A site for my handmade cards, accompanied by my photos and written meanderings which are occasionally witty, often tongue-in-cheek, and rarely profound. Beginning in June 2013, you'll also see lots of NBUS, which is an acronym I coined for Never-Before-Used-Schtuff. Note: my Privacy Policy can be found at a tab below and you can find my NBUS Challenge online. I hope you'll join in the fun there! Thanks for coming by! Have a beverage and enjoy!

September 30, 2024

Fifth Monday ~ Stencil I.D.E.A.S.

Hello Stamplings!

Me again! Happy last day of the month of September, which is also the fifth Monday which means stencils on my I.D.E.A.S. schedule. Happily we featured stencils on our Group of Seven designs Saturday, so this is a follow-up prequel to my last post. Say what now?
Sadly, no matter how many photos I took, I could not capture the schparkle from the metallics that are a part of the Lindy's Magicals powders I used. (That's the difference between Brusho powered inks and Lindy's Magicals powdered inks.) The stencil I used is from Technique Tuesday and the sediment is from Memory Box.

In our Go7 post, we showcased the monoprints we made after inking our stencils. What you see above is the 'print' which happens first if you put a piece of watercolor paper under your stencil when you ink and spritz it and then you simply lift the stencil straight up off the panel. 

It might help if I show you a photo of my stencil all liberally inked and spritzed before I lifted it off to make a print.
After lifting it off that panel, I flipped the stencil over onto other clean panels of watercolor paper progressively, in order to make all the monoprints you saw in my last post. Honestly, it sounds more confusing than it is.

If you are wondering how I got the Lindy Magicals to be placed so accurately in the stencil, it's because I let Hammy and Stanley use these little teeny-weeny spoons that came with a box of resin I've had for a long time. I just told them where to dump the different colors of powder onto the sunflower petals, leaves, and centers. It was sort of like paint-by-numbers and it took us forever, but they haven't played in ages and I've missed them, so it was easy to be patient with them.

~~~

Here is another stencil design that's more my usual QACAS style:
I used an unmarked stencil and Catherine Pooler inks and I simply heat-embossed the sediment in white onto a strip of vellum.

~~~

I know how everyone loves seeing other people's vacation photos,😁so you'll be pleased to know that I did manage to put together some collages of ours. Rather than making this a 47-foot long post, I put them on a separate page. If you are interested, there is a link in the salad side bar.

Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* 

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! 

*Life is too short!
Challenges:
Allsorts: A/G. Huge congratulations on your 800th challenge!!
Just Us Girls: A/G Stencil Week.
Stencil Fun: Fall Frenzy.
The Paper Players: Tic-Tac-Toe from Claire. Middle horizontal row.


September 28, 2024

Group of Seven ~ Stencil Monoprints

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well! I'm sorry I wasn't here last Monday as planned. All of the week before, I had both computer woes and migraine woes. Layering that onto jet lag made things very, um, trying. 

But it's all good and I got my cicada rhythm back, too. Wait. What? I think I mean Canadian. No, stop. It's circadian. What is? Nevermind. 

Thanks to the Group of Seven Cardmakers, I managed to have some creative fun and I've lots of photos to share with you. For this month, we used our stencils and concentrated on making monoprints. The technique works best with open stencils which are inked using your choice of watercolor medium. After inking and spritzing, the stencil is flipped over onto watercolor paper as many times as the ink will last and gives you a useable image. 

1.
I used a sunflower stencil from Technique Tuesday and Lindy Magicals. 

For the technique reference, I should have first shown you this photo of all four of the monoprints I got. 
And below are the other three cards I made: 

2.
3.
4. This last one is very faint, but I liked it anyway.
I think you will enjoy trying this with your powdered inks, distress inks, watercolors, or sprays. For more incredible design inspiration, please check out the Go7 website where you will also find more instructions and video information! Group of Seven Cardmakers.
But wait, there's more ...

