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!

July 13, 2026

Die-Cuts Through the Seasons

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome! I missed you last week! I hope you are enjoying summer/winter and keeping well! 

I also missed Inky week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, but I got a wee bit inky anyway for my Onefer for this week's D = Die Cuts.
I think this is self-exploratory, but I will lay out the ingredients because it's a lot for a CASlicious design. The corduroy-effect card base is from the last century and you know from past posts that I have to spend some quiet time fondling the ridges before I can finally get to work on the card. For the frame and waves, I used hammered card.

The frame is NBUS from Papertrey Ink called, "Reflections: November Dies." The little Ziggie-watercolored sailboat is from a set of two dies called, "Marina Sailboats" from Poppystamps. The "friend" die is from Sissix. The waves are from a set by Simon Says called, "Border Waves." With all these ingredients, it really made itself with just a bit of glue from me.

Playing in the sketch (by Donna) challenge at Freshly Made SketchesJust Us Girls (Word Week: Play); and Cardz 4 Galz (For a Friend or Friendship).

Twofer
This design is very QACAS. While I had the frame dies out, I wanted to use the largest die and I wanted to play in this month's CAS Christmas challenge (and others), so the spotlight image inside the frame had to be a snowman. 

The only hard part of the card was deciding which of my snow peeps to use, especially without my helpers here. In the end, I chose one of my favorites from Purple Onion. I don't know if the snowman has a name, but I think we should call him Button. (I'm not known for the most original names when I'm anthropomorphizing.)

But I digest. I stamped and gold-embossed Button onto a panel of creamy, lightly speckly paper. I used an ancient gold glitter pen to color the scarf, nose, button, and a bit of grounding. I decided not to use a sediment stamp. It seemed repugnant.

Playing in: CAS Christmas (Snowman); Color Hues (Cream and Gold); and Time Out (Water. Because, I mean, snow is made of water, right?)


BTW

Do you have any hacks for getting rid of ground squirrels? We've had some ground squirrels fledge, or whatever you call it when baby ground squirrels grow big enough to come out from under one's deck.😶

Luckily there are only three of them, but they (and their parents) are enough to cause a lot of tunnels to suddenly appear ... including through and under our beautiful retaining wall which I'm afraid will collapse. And we certainly don't want these young'uns having their own babies here some day! 

We have called several exterminator companies to trap them or help us convince them they don't want to live here. So far all of them have said, "Nope. We don't do ground squirrels!"  

But, golly, they sure are cute!
Oh, sorry, that's a bunny we saw on our walk. 

Here you go:
While they look like baby regular squirrels that have bushy tails, this is as big as ground squirrels get. They are little guys with enormous claws ~ little digging machines! 

And in case you are wondering, Nellie isn't phasing them a bit! They are lightening fast and just dip out of sight when she appears. (I hope they are gone before Hammy and Stanley get back!)

Speaking of Nellie, she turns 15 years old today!! Happy Birthday, fluffy girl!

~~~

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!

Mwah!
*Life is too short!