Your Favorite Season!

Hello Stamplings!

No, it's not Monday already! I'm honored to be here today as a Guest Designer for TIME OUT Challenges! The brief for this challenge is Your Favorite Season! I love the changing tree graphic!

For me, it is a toss-up between spring or fall being my favorite season. While I was looking around and thinking about which way to go with my design, I found a NBUS sediment stamp from Memory Box called, "Harvest Love and Kindness," which made the decision easy! 

I cut a stitched circle out of vellum and then added the white heat-embossed sediment. The background is simply a beautiful pp from Craft Consortium called Ink Drops - Sunset (perfect for fall), which I embossed with a leafy e/f. The leaf brooch is from Impression Obsession, balanced with a triplet of enamel drops. 

I want to thank TIME OUT for this honor and I hope you can join us for this fun challenge with your designs reflecting your favorite season!

This challenge is sponsored by Waffle Flower Crafts! The winner will be chosen by the Design Team, will receive a $25 store credit, and will receive an invitation to be a future Guest Designer! 

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Aren't these leaves beautiful? I picked this up on a walk, but I'm not sure what type of tree it came from.

On a personal note, it's ironic that I am posting for the TIME OUT challenge, because I need to take some time out from blogging for a while.

Even so, my plan is to keep NBUS running because it doesn't require much of my time and we all enjoy visiting the gallery and being inspired. When I can, I will continuing to visit your blogs and comment. Thank you for understanding! 

Please keep enjoying yourselves! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

[Edited to add: I have to moderate comments on my blog and I accidentally deleted six comments. If you don't see your comment below and it's been a couple of days, please resend. Thank you!]

Love and hugs,

*Life is too short!

Orange and Green Convene!

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome on this fine fresh start to another week! It's so nice to be able to have the windows open and breezes blowing through. In fact, I need to get outside and tend to some neglected flowers, so I will get right to it.

This is D = Dies/Die Cuts on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. My cards are more suited for inky week, but as these designs show, any wee die cut on your card counts. 

Onefer

I'm starting with the star of the show. This is one of my favorite old-timey stamps from Penny Black called, "Perfect Pear." It lends itself to coloring directly on the stamp, but this time I stamped it in DI Old Paper for a no-line watercolor look and then I painted it with my Ziggies. 

I had begun to paint the leaves when I went into the Big House for lunch and when I came back, I was quite taken by the unfinished panel:

Isn't that pretty just as it is? But the Color Hues challenge is orange and green, so I kept painting. Hammy and Stanley added schplatters and we called it a day. The frame and sediment are from Memory Box.

I'm also playing in the Anything Goes option at Seize the Birthday.

Twofer

Keeping with the o/g colors, this design was inspired by AAA Cards, where the brief is to follow Ceal's Lead (CASE her card). I went with another oldie by SU, using the peaches and turning them into oranges. I stamped and painted them and then I stamped and fussy-cut a mask to blend the light blue rectangle background ala Ceal. 

I kept the sediment simple with a bit of bling, but it needed some umph, so I got out the ol' glossy accents for the fruit and blossoms and the lads winked the leaves.

I am also playing in the challenge at Allsorts where the brief is Birthdays/ Anything Goes.

Threefer

I was out of manly cards, so for this design I used a few NBUS stamps from Stampers Anonymous. I thought they were a good choice for keeping the orange and green and glossification going. The sediment is from GKW and the frame is from Mama Elephant. Besides the Color Hues challenge, I'm playing over at Krafty Chicks: Birthday.

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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 lovely card may help motivate someone else! 

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!

Click here to enter

Septimus Alredius!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you feeling well!

Following last Monday's post, I did call in Scour and Reorg. The timing turned out to be good because the busyness helped take my mind off yet another senseless school shooting in this country which left two children dead, many injured, and anyone there mentally troubled for the rest of their lives. I want to rant on about it, but that's not why you're here. 

We've turned the calendar today for the ninth time in 2025! Happy Labor Day to those celebrating! There are only three more turns to go and the yuletide will be coming in! This week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is I = Ink/Color Medium. With the Playhouse turned topsy-turvy by my crew, not to mention my mental state, I consorted with B.O.B. and I found two inky panels previously made with Brusho powders. And, thus:

Onefer

Some of my bloggie friends made cards a coupla weeks ago using the Northern Lights technique. This isn't that, but a shoutout to them for the inspiration to see this panel as very Northern-Light-ish, so I simply used an old wooded SU silhouette tree stamp in the foreground. (I meant to say wooden stamp, but you have to love the English language because ha-ha, it's also wooded!)

This left me with turkoyce hills, so I covered them with snow using my NBUS Simon Hurley Astro Paste. It's crazy how impossible (especially in the sun) it is to photograph the stunning schparkle of this paste when it dries. In real life the whole bottom area is covered like in the lower left-hand corner. 

I'm playing in Jingle Belles where the brief is "Cardstock Christmas." I used black and watercolor cardstock only.

