satin, 92 lb cover
• Shine, (Light) Gold, 107 lb cover
• FAV Shimmer, Orange Gold Fusion, 107 lb cover
• Curious Metallics, Violette, 80 lb text
• Jolee’s Boutique, Bats
• Martha Stewart’s Rat Border Punch