NOVEMBER TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

Just look at these great ghost and pumpkin fall leaves included in our new November mood board! How can anyone resist playing with that idea?

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: November 2024 Anything Goes Halloween

I couldn't resist! I chose to die cut some PTI fall leaves from ghost-printed paper and coordinating dotted papers, also over-stamping the veins with PTI's coordinating stamp. I started this card with an existing printed Halloween 12x12 paper that I trimmed to a folded 5x7 card and white heat-embossed the sentiment from Unity Stamps #Uk-1400A "Toil and Trouble" (new to me, and expect more from this stamp set as the new Halloween year progresses). After stamping the sentiment, I fussy cut a couple of ghosts from the same ghost-printed stock and glued them to the windows.

The final step was to attach the leaves to the card face - the orange one is attached with dimensional foam. I had a purple A7 envelope in my stash that I lined with the orange ghost paper.

Since Halloween was just yesterday, I'm sure you all still have your Halloween supplies out (in my case they are spread throughout my craft room year-round), so it will be simple to produce yet another Halloween card. Remember that this is a year-round challenge, so we are now starting a new Halloween year, soon to be 2025!

FEATHER

We have a new challenge at Seize the Birthday starting today and the special topping is "Feather". I actually had to go in search of a new stamp/die set for this challenge, although I suppose I could have made it a lot easier on myself by designing something with a bird on it! And before I got this finished, one of my cats ate one of the feather stamps. (I know because I found a small portion of it under the dining room table.)

Except for the feather, all of the papers, dies, stamps, and gems came out of my stash. The new stamp/die set is from Crafter's Companion (Heavenly Boho Feathers")The card base was already folded and in my pink drawer - along with the printed paper. I die cut a stitched rectangular panel from the printed paper, mounted it to a white mat, and attached it to the face of the pink card. I die cut the fancy white frame from white card stock and mounted a second layer to the face of the frame and stamped it in PTI "Autumn Rose" with a sentiment from PTI's "Star Prints". I white heat embossed the feather image onto pink vellum and die cut it. I attached the embossed feather to an additional vellum layer and creased it a bit for some dimension. I attached the sentiment and feather to the printed panel and added 3 clear rhinestones. 

I hope you join us in this challenge! I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up for this topping!

Seize the Birthday: Seize the Birthday #294-Feather

On a personal note: My son and his family have just returned from a family vacation in Italy and Switzerland. While my son has had many great travel opportunities when growing up, the rest of the family has never been out of the country. Chris built the vacation around meeting up with his dad and step-mom in Switzerland - he and his wife were on a river cruise up the Rhine and got off in Basel, Switzerland. They all spent a couple of days together in Lucerne and then Chris and family flew home from Zurich. Chris wanted to introduce his family to the family in Alba, Italy where he spent some time during a high school exchange and then again between years at the university. They had a fabulous time and texted photos to us from all of their stops. This photo is from their 3 days in Zermatt - you'll notice that the Matterhorn is conspicuously photo-bombing the picture! 

GHOSTLY GREETINGS

I know I said I was finished with Halloween cards, but here I am with one more because of The Paper Players PP712 "Tag, you're it!" Leanne chose to make this a CAS challenge, and I've hardly ever been one to turn down a CAS challenge.

Starting with a black A2 card base, I glued on a panel of printed cobweb paper. I die cut a stitched rectangle over the cobwebs after white heat embossing the sentiment from LDRS Creative "Wicked". I die cut a PTI tag in black card stock and die cut a pumpkin face from near the center. I tied the tag with baker's twines and raffia and attached it to the face of the card with black dimensional foam.

The final step was to make a coordinating envelope out of the red-orange paper and line it with my last ever scrap of black and white cobweb paper.

This took ages, but was really quite easy to make - the time drain was trying to adjust the color of the photograph. I use my cellphone to photograph my cards and I've complained in the past about the difficulty with color saturation. This paper is red-orange, but photographed bright lipstick red and it took me quite a while to adjust the color to make it anywhere near the original paper color - it's still not quite orange enough, but I finally just gave up!

