10th BIRTHDAY

I've been so busy lately with gardening and getting our new front yard finished up and have spent very little time in my craft room playing with my cards. This morning I wanted to make a card and noticed that the latest challenge at AAA Cards is "Anything Birthday goes" with the Optional Twist: "10th Birthday". My youngest granddaughter turns 10 in a couple of months, so I thought to make her birthday card early.

I loved that the image on the challenge is a monkey - Kaitlyn's father has called her Monkey since the day she was born! These two monkeys playing jumping jack are from a very old stamp set that is probably called "Spring is Sprung" since that's one of the sentiments on the set. It also had a cute little frog that I decided to use as well, since frogs are her favorite animals.

It's been a while since I attempted a shaker card, so since I had made shaker cards for both of her twin siblings for their 10th birthdays (almost 5 years ago), I thought to do the same thing with this card. Those cards can be viewed here.

The monkeys were stamped on white with brown ink and colored with Copic markers after masking them off and stenciling a pink heart as a background. I then die cut them with a postage stamp die and glued them to a pink die cut rectangle that is matted with a green rectangle. I used a layer of dimensional foam between the white card base and green rectangle for the shaker area. I'm not going to go into the engineering involved with the shaker opening - I had intended to insert an additional color behind the 0, but forgot until it was too late!

I tied a die cut heart onto the 0 with silk thread and a couple of beads. Here's a link to the challenge:

AAA Cards: AAA Card Challenge #265: Anything Birthday goes, we're 10!

 

INSPIRED BY PUMPKINS!

Mid-month May already, and it's that time again - Two Old Bats Anything Halloween Challenge! This time I'm inspired by all of the pumpkins stacked on each other in the top left quadrant of the mood board.

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: May 2024 Mid Month Reminder

YIKES! I just realized I had posted this before finishing my comments! It was pretty simple - sentiment and various patterned papers all from my scrap bin, tied off with white and black twine on a black square card base.

I have finally made myself a template for a 6" square envelope that can be cut from a 12x12 piece of cardstock!

I know everyone is really busy right now - here in Southern Oregon the weather has been fantastic for gardening. But we're hoping you'll eke out a bit of time to enter our challenge before June comes down on us. 

QUIET TIMES

I've been pretty quiet on my blog lately. Life around here has been busy with spring-time activities like gardening and cleaning and evenings with friends, but I was interested in participating over at Time Out Challenges, where Challenge #262 is a photo of a really cute handmade bag by Kim Higgins of Running Stitch Design.

The description of the challenge noted that it wasn't necessary to use dog images - but who could pass up that opportunity?  I started with a 5-1/2" square brown card base to which I attached polka dot and plaid patterned papers that I retrieved (no pun intended) from my stash. I computer-generated a sentiment and printed it in brown on blue cardstock and attached that across the card. I punched the end and inserted a brown eyelet and threaded through some narrow brown satin ribbon. The dogs are from an old Inkadinkado stamp set. I stamped them on white cardstock  with brown ink, colored them with Copic markers, fussy cut them, and glued them all to the face of the card. Very simple!

Here's a link to the challenge in case one of you might be interested in playing along:

TIME OUT Challenges: Challenge #262 - Photo Inspiration

 

On a personal note: I pretty much took the month of April off from all of my regular volunteer activities to start to get things moving on the next phase of our major front yard renovation. We started this whole process two summers ago, completely tearing out old shrubs and a very large lawn and starting over from scratch. The owner of a local nursery that specializes in native plants has been helping with design and a plant list. Last summer we had drip irrigation installed, dramatically decreased the lawn area, and got about 1/3 of the yard planted with Manzanita, Yarrow, and decorative grasses, and now it's time to finish things up. We're scheduled for delivery of a couple of boulders and all of the rest of the plantings the third week of May. In preparation I've been weeding, scraping and painting the fence around the covered patio, and getting the patio cleaned up for use through the summer. It's a lot of work, but my enthusiasm is carrying me through! 

MAY TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

I just don't know where the time flies off to (no doubt there are bats involved), but here we are again at the beginning of May and a fresh new Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge! We have a new mood board that you can use for inspiration, or submit any project relating to Halloween. Here's our inspiration board - pumpkins, skeletons, cats, and spider webs:

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: May 2024 Anything Goes Halloween

This card was obviously inspired by the lower left quadrant of our mood board. Using printed card stock from Park Lane "Haunted Hollow", I white heat embossed a deckled die cut rectangle using a Tim Holtz cobweb from one of his older Halloween sets. I matted this with white cardstock and adhered it to a black card base. I fussy cut a creepy spider with a skull on its body from one of the coordinating papers and attached it to the front of the card with some black dimensional foam. The sentiment was cut from an ancient Halloween paper and the edge deckled before slipping it under the spider's leg. I also made a custom envelope from the same two-sided printed paper 12x12 pad.

Here's a closer shot of the spider. 

We're inviting you to enter our challenge and become a potential winner of this great Tutti die:

If we have 25 or more entries there will be a drawing and you could win! Hoping to see your Halloween Anything entries!