Spooktacular Bats

I originally started this for another challenge but ended up putting it aside.  I thought I'd try to resurrect it, changing it to a halloween theme.  No, it didn't start out as a Halloween card, would you believe I was going for a Christmas card - I wanted a night sky for St Nick to ride across!  You can see why I put it aside!!!  For some reason my blending didn't go smoothly - didn't help that I couldn't find my blending tool.  I also used the wrong colour of Distress Ink (meant to use Chipped Sapphire).  I also realised after I had finished that I had forgotten to place a circular mask for the full moon.  Never mind I think the uneven blending adds to the eeriness and the purple looks very Halloween and I managed a faint moon by removing some of the purple ink using some water and a circle negative!

The city skyline was created using a Clearly Besotted die I have had for ages and I'm not sure it's ever been used.  I had a little trouble with it because it wasn't wide enough - normally it's not a problem to partially cut, move it along and cut further.  But not that day!  After the third attempt I decided to layer a few of the failed cuts from the previous three attempts behind a single skyline.  I quite liked the look of this as it gave a bit of dimension to the city skyline - like city blocks I suppose!  However the base line looked pretty uneven and needed to be hidden so I placed a frame over the whole scene. 

I knew I wanted to have bats.  When I lived in inner Sydney, there were dozens of magnificent old fig trees that the flying foxes just loved to feed on.  Flying foxes are huge with a wing span of up to a metre.  They used to make a lot of noise when they arrived and boy did they cast a shadow!  None of my bat dies were what I wanted - either too big or too cute - so I turned to my Cameo and the Silhouette Studio software.  Even with all the cut files available at this time of year, I couldn't find any bats in flight.  However, with the aid of of the transform option in the Silhouette Studio software,  I managed to get the angle I wanted and cut three in different sizes.  There were hundreds that used to come feed in the fig trees near where I lived but I was glad I decided to stick with only three bats for my card - the Cameo was misbehaving (of course) and I ended up having to finish the cuts with scissors.  

I wanted a small, subtle sentiment and didn't have anything appropriate so I created one using Word Art.  While doing this, I thought I'd try a Luxembourgish sentiment as well as an English one and decided on "Schéi Ge-BOO-ertsdag" (Schéi Gebuertsdag is Luxembourgish for Happy Birthday - literally beautiful birthday) and "You're Spooktacular".  Not sure how I'll use the card yet, so I haven't attached either of them.  I coated both sentiments with Glossy Accents and the bats as well not that you can tell from any of the photos unfortunately!

I'm entering the following challenges

Simon Says Layer it Up

The Fusion Card Challenge

{Pin}spirational Challenge #274

Little Red Wagon Challenge #572 - Things Beginning with "B"

613 Avenue Create - Anything Goes with the option of Winged Things

Also sharing at NBUS Challenge #19, 'cos I'm pretty proud of myself for using something that's been in the cupboard for years (also a little embarrassed)!

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed your visit.  And if you leave a comment  I can return the favour,

Kate