Stenciling Through the Seasons

Hello Stamplings!

I sure hope this finds my European friends feeling much cooler! What a terrible heat wave in areas that are not used to it. (I'm not going to talk about how nice the weather has been here!🤫)

This is a rare fifth Monday of the month as we close out June, which means it is S = Stencils week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar.

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I used a NBUS stencil from Papertrey Ink called, "Wandering Petals." Now, I don't do much stenciling, but I enjoy it. Even though they all sit organized in pretty stripey binders right to the left of my face, I tend to ignore them. It's like the thigh-bone-connected-to-the-knee-bone situation, but in this case, it's more of an organic disconnect from eye to brain. 

Which brings me to sharing a dumb thing I did when stenciling this card. I'm telling you because after I embarrassed myself, then I was amused. But, also, tell me the truth, am I just getting too old for this job?

This is a simple two-stencil stencil. Two. One stencil is the stems and leaves and the other is the petals. It doesn't get much easier than that. I inked the stems and leaves, picked up the petals stencil and the phone rang. After the call, I absent-mindedly lined up the petals stencil over the stem stencil ... and loved how perfectly they lined up! This was a revelation!

But then I lifted the petals stencil and realized why no one else had shared this wonderful technique. Like a do-do, I had simply inked the petals onto the plastic of the stem stencil!🫣

Once I properly inked the petals, I used the stencil to outline the flowers with my fine-point black pen.

And where were my little helpers, you might ask? I clearly need them, but this is their vacation time and they are off to see the cousins. Hammy is slowing down, so I'm glad we have Stanley back to help him on their travels.

Playing in: Addicted to Stamps and More (Die Cuts and/or Stencils); Just Us Girls (Stencil Week); and Simon Says Stamp Wednesday (Anything Goes).

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My Christmas design was schparked by the current sketch at Jingle Belles. I hope you can see the snowflakes. The snowflake stencil is without packaging so, you know, it fits in the above-mentioned binders. I didn't start out planning to go mono chrome, but one minty green thing led to another.  The sweet little snowman is NBUS from Pink & Main. 

Also playing in: ABC Christmas Challenge (L = Let It Snow); Christmas Kickstart Challenge (Snow Day); and Rudolph Days (A/G Christmas).

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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!

I have a busy week ahead with a special July NBUS on the 1st, my birthday on the 2nd, and the 4th of July weekend, so I might not see you next Monday. Stay inky!

Mwah!

*Life is too short!

Cheers!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you well and I hope you had a wonderful Father's Day weekend! The family came for dinner and it was a treat to sit down just with them. (We normally host bigger gatherings.) We were blessed with beautiful weather, which I know isn't the case for some of you. I hope it calms down and cools off where needed!

Today is "Anything Goes" week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, so the sky's the limit. I might be weird (I see you cocking your head at the modifier!), but I don't do as well without boundaries. I have too much schtuff!

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Thankfully, other challenges give me guidance when my mind is going in a million different directions. The current Color Hues challenge by Carol is yellow and black. I've been wanting to bring this very old set from Altenew out of mothballs. This one is called, "Painted Butterflies." They are from 2014! They are easy to layer and since the invention of the MISTI, it's even easier now.

I decided to use the whole set to make my own DSP. The lads did a light ink schplattering and I used a gold and black birthday sediment strip from Memory Box to finish it off.

I'm also playing in: Addicted to Stamps and More (Any Occasion).

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For my Christmas card design, I used the sketch by Narelle from Freshly Made Sketches, but to make it work for my die idea, I turned the sketch on its side. 

The die is "Moose & Pine Trees" from Cottage Cutz. To cut the rectangles and silver panel, I used "Dotted Rectangles" from Sizzix. I struggled with whether to add a sediment and, if so, where, until I saw this teeny tiny "cheers" stamp in the "Holiday Greetings Mix 1" from SSS. It's really a fabulous set of varied sediment stamps.

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I was going to launch into an essay about why deer remain deer even if there is more than one, yet tree becomes trees, if there is more than one. Then, when I typed the above, I saw from the name that the critters on the die were moose, not deer. Still, why don't moose get an 's?' Cows get an 's.' Or, at the very least, shouldn't moose become meese in the way that goose becomes geese?

And who gets to decide these things? They didn't ask me for my opinion. Did they ask you? 

Which reminds me. Did you know watermelons now come in yellow? On the inside? I tried one and it did my head in. It looks yellow, but tastes the same as the traditional red ones! But that begs the question: if it tastes the same as a red one, why make a yellow one?

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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! 

*Life is too short!

Roses Are Any Color!