I went to clean off my stencil and when I started swiping with a baby wipe, I noticed a cool design was transferring onto my scratch paper. I stopped and grabbed three more panels of Tim Holtz watercolor paper and made these patterns, just swiping across the stencil with my baby wipe, cleaning more of the ink off each time:
I wasn't able to get a very good photo because it was evening, but in person each one is really cool. So cool that I didn't want to cover them up, so I made these very simple matted cards with foiled sediments which I've had in my stash:

5.
6.
7.
Such a fun bonus!

~~~

Enjoy your weekend! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Unless something unforeseen comes up, I hope to be back Monday with more stencil designs per my fifth Monday I.D.E.A.S. schedule. And I'm also hoping to finally share some of our vacation photos!

Thank you for your patience and your forgiveness for my lack of visiting. Next month is going to be another busy month with visitors first one week and then the next. And then it will be full on Christmas cards!

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! 

*Life is too short!
Challenges
1. Colorful Options: Be bold.
2. Beautiful Blossoms: A/G Floral w/ optional mood board.
3. Triple B: Birds, Blooms, and Butterflies.
4. Simply Clean and Simple: Signs of fall.
5. Cardz 4 Galz: Any coloring medium.
6. Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers: A is for Autumn.

        


September 16, 2024

Closed This Week ...


More to follow . . .

Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

*Life is too short!

September 9, 2024

More Cute Critters!

Hello Stamplings!

How ya doin'? September is such a beautiful month, but the weather can still be unpredictable. I hope you are somewhere clement and having fun!

I'm featuring dies on this second Monday of the month.

Onefer

I love the way this little Colorado Craft hamster fits so perfectly into the sensational NBUS Scripted Sediment from The Greetery! (I'm glad the guys are at the neighbors so they won't think I'm showing favoritism by only using one of the hamster die-cuts. Ssh!🙊)

The NBUS coverplate die is called, "Aida Cloth Texture Plate," also from The Greetery. I added a little heart for punctuation and then blended a corner border on opposite corners to draw your eyes into the focus-pocus center.

Twofer
This creation has a bit of this and that and a schplash of ah ha. It started with a simple white die-cut circle I found in my stash. The circle had a light inner rim of pink all around the inside edge. I have no idea why, but there it was. Over the course of several days, I tried arranging /filling the circle with flowers or words and nothing was happening until I realized the white circle fit perfectly into a larger black circle panel, which I found lounging about in another corner of my stash.

After putting the circle panel and card base together, I went back to figuring out what to put in the circle. Recently, my friend Karen used her NBUS Harvest Mouse set from My Favorite Things on a darling card, which reminded me that I also have that set ~ neglected and unloved since 2015. (It's so nice that our products don't have expiration dates!) I thought this little guy from the set fit perfectly in the circle and from his sweet expression, a get-well sediment seemed appropopo!

~~~

Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! 

*Life is too short!
Challenges
Die Cut Divas: Sympathy



September 2, 2024

Getting Inky!

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I hope you had a wonderful week! 

I'm starting to picture the days of the week as bowling pins being knocked down by some rapid-fire world-class bowler! You have to admit it's hard to suck every ounce of fun out of each day when you're ducking bowling balls! 🎳

Sorry, there was no need for such a violent analogy. I'll just stick with the gentle art of card-making! Haha, we all know how violent that can be what with scissoring, squashing, slashing, stamping, scoring, stapling, stitching, and schplattering!

Onefer
For this card, I CASEd myself using a card I made back in May 2020. The stamp is Banners & Blooms from Concord & 9th. After white heat-embossing the image, I painted the flowers with my Ziggies. The simple sediment is from Avery Elle.

In an effort to use more pp, I chose this watercolor plaid as a perky background. No winking of the flowers this time because the lads are staying with the neighbors while we are whooshing around and drinking at the famous bar, Hither And Yon. 

