It's getting close to Halloween. We went to a delightful pumpkin farm yesterday with our grandchildren. It was my first experience with a corn maze, and let me tell you, it wasn't all that easy (or quick) to find our way out! 

Which means, of course, it's time to share a Halloween card. Actually, it's my second one. The first was shared here for a Color Hues Challenge.

The Color Hues card is for Hannah, and this one is for Caleb. They'll get their Halloween bags from us tomorrow morning as we'll be heading home early Saturday morning.

This one is a CASE of my first card, with a circle opening to an ink-blended moon instead of an oval. Only one ghost, but many more bats! The ghost die is Poppy Stamp's Scary Ghost, the bats from Spellbinders Spooky Boo, and both the outside and inside sentiments are from My Favorite Things Itty Bitty Boos.

After ink blending the moon, I sprayed it with a clear shimmer spray, although you'll have to believe me since it's almost impossible to see in the photo.

If you look closely, you might be able to see that the bats on the front of the card and the web in the corner were die cut from black glitter cardstock. 

I've been following the Festive Friday Challenge for awhile, but this might be my first entry. It's a Halloween challenge and you need to pick 3 of the items to include on your card. Mine uses Moon, Orange, Black, and Ghost. It's definitely my first entry in the Shopping Your Stash Challenge which I recently discovered. It's one I really need to participate it frequently. Absolutely everything on this card was already in my stash. The current challenge is "Frightfully Delightful." I'm also adding to the Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Spooky.

I recently needed a small gift for a friend, and Tracy suggested I make a set of notecards. Once the holidays are over, I think I'll make a few sets of cards so they're ready when I need them. For these, I pulled out one of my favorite Simon Says stamp sets, "Stronger Together" with sentiments from Papertrey Ink's "Botanical Silhouettes."

I chose rather generic sentiments thinking that "Best Wishes" works for many occasions and "Just a Note" as well.

I'm entering the CAS on Friday Challenge which is currently "Black, White, and One Color." 

This is one of those cards that works for so many occasions–thank you, birthday, thinking of you . . . I love having a few of these kinds of cards in my stash. 

Anemones are one of my favorite flowers. We tried twice in the last year to grow some, but most of the bulbs were dug up and eaten by some little critter before they ever broke through the ground. I have to settle on a couple of stamp sets and this beautiful die from Honey Bee. I die cut it twice–once with light blue paper and once with a dark purple (the bottom layer of the flower.) I opted for metallic silver die cut leaves and added some light purple ink to the centers of the flower layers.

I also die cut the arch from Ellen Hutson's Essential Arches two times once to get the layer for the sentiment and once for the frame. Those Essential dies are some of my most used-sometimes I layer them and sometimes I just use the frames. The sentiment is from an older Pretty Pink Posh sentiment set, Thoughtful Greetings.

The Time Out Challenge this week is to create a friendship or encouragement card in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness. I'm also adding this to The Flower Challenge: Use a Sentiment and Happy Little Stampers: Dies-Anything Goes.

It's definitely time to think about creating Christmas cards, and for the first time ever I'm in great shape. I've pretty much stuck with my goal of creating 10 Christmas cards every month so I think I have 80+ cards done. This card is one I made when I was experimenting with different color combinations for the wonderful, "Holiday Botanical Background Stencil," by Pinkfresh Studio.

I added Stickles to red berries and they suddenly became pink or melon berries. I like them, but it wasn't what I wanted at the time, so there is only one version of this card. I used two different green inks for the leaves and added some white gel pen for some added interest.

It's easier to see the frosted berries here as well as the wonderful pre-made foiled sentiment by Waffle Flower.

This is another entry in the Pinkfresh World Card Making Day Challenge. I'm also adding it to the Addicted to Stamps and More: Die Cuts &/or Stencils and Happy Little Stampers: Stencils.

I’ve been sidelined for awhile following some (not serious) surgery, lots of church commitments, and getting ready for a road trip to Wisconsin. I managed to get a few cards made, and some of them photographed, but writing blog posts just didn't happen. Now we’re visiting Sarah and her family for a week so I finally have time to share some cards while the grandchildren are in school. Hopefully there will be a flurry of posts this week. There's also a stack of cards waiting to be photographed when I get home, and quite a few more I'm hoping to create once I get back into a regular routine.

First off a card for the Pinkfresh Studio World Cardmaking Day, Addicted to Stamps and More: Die Cuts and/or Stencil, and The Flower Challenge: Use a Sentiment.

It's a birthday card created with all Pinkfresh Studio products to help The Flower Challenge celebrate their 6th birthday. It uses two dies as well for the Addicted to Stamps and More challenge.

