More Sharing Time

Good Day, Stamplings!

While I have candied nuts roasting (making the house smell amazing), I wanted to share a few more Christmas makes and support many of the challenges and the designers who work very hard for us. I'll put a lid on the chatter box and just get goin'.

Onefer.

I tried to channel my inner Kay Miller! Here is a closeup of the winking. Can you tell I used a new Stella?!

Challenges (badges below)

• CAS on Friday: Christmas.
• CAS Watercolour: Anything goes.

Twofer.

I really overworked the Zigsters with this one. Peace on earth looks like there might be some storm clouds brewing! (Obviously, my inner Kay went on lunch break.) 

You know how you keep going and going some times like you're having an out-of-body experience? You can see yourself watching your hand continue of its own volition and you're thinking, "Why is my hand acting on it's own without any communication from my brain which is yelling, "STOP!"? 

I'm sharing it anyway because I feel like I saved it a bit with the framing and bow. It's prettierer in real life when you see the shiny leaves and Nuvo berries on the holly.

Challenges (badges below)

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Make your mark.
• Simon Says Stamp Monday: Christmas / Winter holidays.

Threefer.

This super-QACAS number is a repeat of a design I made last year, but never posted. A minimal effort at stamping and embossing and a maximum effort at using up some ribbon.

Challenges (badges below)

• Curtain Call: Inspiration graphic. Please note: This is the last challenge for the Curtain Call. I hope you will be able to join in to show your appreciation for all that the current and past teams have done to inspire you! Thank you, CC!
• Stinkin' Inkers: Celebrating the holidays.

Fourfer.

Here is another card with more of my Brusho background. The NBUS Reindeer Window is from Memory Box. I hope you can see the beautiful texture on the card base. I've been hoarding these ancient yummy pieces of colored and textured card stock forever. I decided that makes no sense, so I'm setting them free.

Challenges (badges below)

• Moving Along With the Times: Twas the night before Christmas (reindeer).
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: Use those snippets!
• TIME OUT: Photo inspiration below (reindeer).

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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!  Please let me know you came by so I can be sure to 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 the pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! P.S. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Mwah! 

NBUS Challenge #6 ~ Day Five!

Greetings!

Can you believe we are halfway through NBUS #6 already? Yup, flies time when you're having fun! If you want to link up, the tool is below. (Using the Page Down key will save some wear and tear on mouse wheels and fingers.) There are a few rules, so make sure you check those out to be in the drawing. Thank you so much to everyone participlaying!

It's the weak end, so do you have crafty plans? We are in for a rainy weekend, which we all love cuz we need more of it. So far this year, the El Nino weather forecast has been El Stinko.

But it's not about Spanish today, it's about Irish. Today I'm presenting three St. Patty's Day cards. We celebrate here because the Mister is half Irish from his dearly departed mother, Genevieve. Even though it's not until the 17th, my mouth is already watering just thinking about corned beef and cabbage with carrots and potatoes and Irish soda bread, all washed down by a lovely dark Guinness for the Mister, a wee dram of Jameson's finest for me, and some Red Lemonade for my furry sidekicks.

Do you need to go get a snack and a beverage now? Go ahead, I'll wait ...

Okay, up first:

I've used white glossy card stock and snippets of stripey green. The NBUS is the awesome Layered Banner die by Papertrey Ink, as is the "Celebrate" sediment from the matching stamp set heat-embossed in platinum. The shamrock and greeting are ancient, from Stampin' Up. IRL, the greens match better than they appear on film. No Academy Award then for this card for cinematopography.

Challenges

• Curtain Call: Anything goes, with optional Key Lime photo inspiration.
• The Card Concept where my friend Ardyth is the Guest Designer: Shamrocks, patterns and greens. And, gah, I need those cookies! My card style is CAS - clean and simple.

Up second:

A lovely Irish blessing that sees ink every year. Nothing NBUS here, but the laws of Generational Ireland require the annual making of a card using this blessing. The background is smooched and the ancient greeting is from Personal Stamp Exchange.

Up third, with two men on and nobody out, we have another annual crowd favorite, which, you know, knowing me, I have to make:

I'm sorry. Any monitor cleaning bills can be forwarded to the main office.

It will come as no surprise that this greeting is from River City Rubber Works. The fancy ankle-breakers are from All Night Media.

Challenges

• Double D Challenges: Feeling "Green."
• Fusion Card Challenge: Just the photo inspiration.

~~~

Enjoy your day! Enjoy the NBUS #6 Challenge! 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 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

Watercovering Plates

Hello! Happy Sunday Funday! I hope my American friends all had a safe and sane 4th of July celebration!

Today is July 5th, which is the day in 1937 when SPAM was first introduced to the world by the Hormel Foods Corporation. They had no idea that now, 78 years later, it would have a whole different meaning! [#Trivia Nugget.]

When I saw Nichole's Make It Monday video challenge was about adding color to cover plates, I was immediately intrigued, especially since one of my favoritiest card artists in the world made the video. That would be Laura Bassen of Doublestick Heaven, of course! (I like to pretend I'm one of her moms. As a result, she has a restraining order out on me, but it doesn't make me love her any less.)

The challenge is almost over, but if you have any cover plates or full-size dies such as I used in my twofer, you should click on either of the above links and watch the amazing video. Conversely, if you have any colors that need cover plates, you're on your own.

Here is my rendition:

I used PTI's Quartre Foil cover plate and the heat-embossed sediment is from PTI's "Signature Greetings" set.

I'm also entering the Curtain Call challenge of "Celebrate," which is running for the whole month of July in celebration of their 3rd anniversary and the birthday celebrations going on over at STAMPlorations in honor of their 2nd birthday! Congratulations to both awesome challenge blogs!