Twofer
And here we have a very QACAS card. I found the skyline stamped on a white panel in BOB. I have no idea what stamp I used at the time and I no longer own it. Just to be different, I masked the panel with a strip of tape and ink-blended a rainbow-colored sky. A sediment and some bling and walla: Rainbow City!

~~~

Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* 

W
atch out for flying bowling pins!

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse 
and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! 
*Life is too short!

August 26, 2024

Anything Goes, Girls!

Hello Stamplings!

One more week, or rather six days, and we will be whooshing away another page of this year's calendar! Rrrippp! 🗓

We have a busy few weeks ahead with traveling and with friends and family visiting. I have made a few cards to try and keep to my I.D.E.A.S. schedule, but I'm not sure they will get posted ... best laid plans and all that! Commenting will be sparse, but I know you understand.🤗

Today being the fourth week/letter of August, it's a free-for-all, otherwise known as A = Anything Goes!

Onefer
I was inspired to make a card for the Pink Fresh Studio August 2024 Challenge. It gave me a chance to use some of the new Washi die cuts that Col, Lin, and I made in June. This time I used the beautiful balloons and a Pink Fresh sediment from the "Perfect Sediments" set. The NBUS cover plate background die is called, "Hexagon Tile," and it is also from Pink Fresh.

I was going to call it good, but then Hammy suggested adding some schparkle with a frame from MFT cut from pretty blue glitter paper and, not to be out-done, Stanley suggested I add an escaped balloon in order to balance the compost. (That's what he calls it. We think it's cute and don't have the heart to correct him!)

Twofer
For this card, I used a NBUS Penny Black set called, "Painter's Vase," which I received from my dear friend Loll in 2019. It's been buried on Mt. NBUS ever since, but this week I was inspired to excavate it because Loll is a Guest Designer for the current Penny Black Saturday Challenge. The brief is anything goes with the option of flowers.

I used the technique where you color the stamp with markers and then spritz the image and stamp it on your paper. I wanted to also play in the current Color Hues Challenge, where my friend Tracey is the host, so I used yellow and orange markers.

I love how the vase turned out, but I think the flowers could use more shadows or white highlights. I also think the design itself needs something like a frame or some soft background blending or stenciling, and a shadow to ground the vase ... . I love this technique, especially with PB stamps, so I'll keep playing and improving.

~~~

Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* 

Oh, I have to share this photo of a baby fence lizard on the patio. That is a tiny toothpick next to him! So cute!

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! 
*Life is too short!







August 19, 2024

Embossibilities!

Hello Stamplings!

How are you this fine Monday? I hope you had a nice weekend! I can tell a lot of you are on holiday this month because I can hear the crickets in the evening and normally the crafty chatter drowns them out. Wherever you are, have fun making memories!

For the rest of us, I have a few embossed designs to share with you for the third week of the I.D.E.A.S. schedule.

Onefer
This is an example of double-embossing. First, I used a regular (unmarked) embossing folder and then I ran that embossed panel through a second time using a 3D embossing folder. The NBUS 3D folder used here is "Leaf Bundle" from Simon Says. You might be able to see that Hammy and Stanley used a few of the leaves as scratching posts which left a bit of a distressed look here and there. 

The beautiful Memory Box "Serene Bird" was cut using patterned paper. A gold-embossed sediment from Memory Box and gold bling finished the QACAS design.

Twofer
The embossing folder featured in this design is from Park Lane (Michael's) called, "Holly Berry." Stanley tried his luck at using a red pogo stick to highlight the berries! (Even Hammy had to admit that the youngster has agility and good eyesight on his side!) 

Using a NBUS die from Spellbinders called, "Stylish Merry Christmas," I used the cut-out letters only for the bold sediment. I backed it with a candy cane striped vellum and then attached it to a card base.

Threefer
This design features a NBUS evergreen embossing folder from Simon Says called, "Delicate Pine Branches." For this card, I thought the debossed side of the branches looked more interesting. 

I used the other portion of the "Stylish Merry Christmas" die, so you can see what the whole die looks like. This time, I cut it from a panel in my stash that was made by spritzing ink over an evergreen stencil. I left out the inside letters of the words. Next, I stamped off an evergreen stamp and stamped it lightly here and there over the panel. I lost the little paper piece that fit inside the R, so the lads searched through my bling and found a beautiful aquamarine bead.

~~~

Sturgeon Full Moon Tonight!

Tonight's full moon is known as the "Sturgeon Moon" because sturgeon fish were once abundant in August in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain region, according to the Almanac. The prehistoric-looking fish are thought to have existed around 200 million years ago. Today there are sturgeon farms all around the world, raising sturgeon in tanks for their prized caviar.

Other names for the Sturgeon Moon are "Dispute Moon," "Lynx Moon," "Lightning Moon," and "Grain Moon." 

I'm not sure how that happens. The names seem so random and why are there so many? I picture a group of Almanac executives who hold their annual August conference in Tampa Bay. After dinner and a few too many tiddlies, they sit around the club house pool gazing up at the full moon and tossing around ideas for the next Almanac edition. "Goose!" "Ambush!" "Upholstery!"

~~~

Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower! 
*Life is too short!
Challenges:
Triple B: Birds, Butterflies, and Blooms
Word Power: Focal sentiment