I started with the hot foil plate from Pinkfresh Studio called "Folk Floral Stem," and used the coordinating stencils to color it. After die cutting the floral, I added it to the Pinkfresh "Stitched Diamond" coverplate,t rimmed down before adding it to a deep purple card base.

The sentiment is also from Pinkfresh Studio from their Foiled Sentiments collections. I'm a huge fan of the premade foiled sentiments that look so good with the hot foiled designs. 

Thanks for being here, I expect to be back soon!

These cards are a departure from my more often Clean and Simple cards, but I fell in love with the Pretty Pink Posh "Fall Basket" when it was released last month. I have some ideas for more CAS versions, but here are my layered up cards.

I really filled up this basket with pumpkins, apples, eggplant and some foliage. Dimensional tape on the front of the basket allowed me to put the veggies inside. The patterned paper is a favorite from Sunny Studios–Gingham Jewel Tones, and I die cut an oval from cream card stock as a backdrop for the basket.

The Sentiment Suite tag from The Greetery was already stamped with a sentiment from Gossamer Blue–a scrapbook company I frequented in my scrapbook days. All the veggies were die cut from scraps in my scrap basket. I added some Distress Inks on most of them with a finger dauber.

I had a lot of apples left over, and decided to do a square card with a basket of apples.

This time I chose a more traditional gingham pattern from My Favorite Things "Tiny Checks." The tag here is also from the same Greetery set and stamped with one of the sentiments from "Sentiment Suite: Birthday."

I layered the two basket pieces together without dimensional tape here, and it does make for a flatter card, more easily mailed.

Just Us Girls Challenge is asking you to use your scraps: done! The Card Concept and The Paper Players have Autumn themed challenges, so I'll be adding the first card to those since the colors were inspired by the challenges. The Card Concept asks that you define the style of your card. Reading their definitions, the first card is Clean and Layered (clean lines, many layers, patterned papers . . .)  And, once again, I'm sending this to NBUS--it's my first time using these dies.

I needed two birthday cards, and found two panels I had already foiled with the Pinkfresh Studio Geo Arches hot foil plate. I've never used the accompanying stencils before and decided on a bright and happy color combination: orange and blue. 

For the first card I made, I used almost the whole stencil, but for the second card, I cut it much smaller to layer it a bit. My husband prefers the first one, I rather like the second one. 

I used just two of the three stencils, choosing to leave one section white. On my last trip to the Paper Source, I picked up a pack of the Royal Blue cardstock which turned out to the the perfect match.

I gold embossed the sentiment from My Favorite Things in gold, and die cut it with Ellen Hutson's Essential Rectangles twice–once in blue and once in gold for the frame.

I used the Spellbinder's A2 Matting Basics to die cut the stenciled panel and the Royal Blue panel before layering them on the card base. 

The sentiment is a pre-made foiled sentiment from Pinkfresh Studio. 

There are three challenges for this card: The Pinkfresh World Card Making Challenge is open until October 20th, Inkspirational is looking for Stencils, and AAA Birthday for Favorite Technique. Layering stencils have risen right to the top of favorite techniques for me, and Pinkfresh has the best of them. I'm also sending this to Darnell's NBUS site since this is the first time I've used these layering stencils.

Saturday was World Card Making Day, but many cardmakers extended it to include the whole weekend.  I managed to find time to play with a new stencil from Pinkfresh Studio that was released recently as part of their holiday release. What I like about it is its versatility. I made both a holiday card and a birthday card. 

The stencil is called Swirl Background. In this case I used two shades of red and two shades of pink as well as a coat of Nuvo Glimmer Paste to add a dash of sparkle.

I die cut the stenciled portion with the smaller of the dies in Gina K's Master Layout #1 set and a piece of silver glitter paper I purchased in Milwaukee several years ago with the larger die for a narrow border before adding them to a red card base. Although I photographed the card twice in different lights, the red is not quite as bright here as it is in real life.

The sentiment, also from Pinkfresh Studio, is one of their preprinted ones for the holidays. The set comes with the sentiments printed in silver and gold. 

The second card was done in brighter colors for a birthday card.

Same stencil, but a different vibe. Again, the colors are dulled out a bit by the photograph. Not sure what the current problem is. The photo below is more accurate.

The sentiment here is also new, from Simon Says Stamptember release–Circle Sayings. Lots of different sentiments in this set for a variety of occasions. I added a few sequins to the this card for additional sparkle.

I'm entering these in two challenges: Pinkfresh Studio's World Cardmaking Challenge, and Inkspirational where the challenge is stencils.