It’s that time of year when I’m creating autumn cards for birthdays and anniversaries, and Christmas cards since I know I’ll need a LOT of them very soon! Today I have two cards–one of each–for two challenges. 

First off, a very interesting challenge on the CAS Mix-Up site. They’re looking for a botanical print (from a real leaf or plant) as well as some stamping and/or die cutting.

I found a few pretty leaves on a walk a day or so again, and it’s taken two days to get the print made and the card assembled. It’s not often I have very busy weeks with lots of commitments, but this is one of them. 

I colored two leaves with Distress Oxide inks (Crackling Campfire and Carved Pumpkin) and then pressed them into cardstock. I found that using my fingers to press down on the leaves worked the best. I’m very happy with the way they turned out. 

The gold embossed sentiment on vellum is from a tiny stamp set by Gossamer Blue. It harkens back to my scrapbooking days. I added some gold splatters and a narrow gold mat (thanks to the Gina K “Master Layouts 1 dies).

The next card is for the Jingle Bells Pink Challenge. As you might guess this is a Christmas challenge, and if I’ve ever entered it, it’s been at least a year. 

It’s been a long time since I pulled out my Polychromos colored pencils, but this turned out to be a pretty meditative task. 

This is a mini slimline card. The poinsettias are from Colorado Crafts “Slimline Poinsettia” set and the sentiment is from Gina K’s “Holiday Tapestry” set. 

I decided on no embellishments for this one. It’s not often I end up with a one-layer card! 

There are two celebratory challenges running right now, and I pulled out a die I’ve never used to create a couple of birthday cards for them. AAA Card Challenges is celebrating their 200th challenge (Congrats! That’s a lot of challenges!), and Seize the Birthday is asking for cakes! I was happy to oblige.

I wanted to use pink with chocolate cake for one of my cards but also die cut some portions of the cakes in metallic and shimmer papers, being unsure of what I’d want in the way of decorations. In the end I had enough pieces to create two cards–one definitely feminine and another that could work for both men and women. 

I started with a pre-embossed piece I found in my collection of ready-to-use pieces and die cut it with one of the tags in Gina K’s “Tag Trio.” It turned out to be a perfect size for the cake, but I ended up deciding it required a 5X7 format which I don’t typically make. 

You can see the white embossed pattern on the tag. I have no idea what I used to create that piece, but I’d like to locate it. The fun cake is My Favorite Things “Birthday Cake” die, and although I’ve never used it before, it must already be retired as I couldn’t find it on the MFT site. 

For the second cake, I chose one of The Greetery’s “Crimped Frames.” I love the gold and silver with the chocolate cake.

The only change for the second card was to emboss the sentiment from Papertrey Ink’s “Banner Sentiments” in gold.

On both cards, I inlaid the circles on one layer of the cake. On the pink card, I used the same pink shimmer paper as the other “frosting” layers. On this card, I had some white shimmer circles and liked those better than either of the glittery decorations.

It’s always a good idea to have a few birthday cards in my stash. And I’m quite sure I’ll find just the right recipients for these. I’m also sending these cards to the October NBUS Challenge. I’m so relieved to have finally gotten around to using this fun die. It certainly won’t be the last time!

Along with Halloween cards, I finished a few Christmas cards last weekend as well. There’s now a small stash, but it certainly needs to grow by leaps and bounds by the end of next month! This card was made with two challenges in mind. One of my favorite challenges (which I’ve neglected recently) is The Flower Challenge. They are celebrating their 5th birthday, and I wanted to be sure to celebrate with them. The challenge calls for Using a Shape. The second challenge is a Christmas challenge. I ought to participate in these all year long, but I seem to wait until the time is drawing near. The CAS Christmas Challenge calls for Red & Gray.

It’s a color combination I like, so I set out to create a Christmas card with a flower, on a shape, using red and gray. I’m pretty happy with the outcome:

The poinsettia is one of my favorites, Altenew’s “Modern Poinsettia.” I watercolored it with The Stamp Market watercolors. I struggle with those sometimes, but I slowed down and finished this over two days, letting the previous coats dry completely. After finishing it, I splattered it with white ink.

It’s hard to tell in the photo, but the “Braided Circle” die from Pinkfresh Studio was cut from light gray cardstock which looks more cream in the photo than it does IRL. 

The circle and poinsettia were layered onto a dark gray card base. I used a few small pieces of dimensional tape behind the leaves of the poinsettia. According to Google, poinsettias do not have petals, just leaves which are different colors given the amount of light they’ve had. Technically, they’re called bracts. The flowers are actually the small centers of the poinsettia which I colored in a yellow green. They are one of two favorite holiday flowers, the other being cyclamens which are available all year, but were always a Christmas gift from my father when he was alive.

The sentiment, embossed in silver, is from a Colorado Craft set I ordered at the end of last year and have never used, “Slimline Poinsettias.” I’ve yet to stamp or color the beautiful flowers in that set, but I used all three of the accompanying sentiments this weekend while I was crafting Christmas cards. I think you’ll see them on lots of cards. The fonts are really lovely, and they’re universal holiday greetings. The final touch was to add a few silver pearls from Trinity Stamps.

Saturday was World Cardmaking Day, and although there were no posts from me here or on Instagram, I was busy crafting on Saturday and Sunday. Many of the cards I finished may end up with blog reading friends, so I won’t post those until they’ve been received. Some others were Halloween cards, and I’m not sure who’s getting what. I do know who’s getting this Halloween card, and I’m pretty sure she isn’t reading my blog regularly. I’m entering it in two Halloween challenges today, though, so I’ll take my chances.

For once, I didn’t have anything other than the ink blending background in mind when I began. I used Wilted Violet, Twisted Citron, Carved Pumpkin and Spiced Marmalade for the ink blending, adding in some Black Soot around the edges.  Once that was done, I decided I wanted to add the Pretty Pink Posh “Spider Web” stencil to the mix, and added some more Distress Oxide inks over the top.

When that was finished, I started looking through my Halloween stamps and dies. I recently purchased a set from The Stamp Market, “Happy Halloween,” and used the witch’s hat, the spider, and the sentiment from that set.

The three ghosts are from a Poppy Stamps die set I purchased years ago. I popped the largest of the ghosts and the spider up with dimensional tape after drawing a line with a permanent marker for the spider to crawl down.

I love the glow of the ink blended background. I’m entering this in two challenges: Just Us Girls:  Halloween, and The Paper Players:  Spooky.