THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

I wanted to pop over to Peace on Earth Christmas Challenge #84 before it closes for the month. It's full of Christmas gnomes - while I'm not a huge gnome fan, I do have this cute paper I bought last year (after promising myself not to buy any more Christmas paper until I made a serious dent in what I already have) and it has gnomes, pick-ups, and trees!

I started with a square aqua card base and die cut a square from the red side of the paper and matted it with the aqua side and white. I white heat-embossed the sentiment (Impression Obsession #CL971 "Holiday Words") and added some heat-embossed snow flurries from Tim Holtz. I die cut a small rectangle from the aqua side of the paper, capturing one of the trucks with a tree on top and attached it to the red square. All of the layers were glued to the card base and I lined an aqua envelope with the red HO HO HO printed side of the paper. 

 

Peace On Earth Christmas : Peace on Earth Challenge #84

MARCH MID-MONTH REMINDER - TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

I thought we were finally entering spring, but here we are mid-March and we woke up yesterday to snow, and it's been rainy and cold since. 

I started this card with a medium gray rectangular panel onto which I heat-embossed green and black splatters before adding the sentiment on a die-cut circle of printed card stock (You may recognize that paper from my card at the first of the month). The sentiment and witch's hat are both from a Unity rubber stamp set ("Toil & Trouble"). The circles around the moon and bats are both Tim Holtz dies from various collections. I pieced a bright green hat band on the hat, matted the panel with green and black/gray card stocks and mounted all of the layers to a black card base.

I can't begin to tell you how much trouble I had trying to balance the colors on this photo! The green printed paper kept presenting itself as yellow - you'll have to just believe me when I say that it is decidedly green!

 

Here's another shot of all of this month's treat boxes:

  

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: March 2025 Mid Month Reminder

We're still hoping to give these dies away! If we can get 25 or more entries we can have a drawing to give these away and move onto some new products. There are still two weeks left for your projects. 

 

LUCKY

I was Inspired this morning to combine several of my favorite challenges - AAA Cards Challenge #285, Color Hues #105, and Simply Clean & Simple: March. I love it near holidays or seasonal changes when more than one of the challenges incorporates similar themes or colors!

You can see what is on my mind today - we have a beautiful clear day (for a change), and when I'm finished with this I am on my way out to work in the garden. I had this idea to frame a bunch of clover and found a scrap of white paper onto which I had previously stamped and colored this image. When I actually could not find the rubber stamp it came from, I decided to just use it, fussy cut it with scissors and Xacto knife, and slipped it partially behind a die cut frame opening.

I started with a bright shamrock green card base. I stamped the sentiment from Impression Obsession #CL627 "Lucky" with Memento "Cottage Ivy" ink onto a white die cut rectangular piece of cardstock. I attached this to the face of the card base, added a pale green background behind the ornate die cut frame. I mounted the frame, background, and clover/shamrocks to the card, and finished with a custom white envelope lined with pale green printed shamrock paper. 

AAA Cards: AAA Card Challenge #285: Anything goes

Color Hues: Color Hues #105 - Green and White

Simply Clean & Simple: March 2025 - Shades of Green

Added April 3, 2025:

 

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: Today is my "little" brother's 77th birthday! I'm throwing in a photo of the birthday card I sent off to him earlier in the week.

Fortunately my brother is a good sport, so he puts up with the rude cards I send him on his birthday! This card makes use of a brand new rubber stamp set from Unity Stamp Company ("Purr-ty Cats"). And, given that his last name is Poe, I frequently use this Whimsy Stamps sentiment on the outside of his envelopes: 

 

FOUND CRAFTING OBJECTS

Today I went digging in some drawers that I haven't investigated for quite some time, in search of an idea for the latest Inkspirational Challenge #336 - CAS with an optional twist to use stickers, rub ons, or ephemera. 

In one drawer full of envelopes, I found this small ivory envelope lined with dark gray printed paper. I think I might have made this envelope quite a few years ago and then couldn't figure out how to use it. In another drawer I found these dimensional butterfly stickers. I stamped the sentiment from Hero Arts "Hero Greetings" #CM351, using a dark gray ink on the envelope. I also found an iridescent pocket card I thought to use for the card base and I cut off the pocket to make a standard card. Surprisingly I found a matching piece of the same iridescent stock that I die cut with a stitched rectangular die. I glued the envelope to the face of the card and stuck on the butterflies.

