SEPTEMBER MID-MONTH TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

Here we are mid-point in September and crushing toward Halloween!

I liked the image of the 3 witch hats hanging on a door. I mounted 3 die-cut hats (from Spellbinders "Boos! Cocktails") with colorful hat bands and buckles on a scrap of old printed paper, edged it with a black marker, and matted the panel with an orange die-cut rectangle. I glued this to a black card base, tied it with a double baker's twine bow, and attached the double die-cut sentiment from LDRS Creative "Large Word Halloween".

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge

Because the sentiment on this card is so prominent, I'm also sharing it with my friends at the September challenge of Word Power:

 Word Power: Word Power September 2026 Challenge

WITH SYMPATHY

Unfortunately, I'm tasked this weekend with making two sympathy cards for friends who passed away within a week of each other. My decision was to make both of them nearly identical and at the same time - sympathy cards are not my favorite form of expression. I made one similar a couple of months back, so wanted to stick to a familiar formula.

I started by making two A2 card bases from watercolor paper. Using an old rubber stamp with a row of flowers, I white heat-embossed the image onto a scrap of black cardstock and die cut two small deckle-edge rectangles from the same piece. I die cut a couple of additional black card stock rectangles to add dimension to the images and then matted them each with plain rectangles from the watercolor paper scraps, with the plate marks showing. I stamped the sentiment (from Hero Arts #CM317 "Color Layering Sea & Sky") with black ink and glued the matted rectangles to the face of the card. 

WHAT'S UP?

The new September challenge at Simply CAS Challenge, that's what's up! This month the challenge presented by Darlene is "Jungle Animals". 

Simply Clean & Simple: September 2026 - Jungle Animals

This was quite a stretch for me this month, since I had to really comb through my supplies for a single image of a jungle animal. Well, this is it - a couple of monkeys from an ancient acrylic stamp set with a copyright of 2006. I bought it in 2011 for a 2nd birthday invitation for our grand-twins - that's how old this is! This will probably be the last time I use this stamp because it's starting to break down.

For the background I stamped a white card base with green inks with an upside-down vine from an old leaf stamp set of PTI's, to suggest a jungle environment. I stamped the monkeys on the face of the card and die cut a Stampin' Up tag from it and colored them with copics and blended a bit of light green under them. I tied on a piece of fine linen thread that I colored with inks and mounted it over 3 additional layers of tags for some dimension, after adding the tiny sentiment. 

If you haven't been there yet, head over to the SCAS blog to see the fun projects with jungle animals from the rest of the design team!

SEPTEMBER TWO OLD BATS HALLOWEEN CHALLENGE

We have a new inspiration board for September at Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge, and we're quickly sliding into Halloween!

Two Old Bats Halloween Challenge: September 2026 Anything Goes Halloween

HA! I just realized, looking over at my TOB Halloween Challenge badge, that today is my 4th anniversary with the challenge! It's been great fun! If I multiply 2 cards each month times 4 years, I come up with 96 cards!

I was attracted to the books and candles in the lower right quadrant and got out my Whimsy Stamps #CWSD427 "Poe Boy" stamp set to make a Poe arrangement. I think one of the reasons I love Halloween cards so much is that my maiden name was Poe! But you already knew that.

I started by stamping the row of books with black ink and adding a Tim Holtz cobweb in white. Then I colored the books with Copic markers. I trimmed the front panel with a deckle-edged rectangular die and edged it with black ink. This card stock is textured, so to get a clean inking I turned the paper over and inked the raven/scull/candle and open book on the backside of a scrap. I had an old paperback book that had Edgar Allen Poe in the index and paper-pieced that page to the book image and attached it to the front panel. It wasn't in great shape, so I decided to add some gray splats over the book and panel and over-stamped the sentiment (LDRS Creative "Wicked") in black. I paper pieced the skull to the raven image and fussy-cut after touching up with a bit of Copic markers. Finally, I attached the raven and skull to the face of the card with a bit of dimensional foam tape. 

You have 28 days to come up with your September Halloween project - check in over at the blog to see the wonderful inspirational cards made for you by all of my Design Team pals!