NBUS Challenge #10!

Greetings, NBUSers!

Today is the start of the third and last week of my 5-year blog birthaversary! I'm blown away by how many of you have enthusiastically joined in the celebrations and I've loved seeing and pinning your remarkable creations! Thank you!

If you would like to see week one of the celebrations (NBUS Challenge #8) and the gallery, click here; for week two (NBUS Challenge #9), click here.

The basic idea of this challenge is evident in the name. You are to use schtuff never before used (virginal) on your creation. It can be something you've had for years or something you got yesterday. For the history of NBUS and to see prior challenges, please see the tab above or click HERE.

January 30, 2017 ~ February 5, 2017

🔹Please use a NBUS item and share what it is.
🔹Please follow using the blue "Follow" button on the side bar.
🔹Please only enter this challenge three times with new work only.
🔹Please only enter four other challenges, for a total of five, including this one.
🔹Please mention the NBUS Challenge and link your post back here.
🔹Please leave encouraging comments on each other's creations.
🔹Please click HERE for how you enter if you don't have a blog.
🔹Please enjoy!

Note: These are all NEW prizes for this week's challenge!

1. $25 gift card. Winner's choice to any American company. [GC]
2. $25 gift card. Winner's choice to any American company. [GC]
3. Scor-Buddy scoring tool [SB]
4. Mini MISTI Stamping Tool. [M]
5. Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens [Z]

I will hold three separate drawings for each of the three NBUS Challenges. Winners of ALL THREE challenges will be published on February 13, 2017. These prizes are open to participants from all over the world who enter their creation in the gallery.

Important: In your comment (or after your name in the gallery when you link up), please indicate which of the prizes you would like to win by including the alpha letter(s) shown above after the name of the prize. If you have no preference, please indicate [ANY]. 

To be fair, for the non-gift certificate items, please don't request them if you already own them or something substantially similar. If you do not make an indication of your preference, I will assume that you do not want to be included in the drawing for a prize. 

Contact Information:  Also, if you and I have not communicated via email in the past five years, please make sure you use the secure "contact me" form on the right to provide me with your email address! Commenting doesn't always provide me with your email information if you are a No-Reply blogger. If I can't contact you, you can't win!  💙

🔹🔹🔹

This week I have to explain my optional theme before I show you my card.

There is only one optional theme for this challenge and credit for the idea goes to my friend Harriet. I mentioned to her that I was trying to think of unique themes and she suggested that I check and see what today's "National Day of . . ." was. You know how there is always something being celebrated every day of the year, like National Day of the Hot Dog, or National Day of Celebrating Corduroy, or National Day of Hippopotamus Toenails, etc.. 

Well, I did check and, by golly, I found something!

Today is "National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day!" 

Squee!! 

So for your optional theme this week you can:

a) use Bubble Wrap in some way or some fashion on your creation (maybe you have a bubble wrap stencil?), or 

b) use bubbles, or use wrap, or use some other unusual material in some way, or

c) check and see what "National Day" is being celebrated on the day you make something for the challenge. To find out what is being celebrated each day throughout the week-long challenge, just click here for the days of January and here for the days of February.

That's it. Have fun!

Remember, the theme is OPTIONAL.

~~~

Here we go with what I did to inspire you. (Did you get your dwink and sumstenance?)

I cut a piece of bubble wrap and randomly dropped drops of alcoholic inks. I've never seen this done before, but it prolly has been. It was really fun! I didn't try it with reinkers or other liquid inks, but I can't wait to see the results if you try it!

As I dropped inks, I stopped after every few additions of ink and took a piece of glossy card and placed it upside down (glossy side down) onto the bubble wrap. Then I placed my large acrylic block on top of the piece of card and gently but firmly pressed the card into the bubble wrap for a couple of seconds. Bubble wrap smooching, if you will! Then I lifted the card, set it aside, and kept going, applying more drops of different colors, and repeating the process.

Ten minutes later and I had the makings for several cards!

