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!).

~~~

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 St. Patrick's Day! (I.D.E.A.S. Calendar E = Embossing)

Hello Stamplings! ☘☘☘

I hope you're doing well as we celebrate the day Erin goes braghless! Wait. What? It's "Éire go brách" and it means "Ireland forever." The Mister is 50% Irish thanks to his sainted mother, so that makes me Irish by association, at least for one day a year. Plus leftovers.

This is week three on my I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, so it's E = Embossing (any which way).

Onefer

The embossing folder featured in this design is an ancient brick wall e/f by Tim Holtz, using the debossed side. It's been in my BOB for a long time because I originally used a very red (you might say a brick red) ink swiped over the whole thing. How to tone it down? I ended up swiping over it with my Dew Drop Brilliance "Platinum Planet" and I was really pickled at the pretty color and sheen that resulted.

I noticed that Just Us Girls (Word Week) wanted "Green" and so did Simon Says Stamp Wednesday, so I pondered through my various leafy choices. I didn't have any sham rocks, so I chose a NBUS die called, "Garden Tub Filler," by The Greetery, cut from a lovely very gated green pp. For the tub, I used The Greetery's "Pretty Pot" die and I managed to find a teeny-weeny Happy Birthday stamp for the sediment. (A good time to once again thank Iliana for the invention of the MISTI!)

After I finished my card with a marker line border, I saw that the Colorful Options challenge for March had a cute mood board called, "It's Not Easy Being Green," with Kermit and friends. The next thing I know, Hammy, who had been on my shoulder looking at the monitor, started jumping up and down and clapping! Any fool knows you can't do that without falling, so he rolled down my arm and into the bag of M&Ms on my lap. I have no idea how they got there, but, of course, they went flying and I had to grab Nellie because she'll eat anything. Phew! Never a dull moment!

Where was I? Oh, yes, I was sharing that Hammy got excited because he has been playing with my little collection of old froggie buttons for years, waiting for this moment to use them on a card! Stanley joined in and together we decided that the climbing frog buttons worked the best for this design. (But first I had to add little eyeballs to the poor little blind boogers with my white gel pen and fine black marker.) The end.

Twofer

This QACAS double-embossed delight was made to welcome the first day of spring on Thursday. A multi-leaf unmarked 1D e/f is layer one. It got squished a little by layer two, which is Simon Says 3D "Leaf Bundle." Coming in at layer three is a sprig of Pink Fresh Washi tape leafy greens and the cherry on top is a sediment tab from Memory Box.

You gotta love a 3-minute egg card! And a design that lets you use any two embossing folders and any type of topper! C'mon!👏👌

Stop the Schlump

You will find a linky tool below for this week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar prompt. If you use any kind of embossing on your card, please link it below.

Thank you to everyone who linked last week to inspire others. I love visiting you, seeing what you create, and pinning your design! Mwah!

~~~

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!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Tickled Pink on Fun Foam

Hello Stamplings!

It's lovely to be here and I hope you're doing great! I hope the team you (or your mate) were rooting for won the Super Bowl.🏈 I'm surprised they haven't made the Monday after a national day off!

Our plans changed last week due to the rain, so I had some unexpected crafty playtime with the lads. Squee for all!

Onefer

This week's I.D.E.A.S. letter is D = Dies and my first NBUS feature is the smallest feather stamp and die in the Feather Finery set by Papertrey Ink. The NBUS sediment is from the same set. I would have preferred "pickled tink," but we'll just pretend it says that. 

The second NBUS feature product is the Pink Fresh "Dotted Chevron" cover plate. Stanley honed his blending skills with CP ink and we used colored paper👍for the card base. Playing in:

Cut It Up! ~ this makes me smile

Freshly Made Sketches ~ sketch

We Love Stamping ~ CAS

Twofer 

Looking for the Onefer cover plate, I ran across this framed heart die from Reverse Confetti. Just last week when Hammy and Stanley were looking for a specific pp, they came across my stash of fun foam and asked if we could use it soon ... 💡click!

I had forgotten all about fun foam and it cut like a dream with this die. I attached it to a hammered card panel and then added some funky flat bling from GKW. I used a simple 'Hi' sediment so I can use it for any number of occasions. Playing in:

Just Us Girls ~ heart dies

Colorful Options ~ mood board

{PIN}spiration ~ mood board

Obfuscation

You know how I love words and playing with words. I think it's fun except when companies do it in an effort to make something deliberately unclear, pull the wool over my eyes, or pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.