Twofer

For this design ... wait. Where's the rest of this Brusho panel? Wheeeel, what happened was, I went to CASE my friend Susan's card because her design reminded me that I have the same Santa and his sleigh silhouette stamp which I thought would be perfect for a Northern Lights sky. Using my MISTI, my first stamping of the sleigh in black with a heavy hand still wasn't enough coverage, so I reinked the stamp and stamped it a second time. When I lifted the lid of my MISTI, I saw that the Brusho panel had moved in spite of a grip pad and magnets. Wah. Wah.

My cursing made Stanley dive under his blankets, but Hammy calmly suggested that I just cut off Santa and his sleigh and use the partial panel on a card. B.O.B. provided the die-cut sediment and Pinkfresh Studio Washi butterfly which led to the Sizzix cloud e/f and, well, B.O.B.'s your uncle! And now I'm on Santa's naughty list. (Like I wasn't already!)

I'm playing in Addicted to Stamps and More where they are celebrating Challenge 500! Congratulations!! This time the brief is Die Cuts / Stencils. Also, Simon Says Stamp Wednesday where the brief is Anything Goes featuring Pinkfresh Studio.

Bonus!

After I stamped the trees for my Onefer above, I put a white folded card in my MISTI and stamped off the heavy black ink. Bonus! It gave me another perfectly useable card for my Christmas stash. I've always had a fondness for black and white evergreen trees and simple sediment for a Christmas card design. For this card, I used a sediment from SSS "Holiday Greetings Mix 1." I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to add a period to that sediment.

I'm playing again at ABC Christmas Challenge under Q is for Quick! It doesn't get much more QACAS than this!

Lesson

And then what happened was, bless my heart, I thought why not run it through my Gemini using an embossing plate to add falling snow for, you know, interest. Only I didn't ask my little rompers, so I grabbed my 3D snow when I should have grabbed my 1D snow and now here's a lesson for all of us on how sometimes cards don't need more interest!

That poor little bird is about to be knocked out of the sky by that snowfall those snowballs!😆

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

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your colorful/inky art! Your creation may help motivate someone out of their mojo schlump! 

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!

~~~

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse! Enjoy your day!

No, seriously, enjoy! Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Deep In the Wreaths!

Hello Stamplings!

Good to see you! I hope you had a great week and that you are enjoying the last days of August, wherever you are. I'm a morning person, so I love waking up to sunshine and goin' and doin'. Which means I'd better make the most of these days before the sleepy darker mornings roll in.

This week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is A = Anything Goes, which I turned into anything wreathy goes. 

Onefer

This is QACAS at its finest, if I do say so myself, with a chorus of agreement from the hamster gallery! I used more of that brilliant textured card I found which looks like Cord U. Roy's pants. The doubled-up wreath is made from Washi Tape die-cuts from Pinkfresh Studio. The gold-embossed sediment is from GKW. After wards, I ran my Galaxy Gold Dew Drop ink pad around the edges of the pants card.

I'm playing in the AAA Cards Challenge (Anything Goes CAS with the option of green); and the ABC Christmas Challenge (Q is for Quick).

Twofer

Guess what? This card features a NBUS Penny Black stamp and die set called "Winter Blessings" which I recently purchased! I'm trying to be better at that, realizing I risk NBUS Mountain erupting one day when I least expect it because of all the jealous stamps, dies, and stencils that have been stuck there for (cough) years.😱

Anyberry, I used kraft paper and three of the five stamps in the set and there you go. Trivia: in all my years of card-making, this is the first cardinal stamp and die I've owned! Thank you, Penny! It's a beauty and I can't wait to paint it, but this time I simply cut it from red paper and dressed it. Winking of the cardinal and berries provided by my wee helpers. I added three score lines to the bottom pursuant to Lesson 41 in the Book of Compositions.

I'm playing in Christmas Kickstart (Let's Wreath It Up); Little Red Wagon (Circle of Life); and Penny Black Saturday Challenge (Anything Goes - optional: embossing).

Threefer

If you play in Freshly Made Sketches, you'll recognize this layout from their challenge #700. They are celebrating 14 years of challenges! WOW! They went back in time to re-use Sketch #14 (below) for the celebration. It's my first time using this sketch because I didn't start playing in their challenges until my early days on March 4, 2012 with challenge #24! Where has the time gone?!

To build the sketch, I started with the wreath to keep with the theme and I cut it from a scrap of green metallic paper. The wreath is NBUS from Pinkfresh Studio called "Leafy Circle." Then I went through my stitched square dies to find the right size and die cut it from metallic gold. I cut a 4.25 square card base and covered it with a gold panel. 

Then the fun begin. Hammy looked through my gold flecked vellum paper, Stanley looked through window at the squirrels (he is still very young) and I looked through my dots and stripes pp. A sheet of gold stripes won and then we had to spend another hour doing the math and trying to attach the little panels so they were evenly spaced, but differently angled for more interest. Then we had a lie down.

To add the wee corner detail per the sketch, we found this cute little gingerbread cookie which my friend Bunny sent me back in January 2024. It was a happy rediscovering and there are five more little cookies in the envelope, so you will be seeing them again. (If the lads don't run off with them as little playmates!) Bunny included a note that the cookies were from Impression Obsession.

I'm also playing in Rudolph Days, an Anything Christmas Goes challenge that runs from the 25th to the end of every month.

