Spiderweb Save the Dates

I know, Halloween is two months away.  But in my mind, that's not very far at all.  I have every weekend planned out with all my projects.  I wanted to make sure everyone puts my party down on their calendars now, so that they will come to my party, not another party, not a band competition, not forget.  Usually I have a big party...well it starts out that way in my head.  The last two years, I think I handed out almost 100 invitations each year, and only about 15 people showed up.  This isn't really a problem, but I just have enough food to feed an army, which is a little excessive, and I just didn't want to stress out about doing that again.  I decided this year I was only going to invite the people who I knew would come.  Anyone else who wants to come, they are of course more than welcome, but I will avoid the whole I invite people who then feel guilty that they have no desire to show up to my house in costume.  

So after that ramble, the point was, since I'm keeping my party small, I wanted to make sure the people I really wanted to come were going to be able to come...so by handing out save the dates in August, people would actually save the date.  And I already had some scheduling conflicts come up for the last weekend, so October 20th is.

Not only is the 20th going to be my party, but we can celebrate my birthday too...which at midnight on the 20th will be my actual birthday...the 21st.  Since I love Halloween more than my birthday it is entirely fitting.

Well, here it is.  

So how did I make this?  Well it was actually pretty simple...and pretty much free...well I'm sure I paid for it all over the past few years, but it was pretty simple.

Supplies:

- 8x8" card stock in white and orange (I bought it on clearance at Walmart several years ago)

- Spiderweb paper punch (I got it at Michael's last year on clearance)

- Black Sharpie

- Glue sticks

- Little plastic spider rings (I just bought some this year on Amazon, $5.44 for 144 of them)

I really wanted to use my spiderweb paper punch.  I bought it last year right before Halloween, so I didn't get to use it at all.  So I started punching some strips and playing with them to get some ideas. A totally random tip, when the punch starts to get dull, or you just have trouble punching, punch some aluminum foil in the punch.  I saw this on TLC's show, Craft Wars, and it really did work.

After playing with a few arrangements, I liked the 4 strips of spiderwebs the best on the orange.  Since I was making 6 Save the Dates, I needed 24 strips of webs.  The 6 save the dates are for a total of 12 guests...so when you add me, that's 13...a perfect number for a Halloween party.

After cutting all the strips, I used the glue stick to attach the 4 rows of webs to each of the invitations.

I then googled for some Halloween fonts.  I actually liked the Zombie Holocaust one I used last year.  I didn't actually use the computer, but just free-handed as close to the font as possible with the Sharpie on each invitation.

After I had them all written out, I used a pair of scissors to poke some holes in the paper and then put the ring through the holes.  I only drew blood twice I think, so I don't recommend that method.

And here they all are.