~~~

And here are the finished cards!

I happened to have a piece of acetate on my desk at the time and I held it over the glossy inked paper and I loved the extra shine from the acetate. So I used my NBUS MFT Die-Namics "Stitched Rectangle Frame" die to finish the design. Each card looks like a framed photo under glass which is pretty darn cool, if I do say so me wee self.

The horizontal card shown above was one of the last presses (smooches) I did and for that I used a piece of nonglossy card stock just to see how it would do. It did great, but I like the bubble wrap effect better on the glossy paper. The NBUS sediment on the horizontal card is "Label Tape," also from MFT. The "Celebrate" sediment on the vertical cards is also NBUS and it's from PTI's "Bold and Beautiful Sentiments" stamp set.

~~~

When I was finished and I started to clean up, Hammy threw a carrot carat at my head and said, "Hold on there, Missy. Don't you think the bubble wrap itself is the prettiest part of this whole Rigguma Roll?"

As usual, he was right!  The photos don't really capture how brilliant and shiny the bubble wrap is, but each circle looks like a tiny brightly colored glass marble in real life!

So I threw the carrot back at his head (which he deftly caught between his paws), divided the wrap in two, and made these cards:

I taped the bubble wrap to a snippet of card and then framed it with foam and set it aside. I next taped a snippet of acetate behind the front card opening and then sandwiched the two together like you would do for a shaker card and applied the die-cut words from Winnie & Walter. 

~~~

Enjoy your day! Enjoy NBUS Challenge #10! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse. Thank you very much for participating in these NBUS Challenges and for being incredible friends and followers and supporters! Your friendship and your encouraging comments keep me going! MWAH!

If you have any questions, please use the contact form on the right or email darnell dot knauss at gmail dot com. And, remember, if you want to be in the drawing for a prize, please make sure to let me know which prize you want and your email address!

Edited to add: My surgery went well! I'm pretty much sleeping if off and the stitches are still angry, but every day is a huge improvement over the day before. (I can add that being on pain pills does not improve one's pygint skills!) THANK YOU with all my heart for all your emails, comments, and cards! MWAH!

*Life is too short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling:

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Click Page Down to reach the end of the post.

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Click "Jump to Comment Form" and walla, no more car pool tunnel!

Mwah!

If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me

your email address so I can respond. Thank you!

An InLinkz Link-up

NBUS Challenge #9!

Greetings, NBUSers!

Today is the start of the second week of my three-week blog birthaversary NBUS celebration!! As I am wont to do in my talkative way, this is a novelette, so grab yourself a large drinkie-poo and a boxed lunch!

The basic idea of this challenge is evident in the name. You are to use schtuff never before used (virginal) on your creation. It can be something you've had for years or something you got yesterday. For the history of NBUS and to see prior challenges, please see the tab above or click HERE. 

If you would like to see last week's challenge information and gallery, click HERE.

January 23, 2017 ~ January 29, 2017

🔹Please use a NBUS item and share what it is.

🔹Please follow using the blue "Follow" button on the side bar.

🔹Please only enter this challenge three times with new work only.

🔹Please only enter four other challenges, for a total of five, including this one.

🔹Please mention the NBUS Challenge and link your post back here.

🔹Please leave encouraging comments on each other's creations.

🔹Please click HERE for how you enter if you don't have a blog.

🔹Please enjoy!

Note: These are all NEW prizes for this week's challenge!

1. $25 gift card. Winner's choice to any American company. [GC]
2. $25 gift card. Winner's choice to any American company. [GC]
3. Adhesive Tape Glider and three tape refills. [ATG]
4. Mini MISTI Stamping Tool. [M]
5. Chameleon Pens [CP]

I will hold three separate drawings for each of the three NBUS Challenges. Winners of ALL THREE challenges will be published on February 13, 2017. These prizes are open to participants from all over the world who enter their creation in the gallery. (The ATG is gently used.)