~~~

My twofer:

This one was made using my NBUS MFT Die-namics CU die "Floral Fusion." Because I used gold ink for some of the flowers (yes, that's gold, not pooey brown), I backed the plate with a metallic gold paper. The NBUS ribbon is SU lost lagoon. The sediment is an ancient unmarked wooden stamp.

I'm sad that the photo doesn't show how pretty the flowers and gold are IRL, but this might help:

Is it just me, or are "twofers" now becoming all the rage in Blogland?!

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Anything Goes.
• Just Us Girls is celebrating their 300th challenge with a Word challenge and the word is "Congratulations." Congratulations to them for such a successful challenge!

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All the best to the US Women's Soccer team in today's championship game against Japan! Congratulations to all the teams from all over the world who made it into the competition and played their hearts out!

~~~

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 the pop-up box opens.
Click Jump to Comment Form; 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!

I'm Back! I Brought Daisies!

Well, hello there! I hope you are doing well!

Did you miss me? I sure missed you, but I needed the break and I feel fresh as a daisy!

Do you know where that phrase comes from? It's from the fact that daisies close up their petals at night to "sleep," so in the morning they are "fresh" from their night's rest. In fact, the word daisy comes from old English daeges eage or "day's eye," because it only "opened its eye by day."

Of course, all of this is leading to the fact that I made a coupla daisy cards to share.

The color of this daisy is a bit unusual, although I'll bet daisies come in every color imaginable now. I made my daisy in pink, mauve, and purple hues because it is intended for my bloggie friend Monika Reeck of Creative With Monika and purple is her favorite color!

Monika's birthday was April 10th, but I missed it, hence the sediment. In celebration of her birthday, Monika is holding a linky party on her blog and asking us to CASE one of her cards:

Isn't she sweet? I chose the card on the bottom left. My other left. The daisy is a NBUS stamp from Hero Arts called "Engraved Daisy," which I colored onto glossy paper using my Marvy markers. The sediment is from the PTI set "Glory Be."

I applied some ruby glitter Sparkles to the center to give it a bit of pizazazaroo!

Thank you for the opportunity to celebrate your month-long birthday with you, Monika, which also allows me to add you to my DJKASE gallery! Happy Belated Birthday and best wishes for many, many more!

~~~

For my second card, I did not mask the image. I simply inked the stamp and added Sparkles and splatters.

The sediment here is from Penny Black called "moment  of joy."

Challenges

• AAA Cards: It's Springtime. [card 2]
• Addicted to Stamps and More: Photo Inspiration. (Unless these old eyes are failing, those look like mauve daisies on the table.) [card 1]
• Curtain Call: Bouquet. [card 2]
• Less Is More: One-layer card with splatters. [card 2]
• Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge: In the Middle. [card 1]

The links will provide you with information regarding rules, sponsors, and prizes, as well as wonderful inspiration from the design teams!

~~~

Unseen Comments  - Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

It recently came to my attention that some of you are receiving failure notice emails after you leave me a comment. Nevertheless, if you look at the post you just commented on, you see that your comment did get published. So what's up with that?

Well, what you may not know is that although your comment got published on my blog, it did not get delivered to my Gmail inbox like it is supposed to do, which means I didn't see it. Say what?

The way I set up my incoming comments is for them to be published and appear in my Gmail inbox, just like nonblog mail. It's an easier way for me to keep track of which comments I have repaid. Simples. Until now.

I did some research and discovered that Yahoo and AOL have again tightened their server mail restrictions as it relates to sending mail to NON-Yahoo and AOL servers. How rude. There is a fix, but to do so then causes havoc with other servers (like Gmail), so, basically, the fix is of no use and the only thing that might help is for you Yahoo and AOL members to complain to them.

Anywiz, I wanted to let you know what I found out in the event you are having it happen to you with either outbound or inbound comments. Also, if I have suddenly stopped returning your lovely visits, now you know the reason why. And now that I know what's happening, I'm trying to double-check the comment section of my blog to catch those I am missing via my inbox.

Unseen Replies to Comments

As long as we're talking about comments, I've always been curious ...

Over time, I have run across some of your blogs where you reply to your commenteers by typing a reply beneath their comment on your own blog. I don't mean an answer to a question - I think we all have to resort to answering questions that way if we don't have the questioner's email. I am talking about just a polite reply / thank you response to a comment kind of thing.

Is it just me that doesn't return to blogs to check and see if a reply has been left for me after I've left a comment? Do all of you go back to check? Because, frankly, I don't go back to that post, unless it's to offer congratulations to you for a win.

I realize I could check that box that appears at the end of the comment section on some blogs that would allow your reply to be delivered to me, but it would also deliver to me every other comment you get from other people to your posts. That would be both confusing and overwhelming to me and the hamster, so we never check that box.

I wanted to mention this, just FYI, in case you don't know that some of your readers may never see what you've gone to the trouble of writing. Or maybe I'm the only one?, she queries, eyebrows raised.

Thank you for letting me hyperventitillate over these things!

