It’s the last Wednesday–and nearly the last day–of October, so time for Woodblock Wednesday.

This month I chose one of my favorite autumn stamps of any kind, Annette Watkin’s Pumpkin Harvest. It’s one of the few woodblocks that I’ve always used with some kind of regularity. 

This time I brought out the Copic markers. It’s been awhile and it took a few tries before I got the hang of it again. Using X-Press Blending cardstock made a huge difference. 

Once I finished coloring, I die cut the stamped panel and a black framing panel with Hero Arts Infinity Rounded Rectangles which I added to a card base of Orange Zest by Papertrey Ink. The white embossed sentiment is from Pink and Mains Special Day set. 

Thanks, always, to Amy Tsuruta, for hosting this fun challenge every month. There are three other challenges with pumpkin themes this month so the card is off to: The Card Concept: Pumpkin Season, Colorful Options: Orange, and Double D: Use a Pumpkin.

The Paper Players have a fun challenge-Clean and Simple: Add a Tag! I’ve always enjoyed making cards with tags so I wanted to play along. Since I need quite a few November birthday cards, I chose an autumn theme for both of my cards. 

I organize my stamps by theme so I have all my autumn stamps and dies in one place. When I flipped through them, I found some beautiful leaves that I had already colored from The Greetery’s Curio Autumn Findings so I started there. I also have a pretty large collection of pre-made tags–all of which are years old. I picked out two different ones.

The first card uses a pretty standard dark kraft tag, and I arranged three of the leaves on it, adding a die cut sentiment in gold from The Greetery that I also found in the box. For the background, I chose a piece of Papertrey Ink’s Rustic White cardstock and ran it through the die cutting machine with Altenew’s Deck Plank 3-D Embossing Folder.  I stamped the sub-sentiment from Pink and Main’s Special Day stamps in Dark Chocolate ink on a tag cut from the same cardstock. Adding a double bow from Altenew’s metallic threads and a few gold pearls from Pinkfresh Studio finished off the card. 

Although I would classify the first card as Clean & Simple, the second card is a much more Clean & Simple design. I have no idea where I picked up this tag, but I just love it, and it was perfect for a autumn card. I used two dies from Spellbinders’ Essential Squares die and embossed them on another piece of Rustic White cardstock. I adhered the leaf with very thin dimensional tape, and stamped the sentiment from Gossamer Blue in Dark Chocolate ink. That stamp dates back to my scrapbooking days when I often purchased a monthly kit from a company. I don’t think anything besides this stamp set has survived the multiple purges I’ve done since I quit scrapbooking. I trimmed that panel down and added it to a card base of Dark Chocolate (Papertrey Ink.) The autumn light is already causing problems with photographs. I couldn’t get a sharp close-up photo for either card this afternoon. If you click on the photo, it will enlarge it a bit so the details are clearer.

These cards are off to The Paper Players as well as Inkspirational where the challenge is Seasonal.

It’s been taking longer than I expected to get my mojo back after our fabulous trip to Northern Italy, but I have managed to get all the Halloween cards completed that I need for my grandchildren. Not unexpectedly, there are a couple challenges looking for Halloween cards, two of which end today so I thought I’d best get busy and write the blog post. (Oops! Missed the deadline on one of these.)

The first card was created for my twelve year-old grandson. I thought he’d like the eerie feel to this stamp and stencil set by Taylored Expressions called Halloween Scene.

I used some purple Distress Oxide inks and the My Favorite Things Clouds stencil to create the sky, adding some silver metallic ink splatters before stamping the bats. The stamp set comes in two parts, the jack-0-lanterns on the bottom and the sky with the bats for the top half of the card.  There’s a stencil for adding the orange glow to the jack-o-lanterns. The sentiment is a die cut one from Papertrey Ink, Tricky Trio.

The card ended up being 6X6, so I got out some Halloween paper left over from my scrapbook days, my Envelope Punch Board, and created an envelope for it. Hannah’s card was created for an earlier Color Hues Challenge, and both of the cards went in a padded envelope to Wisconsin. Last year, I mailed both cards on the same day, but Caleb’s card didn’t arrive until two weeks after Halloween. Now the cards get mailed together in the same envelope.

I made three of the next card for the three girls here. They like getting the same card, and I know they’ll be happy with this interactive one. Skylar’s birthday card in September used some the The Greetery’s honeycomb balls, and all three girls loved it. 

The web in the background was stamped with Papertrey Ink’s Caught in the Web stamp. All the rest of the products are from The Greetery. I used a double layer of dimensional tape to made the spider pop off the card.

The sentiment is from the Hey, Honeycomb Sentiments and stamped on a Tear Strip Banner die. The directions for creating the spider’s body were from the Hey Honeycomb Halloween sentiment set. The final touch was to add a few rhinestone stars to the background. 

These cards are off to Just Us Girls who have a fabulous Halloween moodboard this week. 

Yesterday I had time to create a card for three different challenges. The first is Addicted to CAS: Just a Note, and as soon as I saw the challenge I knew what I wanted to do. Then I realized that the card fit both Freshly Made Sketches and the Word Power challenges. I’ve never played along with the Word Power Challenge, so I was happy to finally have a card where the focus was on the words. This makes my second post for the day, but the Freshly Made Sketches Challenge ends today, so I couldn’t wait. 

The card was created with just dies from The Greetery. I had already die cut and assembled some of the pens from the Pen Pal die, and I also had precut several panels from the Postal Frame die. All I needed to do was the stamp and die cut the fabulous sentiment from Scripted Sentiments.

I liked this one so much I found two more assembled pens and created masculine cards with those. 

What I really like about these cards are all the sub-sentiments that are included in Scripted Sentiments which means I can use these for birthdays, anniversaries, or encouragement cards–to name a few. I’m quite sure I’ll come back to this design in the future. 

I don’t tend to make sympathy cards ahead, so when I need one in a hurry I head to my envelope of card fronts or embossed panels. This time I found two pieces I had previously embossed with embossing folders, so made two cards. Now I have one in the stash.

Altenew’s Magnolia Ballerina 3D Embossing Folder is so beautiful, it needs no embellishment. I decide to off set the oval and trimmed off the excess.Then I added a simple die cut sentiment from The Greetery’s All Occasion Script Sentiments which I embossed in gold.

Gina K’s Tapestry Embossing Folder is also beautiful. I cut down the panel, and added a narrow gold border and then used dimensional tape to add it to a white card base. For this card I used an already gold foiled sentiment from Spellbinders, You Are Everything set. I did add three gold pearls from Pinkfresh Studio.

These will be two more entries into the Can You Handle the Pressure Challenge and I’m also adding them to the AAA Card Challenge that’s looking for CAS sympathy or get well cards. 

My blogging friend, Darnell, posted a card using Altenew’s Streamlined Sprig die for her I.D.E.A.S. project–D is for dies. When I saw it, I told her I’d try to get a card up that week, but it’s taken longer than I anticipated. But looking at the current challenges I saw two that might help me get this die into use. Time Out Challenges: Friendship or Encouragement, and Can You Handle the Pressure? I’m not using the Optional Leaves theme, but it’s always using an embossing folder. I had one of those in my NBUS box along with the Altenew die. 

I have to admit I just love this die. The die includes the stem and outline but separate die for the fillers behind. I chose my colors from scraps in my scrap box, and did some ink blending for dimension.

The graphic nature of the embossing folder (Spellbinders’ Geo Screen) was just perfect for this stylized flower. 

The sentiment is a Betterpress one also from Spellbinders, You Are Everything.

Hope you are having a day filled with sunshine! It’s cool here, but very bright and likely to warm up by the afternoon.