Important: In your comment (or after your name in the gallery when you link up), please indicate which of the prizes you would like to win by including the alpha letter(s) shown above after the name of the prize. If you have no preference, please indicate [ANY]. To be fair, for the non-gift certificate items, please don't request them if you already own them or something substantially similar. If you do not make an indication of your preference, I will assume that you do not want to be included in the drawing for a prize. 

Contact Information:  Also, if you and I have not communicated via email in the past five years, please make sure you use the secure "contact me" form on the right to provide me with your email address! Commenting doesn't always provide me with your email information if you are a No-Reply blogger. If I can't contact you, you can't win!  💙

~~~

OPTIONAL THEME?

Thank you so much to all of you who tackled the optional theme last week of using colored pencils on kraft! I was so glad to see all the enthusiasm and find out I wasn't the only one who had never tried that technique!

Even though I mentioned several times in my post last week that the theme was optional, there was still some confusion. So this week I'm going to put the optional theme(s) further down in the post to differentiate the required from the optional. 

Feel free to stop here if you just want to make a creation using something NBUS. That's perfectly fine and I can't wait to see what you make!

🔹🔹🔹

If you'd like to check out the Optional Theme(s), read on!

My inspiration card:

I used a heart e/f from Sizzix for SU on the top and bottom of the card base and I added score lines with my Scor-Buddy. For the hidden word panel of the card, I used an ancient heart stamp from SU. You can't really see it, but it is heat-embossed with red e/p. 

Then I cut out the "hello" from the panel using a NBUS die by WPlus9. To give the hidden word dimension, I cut another hello from a piece of adhesive white fun foam, glued it to the top die cut and inserted the word back into the negative opening. A few splatters and baby pearls and wallah!

~~~

OPTIONAL Theme Elements

1.  The first optional theme I used this week is a NBUS Technique called "Hidden Word" or "Camouflaged Word" or, if you want to get technical "Steganography."

Steganography is the practice of concealing a file, message, image, or video within another file, message, image, or video. The word combines the Greek words steganos, meaning "covered, concealed, or protected", and graphein meaning "writing."

This practice goes all the way back to 1499, so you see how ridiculously tardy I feel finally getting around to trying this technique!

2.  The second optional element I used this week is CASEing. I am going to try and do more CASEing (copy and share everything) this year. I originally wrote a whole section on what CASEing means, how I interpret it, etc., but this post got too long (even for me!), so if you are new to this hobby or would like more information about CASEing, please use the Contact Form on the side bar to let me know.

Note: The most essential element to CASEing is that you give the original artist credit. If you don't know the artist because you found the card you are CASEing on Pinterest, etc., then include a link to your source.

Now let me show you the friend I CASEd this week and her card. She is Chrissie Stokes of Simply One of a Kind and here is HER card:

I think Chrissie's card is just gorgeous and so perfect as inspiration for the upcoming Valentine's Day holiday! Note: Chrissie made her hidden word card by making two stamped images of the heart and superimposing her die-cut word over the other one on the base, rather than die-cutting directly from her card base as I did. Either way is fine. You can see Chrissie's original post here.

It was fun CASEing a friend and finally making a stegosauri whatchacallit card! I've always thought this technique looked so neat when I've seen it done. 

I look forward to seeing you try either (or both) optional themes for NBUS Challenge #9, but remember, it's strictly voluntary!

~~~

Enjoy your day! Enjoy the surprise NBUS Challenges! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse. Thank you very much for participating and for being incredible friends and followers and supporters! Your friendship and your encouraging comments keep me going! MWAH!

Remember, if you have any questions, please use the contact form on the right or email darnell dot knauss at gmail dot com. Also, if you want to be in the drawing for a prize, please make sure to let me know which prize you want and your email address!! 

~~~

Edited to add:

I wanted you to know that I was recently scheduled for abdominal surgery this coming Friday, January 27th to repair a prolapsed bladder. 👵 

First my face fell into lovely pouches called jowls, 

then my boobs fell into size 44 extra-extra long, 

and now my bladder is trying to fall out my hoohaw!