Looking at this up closer, I think you might see that the stickers have a bit of iridescent aqua on the top layers of their wings. Finally, I lined an ivory envelope with a scrap of ivory and charcoal printed paper - that's it!

 Inkspirational: Inkspirational Challenge #336 - CAS (Optional Twist - Use Stickers, Rub Ons or Ephemera)

NO PEEKING

When I saw the new challenge at Peace on Earth Christmas March Challenge #83, I loved the green and ivory gifts in the lower left quadrant and knew I wanted to wrap some Christmas packages to place under the tree.

I still have quite a few sheets of this old BasicGrey "Jovial" printed paper that I promise myself ever year to use up, but somehow it doesn't happen. To give you an idea about how long I've had it in my stash, the lower edge of it is dated 2010! I think the best solution, as I did here with this card, is to also make a coordinating envelope. 

I used a black 5-1/2" square top-folded card base and glued on a 5" square of the printed paper. I cut a square of ivory heavy textured watercolor paper, using the deckled edge for the bottom of the top panel. I die cut one of Tim Holtz's trees from the same ivory stock and glued it to the face of the top panel after stamping the sentiment with PTI "Ripe Avocado" ink. I glued the top panel to the card face and added the packages that I had fussy cut from the printed paper, using some dimensional foam with the the top package layers for some dimension. For the final "wrap-up", I added some avocado twine to the top edge of the card, which also serves to hold a folded vellum page inside the card. 

  

Peace On Earth Christmas : March 2025 Peace On Earth Challenge #83

GO GREEN!

It's coming up on St. Patrick's Day, so it's time to get my green on! The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers is offering up the perfect opportunity with their Challenge #260 - "G is for Green". 

I started my card with a sentiment left over from my personal St. Patrick's Day cards a couple of years ago - #RWD-995 from Funny Bones by Riley & Company. I top-folded a white card base and attached a full panel of green plaid printed paper that I die-cut with a stitched rectangular die. I die cut a deckled rectangular panel from avocado card stock, stamped splats of spilled beer and party debris with VersaMark watermark ink, and overprinted the sentiment in black. I matted the green panel with a bit of white cardstock and attached both layers to the plaid card face. The beer glasses were die cut (Tim Holtz #664435 "Happy Hour") in vellum for transparency and filled with beer - oh, whoops! spilled one of the glasses!

I'm not suggesting that I'm a sloppy drunk, but I talk with my hands, and have knocked over many a beer or wine glass! 

Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers: Soss #260 - G is for Green

MARCH TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

SPOOKY!!

We're heading into March now, with all things green - the beginning of spring, St. Patrick's Day shamrocks, and our new inspiration board here at Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge!

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: March 2025 Anything Goes Halloween

This week's card is a CAS version of our inspiration board. I liked the house and green moon at the lower right hand corner and decided to use a very old creepy house stamp that I've never used, along with a brand new sentiment stamp set (LDRS Creative "Wicked"). I stamped the house twice with black ink - once on a gray scrap and again on a piece of printed green Halloween paper. I die cut a circle from the green image and pasted it over the image on the gray paper. Then I framed it with a black square, stamped the sentiment on a white stitched rectangle that I had die cut a slightly larger square from. I stacked all of the layers and attached them to a white card base. The final addition was one of my favorite Tim Holtz's ghosts - glued with a piece of dimensional foam.

I made a coordinating envelope and then, because our challenge is 'all things Halloween',  started having all kinds of fun with treat boxes - each of them will hold 3 Ghirardelli chocolate squares.

I've been playing around with an old idea that I worked with some years back - Halloween treat boxes for Ghirardelli chocolate squares. I originally made them for Valentine's Day, but I thought it might be fun to produce a bunch of them as I go through the Halloween year and make them coordinate with my card. By the time Halloween comes around, I could have quite a pile of them in lots of different colors. I couldn't remember exactly how to make them,  so I turned to YouTube and found the following tutorial:

                                          Ghirardelli Treat Box Tutorial                                                       

I think Diane and Darlene are probably getting anxious to give away these sets of Whimsy dies if we get 25 challenge entries, so let's not disappoint! Get out those green and black Halloween papers and get with it!