Best. Day. Ever.

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome to the show! I hope you had a good week! I've been alternating between card-making and spring-summer-cleaning, both of which give me joy. I'm weird that way. I've killed a lot of dust bunnies in my day, but I still haven't solved the mystery of how the junk drawer gets messy in only five minutes!

This is week two of the June I.D.E.A.S. Calendar which means D = Dies.

Onefer

I broke out my NBUS Postage Collage Cover die from SSS for this design, using the cute playing card images from CAS-ual Fridays Stamps. The sediment is from another oldie-but-goodie: Taylored Expressions "Pawsome" set. My red ink pad needs reinking, but I can't find the reinker, nor, it turns out, the dark green reinker. Smart little Hammy wondered if I put the bottles with my Christmas schtuff~but no. (I can hear you shouting, check the junk drawer!😂)

Challenges:

Addicted to Stamps and More: Any occasion.

Cut It Up: Anything goes.

NBUS: FYI, there's a celebration this month!

Twofer

One could say this design is from the Playhouse "junk drawer," otherwise known as BOB. BOB contains beloved bits I love too much to discard. And when those bits come together as if by magic, it's a thing to behold.🪄

I wanted to use the base panel pp which was left over from a recent make. The lads and I had a rumble with BOB and every snippet we needed was right there, from the schparkly plum paper to the bold sediment to the pretty leafy branch I cut a coupla years ago from a die owned by my friend Bev.

Challenges:

Freshly Made Sketches

Just Us Girls: Die week ~ layers.

Snippets Playground: Anything goes with snippets and bits.

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This is a napkin my sister Diana sent me. It's so funny in a few ways, but I kracked up at the hairdos! These ladies are not getting their hairdos wet, so they don't need to worry about drowning!🌊

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: D = Dies

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using your dies! Your card may help motivate others out of their creative schlumps or give someone a step-off for their own design! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse! 

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Wonderful Memories

Hello Stamplings!

Happy June, buds! I hope you are well! I have to start my post today by sending best wishes to the firefighters in Canada fighting the terrible fires and to all those being impacted by the smoke flowing over several states. It's frightening to see such huge fires when summer hasn't even begun.😞

We are just back from a wonderful visit to British Columbia and the Gulf Islands and I have photos below, but, first, a card to share:

This is the first week of the month, so the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is I = Ink. For this QACAS card, I used my Ziggies to watercolor the flower-only part of the vase-and-flower bouquet slapstick stamp from Penny Black. The lads (retrieved from a friend's home) were tickled to be winking again! The sediment is ancient from PTI, but the pretty font of this set will never be outdated to me ... even as outdated as I am.😂 

Vacation Photos

The Mister and I love Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and the Gulf Islands. On this vacation, we spent a couple of days in the city of Vancouver and then took the ferry over to Salt Spring Island where we stayed in a beautiful VRBO rental for several days. We enjoyed flowers, trees, plush greenery, hiking, restaurants, water views, deer, eagles, shell beaches, etc. No whales this time, but that's okay.

Once back on the mainland, The Mister flew home and I spent a few days with my dear friend Lolly (Stamping With Loll). On the weekend, our friends Susan (Cardmaker's Garret) and Christine (It's a Card Days Night) joined us. We haven't been together for six years, so it was a pleasure to see them again and catch up! And, as you can see, Lolly spoiled us with her delicious homemade goodies!

Lolly is holding her dog, Jessie; Susan's dog Tessa is in between Christine and Susan on the sofa, and in the bottom photo, Jessie warmed up to me as Lolly hugs Violeta. "V" belongs to Lolly's son Jeremy and his husband, Alejandro, both of whom I also got to spend some time with, as well as Lolly's hubby, Gordon. Thank you for your hospitality, friendship, and yummy food! It was a memorable and restorative trip all the way around!

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: I = Ink/Color Mediums

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using some form of coloring, inking, painting, etc. Your card may help motivate others out of their creative schlumps or give someone a step-off for their own design! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! 

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 leave a comment and/or join as a follower!

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Birthday Embossing

Hello Stamplings!

And Happy Monday to you as you begin your week with high hopes! Whatever they may be, I hope they come to fruitition. (Which makes more sense than fruition. What's a "fru?")

All around our neighborhood, hydrangeas are blooming with their many tiny little flowers all balled up into one huge flower. They are one of my most favorite flowers and I was inspired to bring out an old favorite stamp and paint.

Onefer

This stamp is Essentials by Ellen Mondo Hydrangea. I stamped the flower and leaf in black, heat-embossed in clear e/p, and then painted with my Ziggies before die-cutting. 

The lads went to town winking and then all three of us schplattered with diluted guache on the flower and leaf and with diluted purple ink on the background panel. That panel was embossed with an SU Sizzex e/f and attached to a lavender card base.  Finally, the flower was attached using foam squares. The sediment is a foil greeting from Memory Box.

Challenges

Beautiful Blossoms: Mood board with purple hydrangeas.

Cut It Up: Send me flowers.

Seize the Birthday: Flowers.

The Flower Challenge: Add spots or stripes. (Or both!)