The Paper Players: PP712 - A Clean-and-Simple Challenge from LeAnne

AUTUMN LEAVES

There's been a wealth of potential autumn challenges of late and I sat down over the weekend to use up some of my old autumn printed papers and a pile of brown cardstock that has been languishing on my shelves for a couple of years. I made several cards with the same layout, but changed out various scraps to make different combinations. By the time I got around to photographing my work, a couple of the challenges had closed, but still open are Inkspirational Challenge #326 - Mood Board and The Paper Players Color Challenge #PP711 - Shades of Orange & Brown.

I used one of my favorite autumn sentiments from Impression Obsession (#WP684 "Leaf Set") and stamped it in PTI "Dark Chocolate" on various pieces of ivory and cream papers that I had die cut with a fancy framed die (don't know the manufacturer because I've had it for so long). Then I die cut several stitched rectangular panels of printed papers and matted them each and attached to the face of mostly brown card bases - well, one is on a base of PTI "Ocean Tides" card stock. The leaves were all die cut using Spellbinders "Autumn Wonder" #S6-220 and small scraps from my paper drawers. I pulled some silk thread through one of the leaves with a sequin and tied it off before attaching to the face of the card. This was such an easy card to duplicate, that I believe I'll make a bunch more over the next month.

In these photos I shot them in pairs based on the background papers. It was a task to make these photos, as the light is low today:

Inkspirational: Inkspirational Challenge #326 - Mood Board (inkspirationalchallenges.blogspot.com)

 The Paper Players: PP711 - A Colour Challenge from Joanne

OCTOBER MID-MONTH TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

And here we are - zeroing in on the final two weeks of October and Halloween 2024! If you have been following along with us on the challenges, you could have made 24 or more cards since last October! That's how many we at TOB have each made for your inspiration. 

This time around I decided to go with the creepy graveyard scene in the lower left quadrant, except that I couldn't find a suitable cauldron. I decided to clear away some old scraps from years ago and try my hand at a sort of 3D card.

This printed paper featured a fenced graveyard along the bottom of the paper. If you look closely you'll also see faded skeletons rising up from the graveyard as a background - very creepy! I love to fussy cut, so I got out my little scissors and started cutting. I double-layered the tombstones over the base piece and inserted some black cardstock zombie hands behind the first layer. The base rectangle I cut was too large to use on a 4-1/4" x 5-1/2" card, so I opted for an A7 size and had this awkward space on the width of the card. I filled it with a sentiment from an old Inkadinkado stamp set.

I custom-made a sort-of coordinating envelope from double-sided American Crafts "Happy Halloween" 12x12 stack. I can't imagine this card, with all of the layers, would make it through the mail, so I'll probably hand-deliver it.

And here's our mood board for ideas - or you can submit anything Halloween:

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: October 2024 Mid Month Reminder

                                            

AND, don't forget that we have two drawings for these great Halloween stickers and stamp sets when we reach 25 entrees - so as you submit more projects, your chances of winning one of them increases!

SEIZE THE BIRTHDAY!

I'm very pleased to announce that I was invited to be Surprise Party Guest over at Seize the Birthday Challenge for the months of October and November! This is my second guest appearance there this year, but this time I get to stick around for a while longer and I feel really honored.

So, I have on my party hat and I'm ready to go! Today's word is "Dots", and I decided to try out something that I do rarely - to create my own background card stock using repetitive images. I'm not sure why I do this so rarely, because it really is fun.

This card was created specifically for my daughter-in-law's niece - a lovely young woman who just happens to share a birthday with me! On white card stock, I stamped one of the images from Park Lane (#1967-8572) repeatedly with PTI "Fine Linen" and then added the dots with a single tiny dot stamp with PTI "Sweet Blush". Once the background panel was completed, I die cut it with a stitched rectangular die and added a stitched opening and glued this to a card base of pale pink. I stamped the sentiment from an old PTI stamp set "Friends to the End" with some slightly darker pink ink, die cut it, matted it with the same card stock, and glued it to the center of the opening. The second butterfly image is from the same stamp set by Park Lane, and I stamped her on the pink cardstock with the same ink as the sentiment and fussy cut her out. Before attaching her to the face of the card, I glued on a sequin and pulled silk thread through her body and the sequin, tying it off with a knot.

I created some more background paper on white with PTI dots, stamped in Sweet Blush, and cut it to fit inside a custom envelope.

I hope you'll have many occasions to join me during the next 2 months!