~~~

New Friends Corner

I am delighted to be back to introducing new friends to you! I apologize for the delay and I appreciate the patience of all my new friends! Here are five more lovely ladies for you to meet:

Barbara of Barb's Creative Corner. Barb has been blogging since 2011. She has been married for 50 years and is the mother of three and grandmother of three. Barbara is on several design teams, even my favorite snarky kind! You will find a wide range of card inspirations at Barb's place from whimsical to elegant and everything in between!

Sue of Tanglemouse Cards. Sue is from Gloucestershire UK and she only started blogging in February of this year! That's just a couple of months ago and she is already on design teams and winning awards! When you see her fabulous cards and her wicked coloring skills, you'll see why! Please do make a special effort to welcome Sue to our community in Blogland!

Jessica Lynn Mould of Jessica Lynn Originals. Jessica is a stamp designer you may have heard about. She's been in the business for ten years and was once featured on the Oprah show! I originally met her last year and then we were reacquainted through the recent Light it Up for Autism hop.

Jean of Pages in Time. Jean has been blogging since 2008! Jean still loves scrapping the lives of her children, even though they are grown, and over the years she has been well-recognized for her creativity. In addition to scrapping, Jean has begun to get wonderfully painty with canvases and journal pages!

Heather of Crafty SAHM I Am. Heather has been blogging since 2010. I met her through my NBUS Challenge and have loved leafing through the pages of her blog. Heather enjoys challenges and making cards for Operation Write Home. Her cards are all wonderful, but her masculine cards are particularly superb!

Thank you for joining, ladies, and welcome to the Playhouse!

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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 leave a comment and/or 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. 
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If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave
me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!

Christmas Candies and Stars

Greetings, everyone, and happy Sunday Funday!

Thank you for stopping by today. I know you've got a million other things you need to be doing, so I'll get right toit.

I've got a couple of Christmas card designs to share which were inspired, as usual, by fun challenges. First up, let's have a snack of candy cane stripes and peppermints!

I received these lovely glossy candy-cane-striped stickers from Cindy, my local SU demonstrator:

Using the waste from between the large stripes, I laid my diagonal stripes on my card. In between those stripes I drew lines using a red pen to make them look more like candy canes. Then I ran the card through my BS using a snowflake e/f from Sissix. The attached peppermint candies are embellies I bought years ago, made by GKW. EZPZ QACAS card!

Challenges

The main inspiration for my cards came from the current Curtain Call challenge, where the theme is "Candy Canes."

Over at TIME OUT Challenges, the brief is all about Christmas and love. Who doesn't love candy?

And there are two new-to-me challenges for this post! For this card, I am playing in Showcase Your Style, where there is a sketch (see below). 

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Next, I have a couple of cards using a design which was inspired by the current Fusion Card Challenge {Merry Christmas}, where you have your choice of using the photo or using the sketch or fusing them both. I did a true fuse for one of my cards and only used the sketch for the other. Here is the photo/sketch:

Here is my fusion using both:

And here is the same design using just the sketch in blues and greens:

Isn't that a great card sketch for any occasion?! The plaid patterned papers are from my stash, as are the pieces of vellum which I cut using a fish-tail banner die from MFT. I stamped the NBUS sediment from the MFT "Stitched Stockings" set and sponged distressed ink onto the stars which were cut using a PTI die. Once the ink was applied, it was much happier, not so distressed.

Challenges

For this card, I'm playing in the second new-to-me challenge called Crazy for CAS, where the theme is our favorite "Anything Goes!"

I'm also taking my cards over to Pixie's Snippets Playground for show-and-tell and Christmas hugs from all my fun and rowdy pals there. I've made my famous rum cake, but don't tell Miss.

 

~~~

Personal:

Even during these festive times, people experience tragedies and sad times. With permission, I wanted to let you know that a dear bloggie friend of ours, Carol M. of Just me: c could use your prayers and positive thoughts. Her father is in intensive care suffering from a massive heart attack. Her mother and the entire family could use your support. Thank you.

In happier news, today was the TENTH birthday of our beloved twin grandsons, Adam and Henry, so I'll leave you with this handsome photo:

They are growing up so fast, they will soon be my age, which hovers around 14 and 1/2. They had an exciting day with breakfast out, go-cart rides, miniature golf, and a visit to an arcade! What a fabulous birthday celebration!

~~~

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 leave a comment and/or 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 the pop-up box opens.
Click Jump to Comment Form; 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!