~~~

As we say in the industry, if you've made it this far, thank you!🫶 I actually made a few more cards and have some wreaths still to use, but it's Sunday and nearly Ni-Ni time, so I'll save them for another post. The fact that I didn't realize I had so many wreaths tells me it's time for a visit from Scour and Reorg, characters I love in the book of my life, weirdo that I am.

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: A = Anything Goes

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations with no restrictions! It's a free-for-all and you never know ~ your creation may help motivate someone out of their creative schlump! 

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

Puffy Dogs and Puffy Clouds

Hello Stamplings!

I hope the world is treating you like the good person you are!🤗

I've had a busy week with lunches and appointments and we had a wonderful get-together with the family before the grandtwins go back to college next week for another year!** The course work is getting harder, but there is nothing like the fun of your college years! 

This week is E = Embossing on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar and for my first card, the lads and I went traveling in the Wayback Machine. (Google spellcheck wants me to call it the "Swayback" Machine!😀)

Onefer

What happened was, when we went over to see the kids on Saturday, we took Nellie and Jack to the dog park. It turns out they were having a Show-Off-Your-Collar contest and I was able to get a cute shot of of several of the pups lined up against the fence. (Nellie is in the photo, too, but she is hard to see against the white fence!)

The embossed fence e/f is from Darice. The old puffy dog stickers are from Doodlebug. The stacked sediment is from The Greetery's Birthday Blooms. 

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Any Occasion.

Just Us Girls: Word week: Birthday.

The Paper Players: CAS: Critters.

Twofer

The jump-off for this design came from the current sketch challenge at Freshly Made Sketches. The linen panel was die-cut using my NBUS Distant Sun Collage from Memory Box. For the card base and to fill in the sky aperture, I again went back in time and used some gold-speckled DSP I have. After the DSP was popped in the sky hole, the whole panel was embossed using my Subtle e/f from SU. The lads each added enamel dots and I finished with a tiny gold dot of punctuation. QACAS!

Other Challenges

Allsorts: Begins With "B."

Seize the Birthday: No Flowers.

I.D.E.A.S. Gallery

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using your wet and/or dry embossing! Sharing your card may help motivate others out of their creative schlumps!

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 and special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower!

**It is an emotive time for me and The Mister because we were exactly the twins' age when we met 56 years ago! Even to us, we look like babies in this photo, but back then it wasn't unusual to be on your own at 20 years of age, or younger. It's too expensive for kids in college to do that now.  

I'm sure many of you can relate. Sometimes it seems like it was a hunnert years ago, sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday!

Time is a funny old thing.

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Dies Through the Seasons

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you well! Well in health, well in spirits, and well in creativity!

This week the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is D = Dies/Die Cuts (which can also be fussy-cuts). Dies are having a heyday right now and I got so charged up, I did a threefer. Sorry, I didn't mean that to sound naughty.

Onefer

For this card, I was inspired by the photo at the 

Inspired By Challenge ~ specifically the frame and the colors of the leafy spray on the mantle.

I found papers in my stash that have a lightly embossed feel, so I used a creamy one for my background here. I used a woodgrain paper to cut my stitched rectangle frame. The vases are dies from Paper Smooches. The stems are a combination of dies from SU and MFT. The sediment is from Gina K's, "A Little Love." 

I'm also adding my card to Cut It Up, where the brief is to add a sentiment and to Snippets Playground, where the brief is to use your scrappy snippets.

Twofer

Here is another piece of the pretty paper I found ~ this time in a beige color. Nothing original about this design, but I can't remember ever doing it before and I love the simplicity of the scene.

Looking at it on my monitor now, the lads and I are karacking up because it looks like we tossed a coupla dog turds on the grass beside the pile of leaves!😂It's okay because the recipient is a dog-loving friend with a fall birthday and a wonderful sense of humor!

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Birthday.

Cardz 4 Galz: Create a scene.

Krafty Chicks: Birthday.

Threefer

And, thirdly, the challenge at Color Hues schparked another Christmas card for the stash. The poinsettia is an old beauty from Waltzingmouse, colored with my Ziggies in all pinks, even though it came out a bit rusty rose in the photo. Hammy and Stanley were thrilled to have a big field upon which to use their new winkers and when they were finished, I fussy cut it. 

The gray background paper was decorated with a Dotted Scallops cover plate die from Pinkfresh Studio and gold bling and a simple sediment finished it off.

Other Challenges

The Flower Challenge: Add embellishments.

The Holly and Ivy Christmas: Anything Christmas goes.

Just Us Girls: Die Cuts - Florals.

      

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💐I don't say it often enough ... Thank you very much to all the card challenges out there who provide us with endless inspiration and challenge us creatively!👏

~~~

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 someone out of their creative schlump! 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