Surely, fallen arches will be next! 

I decided not to cancel the NBUS celebrations because I've been planning this for months, the posts were scheduled already, and I know you look forward to them. So do I! I just didn't want you to worry if you don't see much of me in Comment Land for a while and let you know that even if I'm not up to commenting, I promise I will be visiting all who enter and pinning your cards to my special NBUS Pinterest Boards! Thank you for understanding! 💗

(And please be careful, ladies. The medical literature online indicates that a leading cause of prolapsed bladders is repeatedly jumping up and down when NBUS goodies arrive!)

*Life is too short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling:

Click CTL + Home. 
Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post.
Click Page Down to reach the end of the post.
Click Comments and a pop-up box opens.
Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel!
Mwah!
If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me
your email address so I can respond. Thank you!

An InLinkz Link-up

Blog Birthaversary SURPRISE! NBUS Challenge #8!

Greetings, my friends!

Today is a day of many celebrations for me and I'm becited to share them with you! You're gonna wanna grab a jumbo beverage and maybe a large sammich.

First, and most importantly, it is the 46th wedding anniversary of me and the Mister! Trust me when I say it seems like 146 years! No. Stop it! It truly does feel like we've only just begun, which just happened to be our wedding song! Happy Anniversary, K2, and cheers to many more loving years together!!

Second, today is the 5th anniversary or birthday or, as I like to say, birthaversary of this little ol' blog! I'm delighted to have become friends with over 1,000 like-minded card artists in that time and written over 1,000 posts! I'm very passionate about this hobby and hope I'll be able to continue for many more years.

Third, as you can see, I've had a face-lift for the special event thanks to my friend Loll! She took a piece of Brusho art that I had created to make a custom background, which I love. And since so many of you use my first name rather than my blog name when you mention me, I decided to change the header design with Loll's help. I hope you like it! Thank you so much, Loll! 

~~~

I couldn't let my blog birthaversary go by without throwing a giant NBUS PARTY now could I? No way! So here we go!

For this event (and this event only) I am running three NBUS Challenges back-to-back for three weeks, with a different challenge running each of the three weeks. Each week there will be different prizes and themes. 

• So today is NBUS Challenge #8, which will run for a week. There is an optional theme and five prizes, and you can enter three times;
• Next Monday, January 23rd, will be NBUS Challenge #9 which will run for a week. It will have a new optional theme(s), and five new prizes, and a chance to enter three more cards; and 
• Then the next Monday, January 30th, will be NBUS Challenge #10 which will run for a week. It will have a new optional theme, five new prizes, and a chance to enter three more cards.
• Winners for all three challenges will be published in one post on February 13, 2017. 

Squee!! Let's have fun with our bad selves and our NBUS!

The basic idea of this challenge is evident in the name. You are to use schtuff never before used (virginal) on your creation. It can be something you've had for years or something you got yesterday. For the history of NBUS and to see prior challenges, please see the tab above or click HERE.

January 16, 2017 ~ January 22, 2017

🔹Please use a NBUS item and share what it is.

🔹Please follow using the blue "Follow" button on the side bar.

🔹Please only enter this challenge three times with new work only.

🔹Please only enter four other challenges, for a total of five, including this one.

🔹Please mention the NBUS Challenge and link your post back here.

🔹Please leave encouraging comments on each other's creations.

🔹Please click HERE for how you enter if you don't have a blog.

🔹Please enjoy!

In the past, other than the requirement that you use NBUS, I've run Anything Goes challenges. For this NBUStival, however, there will be fun specific optional themes. 

Personally, in addition to using NBUS this year, I'm challenging myself to start using those NBUS techniques that I've been meaning to try for ages. (These techniques are old ones that many of you have done before and I'm just late to the party.) 

So for this challenge I would like you to join me and

Note: If your thing is using colored pencils on kraft and you've done it a million times, or you don't own any colored pencils, or you don't own any kraft paper, I would love it if you could instead try some other NBUS technique, something you've been meaning to try. Please share with us what it is. Of course, you still must use some NBUS product. I do hope a lot of you will be able to use colored pencils on kraft if at all possebley, because it will look really cool in the gallery, but remember, this theme is entire optional!

For the September NBUS Challenge #7, there were no prizes, just to see if you were entering because of the prizes or because I encouraged you to use your NBUS. You proved you played whether there were prizes or not (thank you!), but this milestone calls for PRIZES!

These prizes are open to everyone worldwide, provided the rules are followed.

1. $25 gift card. Winner's choice to any American company. [GC]
2. $25 gift card. Winner's choice to any American company. [GC]
3. Faber Castell Polychromos. [P]
4. Mini MISTI Stamping Tool. [M]
5. Clarity Stencil Brushes. [C]

Important: In your comment (or after your name in the gallery when you link up), please indicate which of the prizes you would like to win by including the alpha letter(s) shown after the name of the prize. To be fair, for the non-gift certificate items, please don't request them if you already own them or something substantially similar. If you want to participate in the drawing and would be happy with any of the prizes, please type [ANY] in your comment. 

If you do not make an indication of your preference, I will assume that you do not want to be included in the drawing for a prize! Thank you!

Also, if you and I have not communicated via email in the past five years, please make sure you use the secure "contact me" form on the right to provide me with your email address! Commenting doesn't always provide me with your email information if you are a No-Reply Blogger. If I can't contact you, you can't win! 💙

I will hold three separate drawings for each of the three NBUS Challenges, but winners of ALL THREE challenges will be published on February 13, 2017.