Twofer

For this QACAS design, I used my NBUS gingko leaves 3D e/f from SSS with a panel of watercolor black paper which gives it a lovely texture. Then I simply swiped the raised bits using a piece of white chalk turned on its side. The circular sediment is also from SSS.

Challenges

Alphabet: C is for circles.

Let's Craft and Create: No patterned paper.

Little Red Wagon: D is for die cut.

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: E = Emblossing

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using some form of embossing. Your card may help motivate others out of their creative schlumps or give someone a step-off for their own design! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! Mwah! 

~~~

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!

Have a wonderful Memorial Day holiday next Monday. We will be with friends so I will not have a post. See in June!! (Another year whooshing by way too fast!) 

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

For the Love of Paper and Critters

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are well and you had a great weekend! We celebrated Mother's Day by getting together and welcoming Adam home from college for the summer. The twins immediately pick up where they left off months ago and it's a joy to be around them.

Today the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar features D for Dies.

Onefer

I  have had this moth die from The Greetery for (say it with me) cough years. I love the versatility of it. You can make the moth with either one or both sets of the wings and it comes with a stencil, so you can stencil on a pattern! I have fun ahead of me using all the options!

I chose this moth when I saw Linda's sketch at the current Freshly Made Sketches and built the sketch from there. BTW, this pp is from Craft Consortium and it has a lovely shine or sheen. Or glow or glimmer. Or ... hmmm, why do we have so many cinnamons for words in the English language?

But I digest. In my BOB, I found a small piece of leftover inked paper from a smooching session in the dark ages. I thought the moth might fight with the smooched paper, but they married well together.

And then, all due credit to little Stanley, we went with the score lines for that portion of the sketch (see below), rather than using paper or an image and I just love how it turned out.

I am also linking to Critter Crazy May Challenge and Simon Stays Stamp Monday challenge, which is "Things With Wings."

Twofer

A bloggie friend of mine recently lost her beloved dog and I made this card to send her some hugs. The hearts embossing folder is vintage; it came free with my Gemini Jr., but the die-cut paw is NBUS from Waffle Flower. The sediment is NBUS from Honey Bee Stamp's "Anemones" set.

Once again I used textured and patterned paper for the paw and the card mat and Hammy made me tear up when he tucked a few clear hearts in the paw. 

Little Nellie wanted to offer a sweet hug, too:

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: D = Dies

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using your dies! Your card may help motivate others out of their creative schlumps or give someone a step-off for their own design! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! Mwah!

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!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Grande Dames and Paper Towels

Hello Stamplings!

How's your week starting out on this festive Cinco de Mayo? I hope it's a great one! I made it back from Las Vegas without the millions, so life is back to normal, which happily means I had a chance to make some cards over the weekend! And since it's "inky" week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, I did just that!

Onefer

This little doll isn't too inky, but she was fun to color. The lads loved winking her tiny bits from head to toe - just the right size for their tiny paws! Around cough years ago, my friend Bobby sent me some stamped die cuts of amusing geezer birthday images and sediments. (I think from MFT.) They got buried alive on NBUS Mountain, but I managed to unearth them! Thank you again, Bobby! I have more people of a certain age that I can send them to now!😂

Twofer

I had a plan to bring out my alcoholic inks next, but then I saw a video using my NBUS Dina Wakley gloss sprays that I've also had for cough years. I'll do another post later about how that all turned out, but for today, I got squirreled by the paper towel I used to blot up the ink!

It's been a while since I saw one this pretty, so, of course, as one does, I turned it into a card:

Pretty QACAS, eh? I also found the Lil' Inker Happy Birthday frame already made up in my sediments binder, left over from some other inky day. 

Las Vegas

I know what happens in Vegas is spose to stay in Vegas, but I can tell you. Cheryl and I had a blast! We were pretty much on the go all the time. I haven't been to Las Vegas since 1973, so you can imagine my neck was permanently craned looking up at all the skycrapers! It really is beautiful on The Strip and I didn't see a speck of litter there or Downtown, which I found amazing.

I won't give you a day-by-day (yawn), but I made a few quick collages:

From our room, we could see the Belagio Fountain! And Paris! And the Sphere, but I forgot to take a picture of it. We were on the 55th floor!😮

One day we traveled from The Strip to Downtown where there are still some of the older casinos with neon lights which I recognized from the last century! Even the gorilla suit is the same! Fremont Street is now covered for pedestrians only and there is a zip line running the whole length!

We went to the Wynn Hotel just to walk around and enjoy the stunning decor there, including waterfalls and high-end stores with guards at the door! A nice lady took a photo of Cheryl and me in the floral garden entrance. Old and dear friends are the best! Wait. Long-time dear friends are the best!

And yes, that's little ol' winning me in the upper right! I sat down at my first slot machine (penny) Monday night and put in $20. I played a penny at a time and after only eight pennies, I won $130.40! Because we didn't do that much gambling, those winnings carried me through the week!🎰👏

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: I = Ink/Color Mediums

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using any type or method of coloring! Your card may help motivate others out of their creative schlumps or give someone a step-off for their own design! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! Mwah! Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter