UMBRELLA

I've been thinking about joining my friends over at the Simply Clean & Simple April Challenge all month and finally got off my duff this morning to slip through at the very end of the month before the challenge ends.

The April optional theme is "Umbrella", and the first thing that came to mind was cocktail umbrellas - what does that say about how my brain works?!

I started today's card with a pale pink side-folded card base and I wanted to use some heat embossing in a champagne tone to sort of match the purpose of the card. I found a scrap of iridescent rose-gold vellum to use for the mat of the pink top layer. I die cut a pink stitched rectangle and then die cut a Tim Holtz "Happy Hour" glass for a reverse image. I lined up the pink and rose-gold layers and heat embossed the sentiment and the edges of the rose-gold layer and glued them all together. Before gluing them, I added a flourish in champagne embossing. The umbrella (also Tim Holtz "Happy Hour") was die cut from bronze scraps and glued to the top layer before adding some tiny bronzy pearls. The photo is a bit of a disappointment in that it completely misses the iridescence of the rose-gold vellum behind the reverse die cut glass. 

I like some things about this card, and some things not so much. I think it bears another attempt - maybe as a shaker card in brighter colors. I like how the sentiment just happens to fit perfectly with the shape of the glass - I think it may have come from one of the inexpensive stamp sets by Park Lane that Joanne carries. June is a big birthday month in our family, so I think I may take another run at this idea.

     

Simply Clean & Simple: Simply Clean & Simple April 2025 Challenge

APRIL MID-MONTH REMINDER - TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

Here's our mid-month reminder for the TOB Halloween April Challenge. If you've been planning to play along with us this month but just haven't had the time to get your project (card or anything Halloween) entered, you still have two weeks!

Inspired by the lower left quadrant of our mood board (see below), I used a witch and cauldron image  that I haven't used before - it's from Unity Stamps ("Toil and Trouble"). I've used other images and sentiments from the set, but not this one yet. I started with a rectangle of printed paper as a background and mounted a large orange and yellow moon over a white one that was already on the paper. I mounted it to an orange and yellow mat and glued all three layers to a black card base. Then I stamped the witch with black ink on a white scrap, and colored and fussy cut her. I stamped the sentiment and three Tim Holtz bats and attached the witch with dimensional foam.

I finished off with a custom envelope with cauldrons printed on one side. And here are this month's coordinating treat boxes:

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: Two Old Bats April 2025 Mid Month Reminder

And our cute Whimsy Stamps alien dies for the drawing if we get 25 or more entries in the challenge:

TIME OUT CHALLENGES

WHEEEEE! I get to be Guest Designer over at Time Out Challenges this next two weeks - I feel blessed! The new challenge is one of their "Pick 2" selections. You can see the choices on the badge here: 

TIME OUT Challenges: Challenge #286

This challenge is sponsored by Gina K. Designs and there's a wonderful prize for the winning card! Visit the challenge website to see what is being offered and to take a look at the Design Team's inspirational cards.

I decided on "water" and "spots", and challenged myself to create some water made from various scraps of papers printed with spots, in a CAS style.

I started with a stitched rectangle of navy/aqua spotted cardstock. Then I die cut the same rectangle in three other papers and die cut an upside-down scallop on each of these and glued all but the top layer together. On the top aqua layer I white heat embossed the sentiment and the school of fishes from Penny Black's "Birthday Fishes" stamp set. I attached the top layer with dimensional foam to give the final image a bit more interest. This glued rectangle then got attached to a slightly larger white die cut stitched rectangle, and this in turn was attached to a 5-1/2" square white card base. My final step was to add some spots to the fishes with a white gel pen where their eyes would be.

I found an aqua square envelope in my envelope stash and lined it with the navy/aqua printed paper.

I started second-guessing myself after I finished this card - I chose "spots", but used papers with "dots". I went to my dictionary to double-check if there is a difference between a spot and a dot. A dot is a round spot, so technically these are still spots. I suspect that "spots" might be a bit more randomly-placed than dots, but I'm sticking with what I did!

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: We were surrounded for a week by men painting the outside of our house, which was last done 30 years ago, I'm embarrassed to say! They finished up yesterday and I'm trying to get everything pulled back together. The garden is roaring back and I can hardly wait until the California poppies explode. By the looks of things, that should be soon. By this time next week the covered patio will be ready for use and I think we'll celebrate with friends and wine. I'll take some photos and show off the place!

APRIL TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

 Here's a brand new inspiration board for April, and it's full of orange, black, and yellow "witchy" images! And look at all of the moons!

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: April 2025 Anything Goes Halloween

My card for this beginning of the month challenge is a sort of composite of more than one of the quadrants presented by our challenge leaders.

I die cut circles from two coordinating  orange and yellow card stocks and inserted the yellower one into the orange one to make my moon - I'll see if I can use the additional orange circle on the next card! Then I cut a wide strip of orange and yellow diagonal striped card stock and glued both the moon panel and diagonal panel to a black square card base and added the strip of Graphic 45 "Fright Night" with black cats and sentiment. Then I added a Tim Holtz Halloween die-cut church and scraggly tree, positioning the church so that one of the black cats is peering at us through the church door. I die cut a picket fence from black cardstock from one of my village die sets and added two die-cut bats from Whimsey Stamps. The envelope is custom-made from coordinating card stock.

Here's my coordinating treat box built with black card stock, and I added die cut tags from the orange and yellow papers and a strip of Graphic 45 bats, die cut Tim Holtz cat, Whimsey die-cut bat, and black & white baker's twine. I'll make another box when we're at our mid-month reminder.

 

AND our Whimsy Stamps dies are back to haunt us until we get 25 or more entries in our challenge!