What in the World?

Hello Stamplings!

I have to say, it's hard keeping our chins up after this Easter weekend of severe winter weather in many states and devastating tornadoes in many others. What in the world is going on with the weather? As if the virus wasn't enough of a test! My heart and prayers go out to any of you who have been impacted. 

As for us, we were fortunate to have a lovely weekend, although it was surreal because we usually have a houseful. We did have a great video chat with the prodigals and we are looking forward to having our postponed holiday and long-overdue hugs as soon as we can. 

Onefer

I meant to post this card yesterday, but then I started doing a complete purge and clean of the Playhouse just to be doing something productive and distracting and I forgot all about my post. You know how much I love me some purging and cleaning!

The two cards today were made as part of my recent campaign to use all the focus pocuses in my BOB (box o' bits). I colored the lilies (from PTI) with my Ziggies and had Hammy wink them while we were at our Indiana retreat.

Challenges

• CAS Watercolour: Spring Flowers.
• The Flower Challenge: Spring/Autumn.
• Make My Monday: Spring Flowers.

Twofer

This card panel was made at last year's ESCR retreat in Vancouver. We all smooched backgrounds and then Susan taught us how to bleach our images with splashless bleach. I added bling to the flower centers and two sediment strips from Simon Says Stamp which I framed in black. It seemed an appropriate greeting for someone right now. (Maybe I should send it to myself!)

Challenges

• Alphabet Challenge: A is for Anything Goes.
• CAS Mix Up: Bleaching. (Plus stamping and ink blending - smooching.)
• TIME OUT: Inspired by Words.

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Since I'm a little out of shorts today, I'll leave you with these funnies shared by friends. It's important to keep our senses of humor and there are some very clever people out there helping make sure we do that!

This morning I saw my neighbor talking to her cat. It was obvious that she thought her cat understood her. I came into the house and told my dog. We laughed a lot.

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Take care, stay in, and keep safe!

*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! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)

Holiday Branches

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you're having a great week! I'm knee-deep in all products Christmas and am shocked (as I am every year) by how much of it is NBUS. Do you think Hammy has figured out how to get on the computer in the middle of the night and order things?! I'm not complaining because it's like Christmas when the mail comes, but he needs to finger out a way to give me more hours in the day to USE everything!

Anyhoozle, we're all busy this time of year, so I'll prolly do more posts, but quick ones, just to share the cards I'm making which may spark ideas for you. Today I have cards I made using a NBUS full-size Holiday Branches stamp from Echo Park. The design itself is a CASE of a card made by Jenny Mullens, which  I saved from a Craft Stamper magazine ages ago. Thank you, Jenny!

The great thing about using a full-size stamp is that you can cut it in half and make two cards using the same design, as I've done here, or you can cut it into even smaller pieces for borders, small panels, etc. Wait. What? Clumsy me. What I meant to say was you can cut the stamped panel in half, not the actual stamp! (Is it bedtime yet?)

To begin the card, I did a watercolor smooch panel on mixed media paper using shades of green Distress Ink. (It's Evergreen Spruce that takes on a bluish tint.) For the first card above, the white heat-embossed sediment is from The Ton. The die-cut sediment on the second card is from Creative Expressions. The white paint lines on both cards were made with a Pen-Touch paint pen, a gift from Lolly, and the schplatters are watered down gouache paint.

Challenges for card one:

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Make your mark.
• CAS Watercolor: Monochrome.
• CAS Christmas: Warm and cozy.

Challenges for card two:

• Country View: Hand-stamped.
• Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas: Anything Christmas goes.
• Krafty Chicks: {Winter.}

 

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Here's one of another Twofer I made using the same stamp heat-embossed in white. I wanted to show you how pretty it looks on gold paper. The yummy-textured snow paper is from my friend Chrissie. I'm don't know the manufacturer of the Be Merry die. I used an American Crafts gold metallic pen for the transition line.

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps: Anything goes.
• Cards for Galz: Let it snow.
• Christmas Kickstart: Snow.

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Please keep the residents and fire fighters in New South Wales Oz, in your prayers as they deal with the catastrophic fires.

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! Please let me know you came by so I can be sure and return the flavor!

Note to Bette: I don't have your email address, so I hope you see this. Chester's card was made by Cornelia. The stamps used for Chester are from Cats on Appletrees. In the future, if you ever have any questions about the card illustrations on The Back Stories, you can always click on Cornelia's name at the bottom of the story and that will take you to her blog for details about her amazing cards. Thank you for asking!

*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! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)

It Feels Like It Was Just Yesterday!

Hello Stamplings!

How have you bean? It seems like forever since I've seen you. Last week I shut down the computer for four days, opened a box of Get 'er Done and Hammy and I made 73 card fronts from beautiful pp I've been hoarding. The kind of beautiful watercolored pp that just needs a sediment and maybe a bit of bling, but not too much because the paper itself is the star of the card.

