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.)

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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.

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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 intercourse 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.

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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!

Happy Make-More-Cards Week!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well as we whoosh around to the last Monday of February! I'm pickled tink that I managed to post every Monday this month and I so appreciate of all of you visiting and commenting!

I have to admit I "stretched" the title of the post a bit. It should say, "Play More Cards Day" and it was yesterday and only for the day and they don't mean handmade cards, but in the pocket of my tan jacket in the back of the closet you'll find a creative license under the name Art Blanch which allows me libations.

So, hurrazah, let's make more cards this week! It is also the fourth week of the month on my I.D.E.A.S. calendar, so woohoo, A = Anything Goes!

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Goodness, I'll wait while you get your sunglasses! In fact, I'll grab mine, too! The sun turned my springy lime green into sassy Char Truz! I used a NBUS stencil from the "Rising Wildflowers" set from Pinkfresh Studio. The die was out of stock, but rather than tossing the stencil on Mt. NBUS, I went to work blending CP inks and then I went over parts of the flowers with my watercolor pencils for a little more dementia. 

The scalloped frame is from Pink & Main, the NBUS "birthday" die is from Poppystamps, and the tiny "happy" is ancient from WPlus9.

Challenges: Addicted to Stamps and More (Make Your Mark); Colorful Options (Pink/Purple); and Pinkfresh Studio (February).

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When I saw Lisa's Mood Board at Just Us Girls, this design quickly came to mind. When Hammy is over at Daphne's playing with Stanley (and Daphne's dwarf hamster Dwayne), she often gets out her tea set for make-believe. It all starts out well, but before oolong, the lads start scampering, sending everything arse over teacup ~ literally. Fortunately, Daph is a light-heated lass and their antics send her off into peals of laughter! 

I used a NBUS coffee mug die from Simon Says Stamp, cut from a snippet of pretty pp. The hamster stamps and dies are from Your Next Stamp and Your Next Die. The window die is from Poppystamps and I backed it with vellum patterned with silver leaves. It still needed a little sumpthin, so I added some silver baseboard as a ground and fern bits cut from silver using a NBUS "Dainty Ferns Die" from Waffle Flower. The NBUS sediments are from Pinkfresh Studio.

Additional Challenges: Alphabet (V for Volume); Inkspirational (Mug); Critter Crazy (Anything Goes); and Snippets Playground (Use Your Snippets ~ I remembered to take a photo!).

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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! I'm becited to see all your cards this week!♣️🎴

*Life is too short!

     

Happy Lunar New Year!

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome as we whoosh around to another week! Tomorrow begins the Year of the Fire Horse. (That's horse, not hose, like I keep reading it!🙃) If your year has started out sluggishly, get ready to feel renewed engerny! I found this little bridle bit for you:

Given that the Horse is a Yang Fire sign, its energy is audacious, exuberant, and high-spirited. “Put together these Yang qualities of Fire in the Fire Horse, and we have an extremely intense, energetic, fast-moving and action-oriented year ahead."🐎

Onefer

I  should have made you a card with a horse on it. Instead, here is a Fire Dragonfly:

Otherwise known as the Aqua Dragonfly. I used The Greetery's, "Jumbo Curiosity Moth," but changed out the moth body for a dragonfly body I found in my stash. The wings are cut from a piece of brusho'd glossy paper.

The dragonfly was inspired by the layout from Freshly Made Sketches. In order to change up the bottom half of the sketch, and because this is E = Embossing on the I.D.E.A.S. calendar, I embossed the bottom half with a Sizzix e/f. 

I'm not sure if you can see in the photo, but I wanted to add some razzahmatazz to the embossing and, you know, pretend I was a professional, so I blended some light aqua ink over the raised images. Only that was "Ew," way too much aqua per my resident hamster critic, so I really got brave and lightly blended black ink over the aqua! I know, black! I'll be viral, right? I'm also playing in the Allsorts Challenge (Embossing).

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This is a textbook QCAS design. The pretty sprig is NBUS called, "Meadow Grass" from Taylored Expressions. I die-cut it from white cardstock, but for some reason it photographed creamier than it is IRL. Sadly, you can't see Hammy's beautiful winking, which he was so becited to do again!

I'm playing with Seize the Birthday (CAS with Dies) and Addicted to Stamps and More (Die Cuts and/or Stencils).

Threefer

As I was typing this yesterday, I happened to see a couple of more challenges and before the clouds completely covered the sun, I made another CAS design.

I used one of the emboss-resist designs from Stampin' Up for the base. I started by masking off and ink-blending the candle bases in order to follow the sketch from AAA Cards. Then I had a heck off a time trying to figure out how to do the flames. All of my candle flames were too small. I tried free-hand and fussy-cutting them, but I got another "Ew" on that idea. 

Next, I took a field trip through the Playhouse and when I got to my greenery drawers, I hit the jackpot when I came across the "Leaf Canopy Die" from Altenew. It's from 2018 and old now, but it remains one of my favorites and who knew one of the pretty leaves made a perfect candle flame when ink-blended through the negative die-cut?! And even more amazing? I just noticed one of the sediment stamps in the set says, "So happy I have finally found you!"😮

I found a white die-cut balloon and string in my stash and blended them with ink and added the sediment. I'm also playing in The Paper Players challenge from Stef calling for, "CAS with Balloons and Birthday."

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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!