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!

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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.

        

Kaleidoscoping With Group of Seven Cardmakers

Hello Stamplings!

Top/Bottom of the day to you!

It's not a Monday, but it is the 28th, so the ladies from Group of Seven Cardmakers are posting today. Plus, I'm including my I.D.E.A.S. (S = Stencils) at the end, so I will get right toit.

For July, the Go7 were inspired by the talented Jenny Martin of My Paper Epiphany. She stamped and gold-embossed a large stamp, sponged on some inks, and then cut the panel into strips and rearranged them. If you pop over to Jenny's blog, you will see her card as you scroll down. 

The effect is dramatic and this is my first take on the technique:

I also used a large stamp for my design ("Floral Fantasy Background" from MFT), only I colored the panel with my Ziggies, rather than sponging on the ink. The sediment is from PTI, stamped and heat-embossed in black on vellum.

Jenny didn't have a name for this technique, so I dubbed it the "Kalidoscope Technique" because the result reminded me of looking through my grandpa's old Kalidoscope. 

I tried the technique again, this time for Christmas:

For this card, I used an assortment of poinsettia and pine stamps. If I'm honest, I like the first card better. This one turned out to be a bit of a hot mess to my eyes! But, hey, look at me trying new styles and branching out from the mostly-one-image-uber-clean-and-simple-one-layer card style I made when I started twenty-three years ago and still love today. It's fun being well-rounded, she says, reaching in her candy drawer!

Jenny is joining us as a Guest Designer this month with another striking version of this technique. In addition, you will find incredible examples to inspire you by the other Group of Seven Cardmakers. You will also find a linky at the end of the post. If you give this technique a try, we would love to have you link up in the gallery!

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So as not to overwhelm your inbox, I am including my Monday I.D.E.A.S. card here. Tomorrow is the hen's tooth fifth Monday of July and the brief is stencils.

I've made a Christmas card using another one of the Memory Box corner dies I used recently, backing the cut-outs with a scrap of pp. The tree stencil is from Tim Holtz and the lads added the snow and schparkle!

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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!

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. 

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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.

May Week Four and Group of Seven (Bokeh)

Hello Stamplings!

Happy Tuesday! Yesterday we honored our service men and women with Memorial Day and on the 28th of every month we post our Group of Seven Cardmakers, so I decided to wait and post today.

This month the Go7 played with an older technique called "Bokeh," (pronounced "bouquet") which is a photographic technique adapted for card-making. Basically you make a background and then add a layer of circles by sponging or blending through a stencil.

My Results

Linking to Rudolph Days

I made my backgrounds by smooching watercolor paper with either watercolor pens which were scribbled and spritzed, or Brushos/Lindy's powders spritzed with water. To make the Bokeh bubbles, I used a stencil, a Color Box white ink pad, and one of my blending brushes. For the Christmas card, I made it more Christmassy by also stenciling stars and letting the boys add a bit of schplatter.

It's a fun and easy technique to zhuzh up your backgrounds, but you might find your results vary. For instance, over time my circles on card two sort of evaporated. I'm not sure if it was because of the bumpy paper on that one or the lighter background.

You can find a video link and more information on the main Group of Seven blog. You will also be treated to the sensational examples of the technique by the Group and a link for you to add your own result if you play along with us! Mwah!

And if you are playing along with my I.D.E.A.S. schedule (see side bar), this is week four of May, so the brief is "Anything Goes!" My Bokeh cards work for that and so will anything you make!

p.s.

You haven't seen Miss Nellie for a while, so she is joining in the fun today! One day last week I came out of the bathroom and I couldn't find her in any of her usual perching places. Perplexed, I took a step towards the front room and saw this! Should she be in the movies, or what?!

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BTW, about my devil's-food-cake-naming story in the last post? Some of you didn't notice that I confessed at the end of the post that it was all made up in my head. It's simply not true and I hope you didn't tell too many people. That's how rumors get started.

You gotta love me!😇

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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! 

*life is too short

Inky Gilding Flakes and New Year I.D.E.A.S.

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are well wherever you are! Things are perking along here and I'm slowly getting used to my new Playhouse fluxation. It's like teaching an old dog new tricks, but I'm getting the hang of it. I've been thinking of ideas for getting myself into a routine, but more on that further down.

First, it's the 28th and that means it's time to show you what the ladies of the Group of Seven Cardmakers played with this month. We got out the alcohol again ~ inks that is! After making designs on Yupo or glossy paper, we stopped breathing,  corralled our gilding flakes, and put them over the sticky bits.

This is my example:

I should have warned you to put on your sunglasses, sorry. Even as bright as it is, it's hard to capture the full shine of the gilding flakes. 