Each one took very little time to do once we got a rhythm going and I'm sure it will take longer to finish them off as cards! But we'll do it little by little, lit by the euphoria of filling the stash box and having accomplished something that's been on the Todo List for ages!

Speaking of ages, today we are celebrating longevity, sticktoitiveness, and contentment. My card:

I used an MFT photo booth frame. Both the young couple and the old couple are stamps by Penny Black. The beer is NBUS from Tim Holtz. I watercolored the images with my Ziggies, ahem, after I inserted them in the frames. Slap! The sediment is from Paper Smooches. I believe the numbers are from PTI. 

This is a surprise card I made for The Mister to celebrate the fact that we met 50 years ago on September 5, 1969. We met at a kegger in the woods. A kegger is a gathering of college and working kids to eat junk food and drink a keg of beer. Hence the beer image! While our meeting that day was brief, it was very memorable. It took me two more weeks to catch him become his steady  girlfriend and we married a year and three months later.

Challenges

• Cardz 4 Guyz: Celebrate.
• CAS Mix Up: Inchies. Stamping, die-cutting, and watercoloring.
• CAS Watercolour: Complimentary colors. Green and red.
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: Use your snippets!
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday: Stamp it.
• SSS Work It Wednesday: Celebrate.

  

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I used the photo booth frame for my card because we had this photo booth picture taken shortly after we met when we were 20 years old. We adulted early in those days.

And here we are today ... I love this guy and he just gets handsomer!

Fifty years, fifty pounds, and fifty million laughs later and we still fancy each other quite a lot! We feel very blessed. 

What's that? The secret? An attitude of gratitude and consideration. We've never stopping saying please and thank you. And, most importantly, separate bathrooms!

~~~

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! Please let me know you came by so I can be sure and return the flavor!

*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! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)

Through the Seasons

Hello Stamplings!

How's your week going? I know I've been posting a lot this past week, but because of a busy first half of the month, everything card-related got pushed and now I'm up against some challenges closing so I've got a Fourfer for you. Ah, that was sweet of you not to groan.

I promise I'll be quick, but I'll wait a sec if you want to get a drink and put that lumbar pillow behind your back. Doe a deer, a female deer, re, a drop of golden sun, mi, a name ... oh, hi. I was just humming while I waited for you.

Here we go!

Onefer

I've used NBUS butterflies from Memory Box cut from a watercolor background for this design. The dies are called "Drifting Side Butterfly" and "Flitter Side Butterfly." 

Challenges

• CAS Watercolour August Challenge: Colorful butterflies.
• Country View Challenge: Texture.
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday: Clean and simple.

Twofer

I liked it so much, I made a few more of these colorful butterfly designs. For this one, I added gems and a birthday sediment.

Challenges

• Cardz 4 Galz: Wings.
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: Use your snippity bits and pieces.
• Seize the Birthday: With toppings option of butterflies.

Threefer

I made this simple design using a plaid stencil and a bottle of NBUS Wendy Vecchi Pearl Mica Spray. I am intrigued that the Pearl spray appears silver when sprayed on the black. The stencil is "Tim Holtz Layering Stencil Plaid THS097."

Challenges

• CAS on Friday: Use a stencil.
• CAS Stencil: Sprays.
• Watercooler Wednesday: Marsha's masculine anything goes.

By the way, the shimmer is amazing in reality:

After spraying the stencil inside a big box, I quickly flipped it over onto another piece of black card and was able to get another shimmery panel. It's lighter, of course, but still visible enough to grow up to be a card some day.

I have to say that was fun. I've had this spray for ages and never used it. I have occasionally tried other sprays in the past without much success. I really appreciate the CAS stable of challenges for inspiring me to step outside - literally - and try new things! 

Here's a tip I saw on a blog (I'm sorry I didn't note which one): When you spray, don't point the spray at the paper. Lay a big box on its side and place the paper flat on the side that is now the floor of the box. Then, instead of pointing your nozzle at the paper, point it at the back of the box and you'll get lovely coverage just from the falling mist and there won't be much piddling. It worked for me. (I hope it wasn't just a spray manufacturer telling us to do it this way! 😏)

Fourfer

This is another card panel I made at the 2019 ESCR. The card is glossy black and the embossed snowflakes were made by pushing a glittery paste through a snowflake stencil. Again, very schparkly in real life between the glossy card and the glitter in the paste. I used Nancy's technique where you cut strips out of the image panel for a little extra interest. I think the sediment is from PTI?

Challenges

• CAS Christmas Card August Challenge: Glitter.
• Cupcake Inspirations: Glitter.
• The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge: Anything Christmas goes.
• Merry Little Christmas Challenge: Anything Christmas goes.

 

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Thank you for making it to the end! I try to only do two cards per post because I know it's hard to remember them by the time you get to the end. Oh, and before you ask why I didn't mention Hammy's help with these, he is away at the annual hamster convention in Bellingham WA in honor of Mr. Saddlebags.

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! Please let me know you came by so I can be sure and return the flavor!

*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! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)