Seize the Birthday: Seize The Birthday #293-Dots

GRATEFUL

I've been mulling ideas for my Thanksgiving cards and kept going back to one I did last year and then never sent out. I just didn't get my act together, and anyway it would have been extra postage to send because of the square format, size, and extra layers and I didn't want to pay the extra. So this year I've been rethinking last year's version. I have a stack of old woodgrain kraft card stock from another year and I was thinking that I would use it this year and see what I could do to play around with texture, keeping the colors to a neutral minimum.

I started with a 5x7 top-folded card base and messed with that a while but realized that there was something about the square format that just worked better with these fabulous Spellbinders mushrooms. So I trimmed the card down to a 5x5 and it will now fit into kraft A7 envelopes that I already have on hand. I cut a smaller square and matted it with an ivory scrap. The PTI sentiment is white heat-embossed onto the front panel before adding the leaf swirl, which was over-stamped with VersaMark Watermark ink. Finally, the mushroom parts were die cut from the same woodgrain stock and off-white watercolor paper, assembled, and glued to the face.

I think I'll probably finish these off by binding a folded lightweight ivory paper leaf to the inside with a message. When I have them all finished, I'll put them into my gallery as the 2024 Thanksgiving card.

I thought to enter this in the current AAA Card Challenge #275 - "Anything CAS Goes/Autumn Colors". I think these are autumn colors.

 AAA Cards: AAA Card Challenge #275: Anything CAS Goes (Autumn)

H IS FOR HALLOWEEN

Okay, so I lied - another Halloween card! But how could I not play along over at Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers where the challenge is "H is for Halloween"?

I started with a white panel on which I stamped a zombie background from Whimsy Stamps with black ink. Then I over-stamped some drippy blood from an old bloody stamp set from bygone years. I trimmed the panel by die cutting it with a deckle-edged rectangle and grunged up the edges a bit with some black ink and matted it with some red cardstock. I mounted both layers to the face of a black card base. I white heat embossed the sentiment from Tim Holtz on a black strip and glued it over the blood. The final step was to color one of the faces of the background paper, fussy cut it, and attached it over the black strip.  

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers: SoSS #255 H is for Halloween

Added November 6, 2024:

FINAL HALLOWEEN CARD

Well not really, because there are still cards that have yet to show up as a result of my tenure at Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge. But I now have enough cards for my mailing list. When I saw Lisa's color selections for Just Us Girls - Color Week #747 - Chartreuse/Light Blue/Gray I really wanted to try out these colors for a Halloween card.

Boy, was this hard to photograph! The brightness of the chartreuse seemed to unbalance the other colors on the card and the little ghost background didn't want to come across as blue.

Anyway, I started with a dark gray 5-1/2" square card base that I glued a square chartreuse panel to, then the ghost background from some ancient scraps in my stash - in fact, all of the papers here are ancient scraps. I die cut the buildings from one of my favorite Tim Holtz sets from dark gray card stock and backed them with printed chartreuse paper. I heat embossed the sentiment with Zing! "Leaf" on some coordinating paper and die cut the top with a stitched curve and attached the buildings and curved panel to the face of the card with a bit of dimensional foam. The Whimsy bat die was the final addition and it looks a bit strange because the shadow is so dark. I custom made an envelope and stamped a sentiment and spider in black from a new stamp set - LDRS Creative #3486 "Wicked".  

"Just Us Girls" Challenge: Just Us Girls ~ Color Week #747 (justusgirlschallenge.blogspot.com)

I think I can finally move on and start thinking about my Thanksgiving cards!

BEWARE!

So here's another Halloween card, and I'm nearly finished with the 30 cards I need. I love that this month's Color Hues Challenge is purple and orange - perfect Halloween colors!

I started this card with a scrap of orange paper that already had a white moon on it. I trimmed it to fit to a 5x6-1/2 black card base, specifically to use a spare purple envelope from my stash. I stamped a graveyard scene (Unity "Toil and Trouble") twice with black - once at the bottom of the orange panel and a second time on purple card stock. Then I die cut a Whimsy Stamps Dracula (#WSD406 - "Dracula Going Batty") from black cardstock and glued him over the moon. The sentiment was stamped in purple (LDRS Creative #3486 "Wicked") and the purple graveyard was fussy cut and layered over Dracula. Before fussy cutting the scene, I touched it up a bit with a purple Copic marker. The two-toned bat is from Tim Holtz. I lined the purple envelope with a scrap of light-weight orange paper. 

