Happy Pencil (Stencil) Day! Happy April Fool's Day! Happy Easter! Phew!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are feeling your oats, cheerios, or bran flakes, because as you can tell from the title, we have busy days ahead of us this week! You might think Happy Pencil Day is a joke because of April Fool's Day, but it snot. It's truly a day to celebrate the pencil. Which we know, sadly, is becoming obsolete.

I've made a card for the occasion and for S = Stencil on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar on this rare fifth Monday of the month. 

Onefer

I used a NBUS stripe stencil from Honey Bee Stamps for the notepaper background, inked in navy blue ink. Next, I sponged ink around the edges to draw your eyes to the hocus pocus sweet child in the center holding her mysteriously humongous pencil. 

The image is "tiny townie Penelope has a pencil" from Stampingbella. That sentence is a Double Alliterative, in case you wondered. I would have gone for a Triple by adding ... "poised pointedly."

I colored the image using my Ziggies and Hammy topped it off with his winker. I cut the image using a stitched oval die from MFT. The text panel is from my pp stash and the wee sediment is part of the stamp set. (Please ignore the splotch in the lower right. Sometimes hamsters have to sneeze.)

Playing in: AAA Colourful (Navy and Gold); Addicted to CAS (Stripes); Freshly Made Sketches (Sketch by Amy).

Twofer

I used a new set of ink pads which I received from The Mister yesterday for no specific reason. What a sweetie!♥️The image is dynamic and, as you can see, very emotionally evocative. I colored it with ... wait. What?! Oh, that man! He got me with an April Fool's Day prank ~ clearly the ink pads were filled with invisible ink!!

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This pretty NBUS stencil from Pinkfresh Studio is inked over its partner NBUS coverplate die called, "Petal Mosaic." The three inks I used are from Catherine Pooler and the sediment is an ancient PTI favorite. Bun E. Frogman came out for his annual hello to you!

Playing in: Just Us Girls (Stencil Week); Try it on Tuesday (Spring); and Pinkfresh Studio (March 2026 Challenge).

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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! 

Happy Easter, Happy Passover, and Happy Spring to all! Enjoy this time with your family if you are fortunate to be together!

Mwah!

*Life is too short!

Forward! Spring!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you well as we enter our first full week of spring in this part of the world! It is also "Happy National Puppy Day!," but more on that later.

This week is A = Anything Goes on the I.D.E.A.S. calendar, which is everyone's idea of a good time! Let's start with springtime in the meadow . . .

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And how about two joyful bunnies from MFT (liberally winked by Hammy) to welcome you? I found the banner in my Easter/Spring stash ~ it looks like it might be from Paper Smooches. I blended the background and then stamped rocks and grass and made the rocks look like tiny dyed eggs or maybe jelly beans. The pointy frame is from Poppystamps.

Playing in: CAS on Friday (Spring) and Little Red Wagon (Signs of Spring).

Twofer

Next up are painted tulips using a NBUS trio of tulips embossing folder from Penny Black. I forgot to use a piece of watercolor paper, so it's not my best painting, but hey ho. I usually biff it when I try to paint over a 3D embossed image, so that part makes me happy and Hammy's expert winking polished it off nicely. I diecut it with a stitched oval from MFT. 

Threefer ~ in celebration of National Puppy Day!

I think this is one of my favoritest cards. The very definition of QACAS, yet bursting with emotion. I used a NBUS die from Cottage Cutz. (It comes with a cat, too, which I'll save for National Kitty Day.) I didn't want to disturb the image with a sediment, especially since this sweet card can be used for so many occasions.

It's brilliant in person when it comes to the texture. On a whim, I used a piece of this thick black handmade paper with nurbles on it, which I've had in my stash since the last century:

When I ran it through the die-cutter it flattened the nurbles, but in just-the-right-kind-of-way because it left a wonderful thick head of hair on the wee pup.

Playing in: Alphabet Challenge (X -Ray - Black and White Only), AAA Cards (A/G w/ option zoo or animals), and Krafty Chicks (CAS).

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Some of you may remember we had a black lab once. We actually started out with a yellow lab named Salty. When Salty was eight years old and slowing down, we thought it would be a good idea to get a second lab and we happened to get a black one. Because of the circumstances, the only choice for his name was Blackie ... no, just kidding! Of course, we called him Shadow!

Shadow remained Salty's shadow for the next seven years! Yes, that's right, it turned out that Shadow gave Salty a new lease on life! He lived until he was 16 and Shadow lived to be 15. And everyone said smoking and martinis would be bad for them! 

I managed to dig up a windy picture of me with them (cough) years ago on one of our Sunday hike/picnics:

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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!

Happy St. Patrick's Week!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you're doing well! I was going to make you Irish Soda Bread, but I have a head cold, so The Mister picked up an Irish apple cake at the bakery. And there's Baileys, o' course, next to the coffee maker.

No matter one's heritage, it's fun celebrating St. Patrick's Day! Around Blogland there is green everywhere, both inside our craftrooms and outside from the lawn on up to the toppiest branches on the trees. (Well, unless you live where there is hot weather one day and snowstorms the next!😢 In that case, I hope my spring green leafy design will make up for my insensitive giraffe.)

Onefer

The leafy e/f is from Fun Stampers Journey. The Washi Tape and gold-embossed sediment are from GKW. The gold-embossed leaves were in my stash. The crimped circle is NBUS from the Greetery. 