Hello Stamplings!

O jp[e upir javomg ... oops, right fingers, wrong keys! I hope you are enjoying the long Memorial Day weekend here in America! We will always remember and be forever grateful to all the men and women who have bravely given their lives in service to our country.♡

During the week I did some spring cleaning which I find weirdly enjoyable, but I also made a few cards because, you know, I'm not completely nuts. Did you snicker or was that a hairball in your throat?

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You might recognize both Jen's sketch from Freshly Made Sketches and the colors from Color Hues. My friend Lynette made pretty cards recently using one of my favorite techniques. It is known by many names, but I've always referred to it as 'direct-to-stamp' because you apply color directly to your stamp with markers, spritz the stamp with water, and then stamp the image onto paper. 

I happen to have a NBUS stamp which I thought would be perfect for the technique. It's called "Rose" and it's from Art Stamp (carabelle-studio.fr). I had success using classic red and pink markers for the rose and I was mulling over design ideas for those images when, by some miracle, I remembered the Color Hues colors and wallah! Did you know purple roses symbolize enchantment, love at first sight, royalty, mystery, and spiritual growth? (I think AI got a little carried away there.)

You can't see it, but Hammy gently winked the rose, being careful not to let the colors run. Hammy has very short legs which work great on the wheel, but when it comes to chasing running colors, he just sits and watches. Ask us how we know! The frame is from Papertrey Ink and the sediment is from My Favorite Things. 

I'm also playing in the Allsorts Challenge (Anything Goes). Allsorts is celebrating their 17th birthday! Congratulations!!

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I used a NBUS book die from Pinkfresh Studio called "Floral Tale" for this design. It comes with lots of stencils and flower dies, but for this inaugural outing, I made a Christmas card design using evergreens. The NBUS 3D e/f is from SSS, called "Delicate Pine Branches." The tiny evergreen stamp and sediment are from GKW.

Today is the 25th, which means it's the start of this month's Rudolph's Day Challenge and the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is A = Anything Goes. I'm also playing in Addicted to Stamps and More (Christmas).

Stanley Redux

Just as a reminder Hammy and Stanley went to stay with our neighbors last year while The Mister was laid up. During that time, their little girl Daphne fell in love with Stanley, so he continued living with her and we walked back and forth often to let the lads have time together. 

Last week we learned from Daphne that her Dad had been transferred and the family was moving to Sydney. Sadly for her, hamsters are not allowed in Australia. We had quite an emotional goodbye with lots of stories, hugs, and tears. 

We will miss Daphne, but happily for us, Stanley is back home and the two critters are elastic to be back together again! And Hammy and I can use the young 'un around here to keep us on our toes!

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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! 

*Life is too short!

Happy California Poppy Day!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing great! We had a lovely Easter and I'm writing this on Sunday night, stuffed to the gills! I don't actually have gills, so I don't know why people say that, but I'm stuffed to there, so this will be a quickie. 

The carrot cake for dessert did it. Next year I'm having dessert first!

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Today really is California Poppy Day. It is one of my favorite springtime flowers here. They pop up everywhere along roadsides and in yards and by the thousands at the California Poppy Reserve. 

This poppy is from "Creative Chaos" by Visible Image. It is the first Monday of the month which means I = Ink on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. I used one of my favorite mediums ~ my Ziggies. I had my little helper add the schparkle with his winking and a simple black card base and Memory Box black and gold sediment finished it off.

Playing in: Allsorts Challenge (Springtime or A/G), CAS on Friday (Botanicals), Dragonfly Dreams April Challenge (CAS).

And there are two challenges where the theme includes "E" is for ?. I think the poppy is "E"nchanting" so I'm also playing in: AAA Card (It starts with E) and Inkspirational (CAS with option of E).

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The toadstools are from The Greetery called, "BotaniCuts Toadstool Garden" stamp and die set. I'm not sure who makes the postage stamp die; I think I might have borrowed a friend's die at one of my past craft retreats. 

The border uses some ancient dotted swiss paper which I cut with my old pinking shears. That's right ~ those huge pinking shears for cutting fabric! They haven't been used for that since the dark ages, but I pulled them out of the dusty sewing box because years ago I donated my 50 pairs of little colored skizzors that we all had with different teeth designs. Ah, the memories of the early craft days before die-cutting and dies and embossing folders.

Gee, boomer, you ask, just how old are you?!

Playing in: Addicted to Stamps and More (Any Occasion), Freshly Made Sketches, Krafty Chicks (Birthday), and Die-Cut Divas.

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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! 

*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!

Onefer

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).

Twofer

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!