I really like the simplicity of this card - much better than the one I posted a couple of days ago.

Here's the link to the challenge:   

 Color Hues: Color Hues #96-Purple and Orange (colorhuesthecolorchallenge.blogspot.com)

And because I used some new stuff, I am also entering the October challenge over at NBUS. The bat, sentiment, and graveyard scene are all NBUS:

NBUS: NBUS Challenge #67 (mynbus.blogspot.com)

OCTOBER TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

WOW! October has arrived, and here we are almost full-circle on our Halloween calendar for 2024! These are great new images for inspiration with some fun colors to play with.

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: October 2024 Anything Goes Halloween

Having said that, I didn't use the colors - I picked up on the Halloween house and trick-or-treaters in the top-left quadrant of our inspiration board, using some more scraps from an old Halloween paper stack that is almost gone. I die-cut a circle from a gray cardstock stitched rectangle and inserted one of orange printed paper and then over-stamped the cobweb and white heat embossed it. I also added 3 Tim Holtz bats, stamped with Memento "Black Tuxedo" ink. The houses were fussy cut from the paper you see lining the envelope, and I layered them with a die cut Tim Holtz Halloween tree with some black foam dimensional tape. The final step was to place stepping stones and additional dots on the bottom of the card with a WG4 Copic marker. 

We had a HUGE showing of incredible cards last month and we're hoping to see the same this month! There will be two random number drawings for these great gifts when we reach 25 entrees:

CONTINUING HOLLOWEEN COUNTDOWN

 Back again with another Halloween Card! The image and sentiment are from a new rubber stamp set from Unity - "Spooky Spirits". The two old printed papers are from my stash - probably from the last century.

I attached the 'Boo!' paper to an orange scrap and the face of a square black base. Then I cut another square of printed cobweb paper and white heat embossed the sentiment. (Speaking of the sentiment, I'm a bit OCD about the improper use of apostrophes, but for the sake of time I left this one alone.) I stamped the martini glass on a scrap of white stock, cut it out, and colored it. I also replaced the two eyeballs on the original image with a couple of crazy pumpkin heads. This card didn't quite turn out like I wanted, but here it is and it will continue my countdown for Halloween cards. I like the background paper because of the 'Boos!' and searched my stash for a coordinating paper for the center square, but kind of missed on this one.

I'm sharing this card over at Love Those Pretty Papers, where the optional challenge is to use fall papers. I don't know how 'pretty' these papers are but they are fall.

Love Those Pretty Papers Challenge: ATG Using Pretty Patterned Paper September Challenge

HAPPY FALL!

AHHH, my favorite time of the year! I was wanting a break from Halloween cards (although I still need a couple more), so the Freshly Made Sketches current challenge provided a nice respite. 

There's not much to say about this card, as it's so CAS. The vining pumpkin image is a really old stamp set - probably one of my first fall stamps. I stamped it with PTI "Ripe Avocado", repeating the image across the full width of the white card stock panel. Then I added the sentiment from Impression Obsessions #WP684 "Leaf Set" and colored the pumpkins with my Copic markers. The final steps were to trim out the image by die cutting a stitched rectangle, attaching it to the face of a white card base, and creating a custom envelope.

Freshly Made Sketches: Freshly Made Sketches #655 - A Sketch by Jen B

On a personal note:

I've been planning for some time to share our new pollinator garden with you. I've made mention several time of it since it's been a 2-year project in the making. We completely tore out the front lawn that went almost down to the street and have replaced it with a smaller lawn area and lots of bee and butterfly-loving native grasses, shrubs, and perennials. 

Here is the day in October 2022 where everything had been removed and the area to become lawn was being leveled and prepared for irrigation:

And here is a shot from the same angle showing the newly renovated garden yesterday morning:

The lawn and plants near the entry were installed in July 2023 and the plants here on the slope were just put in this past May. We're really pleased with the outcome, as are the bees and butterflies - then there's the cats... So far the playful kittens have only destroyed one plant. By next year I'm hoping they can find other forms of entertainment!

Did I mention we have a community of now 15 feral cats that call our property home? They're all spayed and neutered and have been named, so I doubt they're going anywhere else anytime soon.