Enter if You Dare

SO, I am sooo ready for the fall. Cool weather, football, and Halloween!!! I am a big fan of Halloween so, naturally, I've purchased the Pumpkin Carving, October 31, AND the Happy Hauntings cartridge. Love all of them! Naturally though, they are inspiring me to make some Halloween themed cards. Today I have the 'enter if you dare' card. This is a 5x7 gate fold that was inspired by the second gate on the October 31 cartridge. This gate cuts in two different pieces so, I thought how perfect to cut the gate for a gate fold card. The card base is solid black card stock and then I mounted a printed sheet from the DCWV 'The Haunting Collection' stack. I cut the gate at 4 1/2" out of solid black cardstock. When you get ready to glue these gates though, you need to be quick about it. I just dab dots of glue all over using the small Zig glue pen. If you don't do it quickly, the first ones will dry by the time you get the last ones. :)

I found the "Enter if you Dare" phrase on the Happy Hauntings cartridge and decided to cut it at 1 3/4" with a dark purple base and a black top layer and then I glued only half of it and attached it to the card so that it isn't permanently stuck to the card, preventing the card from being opened. Then I decided on bats...hmmm. Lots of bats in these cartridges, in some different layers. I love the bat on the Happy Hauntings cart but, when I cut it, it was bigger than what I wanted for the card and the purple top layer was VERY thin so, I didn't think I could cut it smaller without it ripping. Instead, I chose the bat from frame3, layer 1 shift and the one from the cat key, layer function, both at 7 1/2". Since these bats were actually layers on other cuts, I needed to cut them in a larger size to be sure they were big enough to put on the card. I cut two of each, a top layer in black and a bottom layer in purple.

On the inside, I mounted a grey piece of Archiver's card stock, cut a bit smaller than 5x7 . I cut the graveyard from the Happy Hauntings cartridge as well. It was the graveyard shift cut and then the graveyard layer 1, both at 3 1/2". I used my Design Studio to see test the different sizes before cutting. I don't save it as a cut file but, I do like to check it out on DS before cutting so that I don't waste paper when I do the actual cut. Once I cut the top 'grass' layer, the tips of the grass were white from the core of the card stock so I inked them with a matching green color to hide the white core. Then I decided to ink the edges of the tombstones to give them more of an aged look so, I did that using the Cat's Eye alabaster ink pad. I had to trim a little from the sides of the graveyard cut so that it would fit in the card and then ink a little more. This led to me ink the edges of the gray mat in black, I think it adds to the spooky Halloween feel of the card. I added some more bats at the top to complete the inside.