My inspiration for this card came from:

• Sketch: CAS on Friday.
• Color: Seize the Birthday: green as main color.
• I.D.E.A.S.: E = Embossing.

Twofer

I pretty much CASEd Michele's adorable bunny card which she made for her sketch at FMS this week. I couldn't resist! The bubbly e/f is from Fun Stampers Journey and the small arched panel is NBUS from "Curved Cap Pinpoint Layers" by Memory Box. The NBUS sediment is from Waffle Flowers. The little Easter egg stamps are from GKW; I heat-embossed them in gold onto pink paper and fussy-cut them. 

Oops, Hammy just pointed out that I forgot to mention the star of the show! The sweet bunny is from My Favorite Things. He also wants me to mention that it took him 32 tries to train the bunny to balance on the eggs. And, yes, chocolate helped!

My inspiration for this card came from:

• Sketch: Freshly Made Sketches.
  
• Themes: Just Us Girls: Emboss.
  AAA Card Challenge: A/G w/ option of zoo or animals.

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Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* And whether you are full-blown Irish, half-Irish, or Irish by marriage like me, enjoy your St. Patrick's Day celebrations!☘️

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

*Life is too short!

Happy Say What?

Hello Stamplings!

When I was checking out what happy thing we should celebrate this week, what with wars and all, I came across something that made me laugh so hard, tears were running down my leg. I startled Hammy and he fell off the rim of the wastebasket where he had been practicing his schplattering. He fell straight onto a wad of masking tape (now covered with schplatters), which, of course, stuck to his fur. He's fine, but I've got the jiggles all over again!

Here you go. This is what the Interwebs told me we should celebrate on March 9th: The first site said, "Panic Day!" and then immediately below, the second site said, "Get Over It Day!" Okee-doekey.

Let's talk cards and forget everything else. This is the second Monday of March and my I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is D = Dies and there are a few challenges where the prompt is also dies/die cuts. Plus, I was inspired by the 12th Birthday celebration at the TIMEOUT Challenges. The talented Stef Perry of Perry Papercrafts is the Muse with a beautiful card for us to CASE. 

Stef's card is on the TO prompt below and this is my CASE:

Thank you, Stef, for the inspiration and thank you Nonni and Sandie for starting this wonderful challenge all those years ago!

I started with a piece of schplattered pp and layered that with a piece of embossed paper which I inked using a brayer. 

I'm trying to use some of the thousands of sheets of gorgeous pp I've got, so I used some of it to cut this NBUS die from Alexandra Renke. And then what happened was, I got into a die-cutting fugue and cut about 22 of them! I wish I was kidding, considering I'm trying to use my schtuff, not add to it, but they looked so pretty cut from pp. The gold-embossed sediment was in my stash.

Also playing in AAA Birthday - Die Cuts and Just Us Girls - Die Week.

Morefers

Ahem, speaking of die-cutting fugues! I didn't even count the dozens of butterflies I made. It gets rather addictive! I'm happy to say that I made three of each color before I stopped, which was good for my stash because I was out of birthday cards. And now it occurs to me that I can tuck one or two butterflies in the cards when I send them out. I used a Tim Holtz plaid stencil and the charming sediment is from HLS.

I was inspired by the current sketch by Karren at Freshly Made Sketches and the "Anything With Wings" challenge at Seize the Birthday and 613 Avenue Create Also: Inkspirational - Use stencils (option plaid) and Krafty Chicks - Birthday and Just Add Ink (Stencils-Dies or Both).

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

And remember, go ahead and panic, but only for a little bit, and then get over it! 

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!

Color Hues Guest Designer!

Hello Stamplings!

Surprise! I'm popping in on a Sunday because I have the great honor of being a Guest Designer for the current color challenge at Color Hues! As you'll see, I had a lot of fun with the colors, so grab a beverage and a snackidoodle!

There are so many wonderful options for designs using green and gold! I was brainstorming many of them with a dear friend and she suggested get well cards, in line with the saying, "You look green around the gills." 

Next was deciding what to use to convey that message in an amusing way. It was hard choosing from the Critter Drawer, but Hammy pointed out that the "Doggy Kisses Set" from Art Impressions was still on Mt. NBUS ...

Doesn't this sad Basset Hound convey feeling low and sickly and green around the gills? You just want to hug him.💚I used my green Ziggies and Delicato metallic Golden Glitz reinker to paint him. You can't see it, but Hammy winked the green to match the schparkle of the gold. I used green and gold pp and a paws e/f for the background. The sediment is "Letter It" from Ranger.

Then another doggie caught my eye:

This poor guy looks very green around the gills, but something tells me he is not enjoying the get-well hug from the house cat ... even if the house cat is made out of gold! And here you can see the green schparkle from my little winker! These goofy characters are from "Picture Perfect" by My Favorite Things.

And to finish off the theme, I made one more from the Doggie Kisses set:

I apologize for the glossy green vomit, but I couldn't resist! (And here I went and suggested you get a snack. Oops.🤢) I used a stencil for the wallpaper and the NBUS sediment is from Waffle Flowers. It's my favorite get-well sediment ever! 

The little stuffed bear took a bit of creative fussy-cutting and coloring. I took him right out of the arms of another adorable dog in the set:

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What will you choose to play along with the Color Hues challenge this week? Leaves, leprechauns, clovers, frogs, trees, apples, etc. ... the list is long! The very talented Design Team have made delightful cards to further inspire you, so pop over to the blog and check those out! I can't wait to see what you create with GREEN and GOLD! 

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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!