You know that technique where you brayer or otherwise press foil over the sticky bits on your finished AI panel? (quick video) The technique above is similar, except you use gilding flakes instead of foil. If, like mine, your sticky bits aren't very sticky (say what now?), then you apply a thin line of glue where you want your shiny flakes. I was surprised how thick my flake lines were after I brushed off the excess, but I ended up liking how they stood up to all the different bright colors. (If you want a thinner line of flakes, don't press them down flat.)

To find how-to video links and see lots of wonderful and inspiring examples of this technique, please click over to the Group of Seven Cardmakers. And if you try it, please add your design to the linky there!

The greeting on my card is NBUS, so I will link to the NBUS challenge; a few other challenges this month are using NBUS for their briefs, so I will link to Die Cut Divas and Little Red Wagon. And because it's a birthday card, I am linking to Anything Goes at Seize the Birthday.

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Looking Forward, cont.   

Following my last post, Hammy and I mulled both our thoughts and some wine and came up with a plan of action to hopefully fix my broken routine. I'm sharing the plan with you because it is my fond hope that by doing so, I will be held accountable to follow through!🤞

In a nutshell, my plan of action is a schedule. Now some people might think a schedule sounds too much like work, but I have tried everything else the last couple of years and relying on self-discipline clearly hasn't worked! This might not work either, but it can't hurt to try, and I'm excited about the fun I am going to have actually using all my schtuffs!

You can't have a schedule without bullet points and, you know me, you can't have bullet points without an aaaackronym!

I'm sure you can imagine with amusement all the various letters Hammy and I came up with, some of which were inappropriate for a family blog.😉 In the end, "I.D.E.A.S." seemed to hit the nail on the head.

P for paper of any sort and another S for stamps are not bulleted, purr say, because they are generally used, although I do hope I will be better at using my patterned, colored, and specialty papers. Of course, as often as possible, I will focus on NBUS and I'm hoping to add a silent V and C to this schedule, so I'll be better at visiting and commenting, which I always enjoyed as much as any other aspect of this hobby!

How it will work: Barring the usual life caveats of illness or company or travels, I am going to post a card or twofer every Monday. (Right there will be more than I've been doing lately!) Each week will feature a letter in the acronym. Because January is almost over, I will start on the first Monday in February and my calendar will look like this:

For the months that have a fifth Monday, I will feature S = stencil. 

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Wish me luck! Feel free to use my I.D.E.A.S graphic and join me on this productive journey!🙋 Just let me know if you do, so we can cheerlead each other along the way! 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!

Mwah!

*Life is too short!

Smooching With Cling Wrap

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are all doing well and that my American friends had a warm and delicious Thanksgiving holiday weekend! We had a great time and enjoyed seeing the grandtwins again! (It's certainly time to be thankful for stretchy fabrics!) And now we only have 27 days until Christmas! You're welcome. Do you need some help getting up? 

This month our Group of Seven Cardmakers enjoyed smooching with cling wrap and alcoholic inks. It's been a few years since I've done this technique and it was inky and fun. You can find instructions, video links, and lots of excellent examples over on the website. Here are my results:

I decided to use some gloss acrylic sprays that I've had for a long time and never used before. One set is called Splash and the other set is by Dina Wakley. I used glossy paper, so it was doubly-glossy! Then it was fun figuring out how to make them into much-need Christmas cards in unexpected colors.

When you get a chance to try or re-try this technique, there is a link over on the Group of Seven site for you to share your results. We always love it when you show how we have inspired you!

 And speaking of Christmas cards, here are my completed cards, so far. 

They are mostly one or two layers to make it easier and more economical to mail. I only have another inch to go and I can start the not-as-fun part of finishing the insides and envelopes. (Didn't we decide that it would be okay to just send the front panels, like post cards? Hmmm, no, I guess they would be pretty messed up going through the mail machinery, huh? Never mind.) It feels good to have most of them done and to have made a huge dent this year in my stash of Christmas die-cuts and patterned paper! 

Taking a Break

It feels silly to let you know I will be taking a break when I haven't been blogging that much as it is! We've had a lot going on this year with traveling, visitors, and not feeling great, so things around here have gotten neglected. As energy allows, we are going to take care of some home and garden projects. Plus, Hammy always makes the rounds visiting his family over the holidays, so it's a good time to clean, paint, and purge the Playhouse.

I plan to keep NBUS active, however. I love that it keeps me connected and your fantastic gallery entries tell me how much you love being prompted to use your unused schtuff! I also love seeing what you snagged at holiday sales and/or got for Christmas!

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Enjoy your holidays, however you celebrate, and thank you for your friendship and support! Mwah from me and Hammy!🐹💕

Life is too short!