~~~

Here is my entry as inspiration for you.

The swooning lady is Madge from Art Impressions. I just found via Google that Art Impressions has a challenge and the current challenge is about trying new techniques, so I'm going to enter Madge over there!

For the sediment, I did a little creative and unauthorized manipulation of a "You Make Me Smile" stamp from CFS. You can see it here:

I just masked the "mile" and handwrote "woon" instead. I mean, don't get me wrong, the Mister still makes me smile, too, but with the fabulous posturating of the theatrical Madge, I had to acknowledge that he still makes me swoon, too!

Then I thought, well, maybe I can kick it up a notchlet, so I did this to it:

Funner.

~~~

And then what happened was, right after I finished the above card, I got my Happy Mail and in it was a NBUS stamp from Penny Black ("Kisses For My Sweet"), which I've been loving for quite a while and finally bought. How could I not make another card for this special day? It isn't colored pencils on kraft, but it is NBUS!

I used my Zig KGT paints to watercolor the sweet couple. I embossed the side with a heart e/f from Sizzix for SU and offset the panel onto a matchy-matchy card base. The sediment is from Papertrey Ink. A crop-o-dile chomped the corner.

Here is the most recent picture of the Mister and me at Christmas at the Mister's sister's house holding the Mister's sister's dog Cisco. (Sorry I made you spit with all those esthes.) We're not looking too bad for being 78-years-old and married for 46 years, huh?! Well, oookay, we're not that old, but you did think we were looking especially good there for a second, dincha?! 

~~~

Enjoy your day! Enjoy the surprise NBUS Challenges! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse. Thank you very much for participating and for being incredible friends and followers and supporters! Your friendship and your encouraging comments keep me going! MWAH! 

If you have any questions, please use the contact form on the right or email darnell dot knauss at gmail dot com. And, remember, if you want to be in the drawing for a prize, please make sure to let me know which prize you want and how I can contact you!!

*Life is too short!

Let's also celebrate Dr. King today!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling:

Click CTL + Home. 
Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post.
Click Page Down to reach the end of the post.
Click Comments and a pop-up box opens.
Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel!
Mwah!
If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me
your email address so I can respond. Thank you!

An InLinkz Link-up