An email from a well-known company just arrived, saying they are going to "update" our pricing soon. Update? How about they just say they are going to "increase" our pricing soon (again) and leave it at that? I resent being treated like I'm too ignorant to see through it.

But that's the way of the world now. 

So when you have your next annual physical and the doctor comments on what's been happening with your weight, just smile innocently and say, "That's not an increase, doctor. That's an update!" 

Oh, and another thing. For those of us of a certain age who are shrinking vertically, why doesn't the doctor ever factor THAT into the math when he mentions our weight? I'm a little over 5'3" now, but I was once three inches taller. If my current weight were on a frame 5'6" tall, the doctor would be telling me to eat more!!🍔

~~~

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!

Group of Seven ~ Stencil Monoprints

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well! I'm sorry I wasn't here last Monday as planned. All of the week before, I had both computer woes and migraine woes. Layering that onto jet lag made things very, um, trying. 

But it's all good and I got my cicada rhythm back, too. Wait. What? I think I mean Canadian. No, stop. It's circadian. What is? Nevermind. 

Thanks to the Group of Seven Cardmakers, I managed to have some creative fun and I've lots of photos to share with you. For this month, we used our stencils and concentrated on making monoprints. The technique works best with open stencils which are inked using your choice of watercolor medium. After inking and spritzing, the stencil is flipped over onto watercolor paper as many times as the ink will last and gives you a useable image. 

1.

I used a sunflower stencil from Technique Tuesday and Lindy Magicals. 

For the technique reference, I should have first shown you this photo of all four of the monoprints I got. 

And below are the other three cards I made: 

2.

3.

4. This last one is very faint, but I liked it anyway.

I think you will enjoy trying this with your powdered inks, distress inks, watercolors, or sprays. For more incredible design inspiration, please check out the Go7 website where you will also find more instructions and video information! Group of Seven Cardmakers.

But wait, there's more ...

I went to clean off my stencil and when I started swiping with a baby wipe, I noticed a cool design was transferring onto my scratch paper. I stopped and grabbed three more panels of Tim Holtz watercolor paper and made these patterns, just swiping across the stencil with my baby wipe, cleaning more of the ink off each time:

I wasn't able to get a very good photo because it was evening, but in person each one is really cool. So cool that I didn't want to cover them up, so I made these very simple matted cards with foiled sediments which I've had in my stash:

5.

6.

7.

Such a fun bonus!

~~~

Enjoy your weekend! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Unless something unforeseen comes up, I hope to be back Monday with more stencil designs per my fifth Monday I.D.E.A.S. schedule. And I'm also hoping to finally share some of our vacation photos!

Thank you for your patience and your forgiveness for my lack of visiting. Next month is going to be another busy month with visitors first one week and then the next. And then it will be full on Christmas cards!

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!

Challenges

1. Colorful Options: Be bold.

2. Beautiful Blossoms: A/G Floral w/ optional mood board.

3. Triple B: Birds, Blooms, and Butterflies.

4. Simply Clean and Simple: Signs of fall.

5. Cardz 4 Galz: Any coloring medium.

6. Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers: A is for Autumn.

        

Group of Seven Goes Monochromatic!

Hello Stamplings!

The Group of Seven Cardmakers are showcasing the monochromatic design element this month. You use just one color on your design and by using different shades of that one color you can make some very striking cards.

Onefer

I chose red as my color choice. Wait. What? Just seeing if you were paying attention. With this heat, it's easy to nod off in class. This card is pretty self-exploratory. The flowers from SSS are called, "Bouquet of Thanks."

The only thing you can't see clearly above is that the chevron background is actually an emboss-resist paper. This shows the shine better:

And now you can see the lads' brilliant winking, too!

Twofer

This is a one-layer design, which stencils make easy. This NBUS stencil from A Colorful Life Designs is called, "Elegant Snowflake." Just to be different, I decided to color it as a stylized poinsettia. 

I have to say, don't do what I did. I wish I had taken a photo of the millions of pieces of masking tape I had to use to cover the various bits as I changed colors of ink. And then, when it was all done, I was disappointed to see the blending wasn't even even, but I wasn't about to try and fix it! 😰

We would love to have you show us your monochromatic designs if you have a play! There is a link provided over on the Group of Seven Cardmakers blog. 

~~~

Enjoy your weekend! 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!
Challenges:

Just Us Girls: A/G Stencils.

Colorful Options: Aqua

Peace on Earth: A/G Christmas.

Rudolph Days: A/G Christmas.