Silhouette Sketch Card Challenge 10.25.2012

I am not sure I've ever entered a contest with my craft stuff (does Girl Scout Camp circa mid-1990s count?) but when I saw the Silhouette Sketch Card Challenge I decided to give it a try.  I wanted to make a card to send to someone doing me a very special favor for my son, so by the time you read this the card will be off to a good home :)

The colors are not photographing well, especially the orange.  See close up below for a better idea!

The bats are tan and black.  The damask is dark green and black.  The polka dotted strip is orange and white.  I'd take better pics in natural light, except Frankenstorm Sandy has pretty much guaranteed no sunlight for today.

One thing I love about the Cameo is the Print & Cut feature.  I have never been happy to be limited by cartridges, and while I branched out with 3rd party programs on my Cricut, I still needed things.  With Print & Cut, all I need is 8.5x11" card stock.  You can get a pack of 100 sheets at Michael's for under $4 when you coupon it.  I DID have black card stock and some tan thread laying around from previous crafts, but everything else is all Print and Cut.

Card- black card stock, Michael's
Bat background- Silhouette Store
Tag's Background- Silhouette Store
Green Background (back strip)- Silhouette Store
Orange Background (front strip)- Silhouette Store
Tiny Spiders (ungrouped & multiplied)- Silhouette Store
Skull Shape (ungrouped)- Silhouette Store
Tag Shape- Silhouette Store (I couldn't find this one; I think it was in the freebie start-up download pack)
Tan Thread- Michael's

See?  I only needed to have 3 items on hand (black card stock, white printable card stock, and thread) and I made this adorable embellished card!  I decided to go with a Halloween card because I love this holiday (a massive decorating post is coming up on Halloween itself, but you can look back for the month's posts and see for yourself!) and it seems like every other crafter on the planet has jumped ahead to Christmas, along with every store I go to, and even some Sirius radio stations!  Slow down people, we still have allll of November to decorate for!

On to the card itself!

1 page!

I eliminated the word bubble because I just thought it made the card too busy.  I tried "Happy Halloween," "BOO!" and "SPooKy!" in a creepy Halloween-y font but in the end I think it was just over the top.

The 3 spiders scared me- I was afraid their legs would rip- they're not perfect, but you can't really tell.

I did cut the orange strip so it would have a banner-like edge as the sketch did.  For the Print & Cut I just drew 2 rectangles with the rectangle tool and filled them in.  What really helped also was using "Bring to Front" "Send to Back" etc. to help me line everything up digitally before I separated it again and printed it out.

I love Print & Cut because I did not have to do any special shopping to make this.  I just got inspired by the challenge, opened up Studio, and browsed the store til I had what I needed.  Most of what I used I happen to already have!

Thanks for looking!