Krafty Chicks ~ Stamp Act

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? Thank you for taking a break to click open my bloggeroo today! You deserve a break and a favorite beverage. And sure, I support having a little sweet, too, while you're at it.

Just as I was looking for some renewed schpark to light up my get-up-and-go in the new year, I was asked by the Krafty Chicks to be their Guest Designer for January. What an honor and what perfick timing!

The Krafty Chicks post challenges once a week on Thursdays and for Week 1, the prompt is "Stamp Act." Here is my card to inspire you:

Zany the zebra is part of a NBUS stamp set called "Savanne1" from Craft Emotions, simply stamped in black and white. The sediment is from Dylusions. The double-stitched die is from MFT. And, of course, Hammy brought the zebra to life by adding googly eyes.

Don't you wonder what mischief lies unseen in front of Zany? I'm sure there is a group of her zebra friends gathering in the distance, but what are they up to? Oh, the imagination stirs ~ or maybe the memories! Why, it reminds me of that time back in 1973 when a group of us girls drove into Los Angeles from the sub-Urbs and Cheryl suggested that we ...

Thank you, Krafty Chicks for asking me to guest design this month! You can find all the details and the linky tool on their blog and I look forward to seeing your stamped creations! 

I'm also playing in these challenges:

• Critter Crazy: A/G.
• Simon Says Monday: Something new.
  
• TIME OUT: New.

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Twofer

Another QACAS and NBUS design for you. I've had Tim's Mini Blueprints booze-themed stamp set for (cough) years and I finally broke the seal on that puppy. All of the blueprint images are fantastic! The sediment is from Tim's Big Talk collection. (Hammy scampered up my pant leg just as I was taking a sip, so pardon the spillage.)

Those of you who are eagle-eyed and sober will note that that wine opener would crush that bottle of wine if it was used. Well, you might find, as I did, that if you drink a little wine and then look at it again, the perspective problem goes away! Hic!

Challenges

• Card Concept: Fresh new year. My style is Clean and Simple.
  
• CAS Mix Up: Loose watercoloring.
  
• HLS CAS: A/G.
• Just Us Girls: Word Week ~ Beverage.
• Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers: S is for Snarky.
  

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Kudos to the Postal Service

While I had a few cards returned unnecessarily and packages that took forever, I just had to share this positive PO experience. Below is a photo of a card I received from my bloggie friend Aileen in Australia:

Notice anything remarkable? There is NO postage stamp! I've been know to send cards off like that a few times myself, but they've always come back to me. Somehow the post office managed to get this beautiful Christmas card to my mailbox in America and that makes me smile!

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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 and return the flavor! And thank you for your positive feedback on my last post regarding Verna and sending cards to seniors.

*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's Trifecta Holiday Time!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you have been doing well wherever you are and whatever seasonal change you are experiencing. Our hemisphere has been having xtreme weather again. We actually got over three inches of rain, unseasonably early for us, but we badly need it. Others, sadly, had wind and flood damage and my heart goes out to them.

Here in America, we are heading into the Trifecta of Holidays. First up is Halloween this weekend, followed four little weeks later by Thanksgiving, followed four little weeks later by Christmas. Followed by my usual 13.5 pound weight gain. It would be so much easier if these holidays weren't all within such a short time, but I wasn't home the day they called for my opinion on the matter.😄

For this post, I only feature two of the holidays, starting with two Christmas cards:

Are these NBUS critters from the MFT Picture Perfect set guinea pigs or hamsters? Not sure, but no matter, they are darlin' either way, so Hammy and I are declaring they are one of each! I chose the frame and coloring to play in the Color Hues kraft and red challenge, only to just discover that it ended this morning. Oops, I guess I need my head eyes examined.

Besides the sediment declaring this a Christmas design, I tried to change the sunflower seed into an ornament. Now, I'm thinking it looks more like a flask, but, hey, that's festive, too right? Maybe they had a long day planned dropping off Christmas gifts to all the relatives (hamsters and guinea pigs tend to have a LOT of relatives!) and it was cold and they needed a little nip of brandy now and then to sustainsiatate them.

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Christmas.
• Cardz 4 Guyz: Animal (actual or animated).
• Jingle Belles: Not a creature was stirring.
• Peace on Earth: Anything goes with an inspiration board.
  

Twofer

This card is art and function. Whoever gets it in the mail this holiday can always use it to light the way if the electricity goes off! I chose this pretty snowflake frame from GKW to paper-piece in metallic gold and blue to join in the October Rudolph Days Challenge. Mo is dedicating this month's challenge to Kath of Plain and Simple, who passed away a few months ago. Kath was a well-known friend to many of us and she loved paper-piecing. I love it, too. It's fiddly, but so satisfying. I finished it with a simple vellum sediment from Penny Black.

Challenges

• Christmas Kickstart: Make one for a loved one.
  
• HLS Christmas: Anything goes.
  
• SSS Wednesday: Anything goes.

Happy Halloween!

I don't make a lot of Halloween cards and this silly card is my fav this year, even though it happened by accident. What happened was, I made a few cards using the ghosts from poppystamps Groups of Ghosts. I pushed out their eyeballs and tossed them off to the side because the ghosts are intended to be sheets with empty eye-holes cut out. 

Well, I happened to push them onto a piece of discarded black card and, thankfully, Hammy looked up just then from sewing his pirate costume and he noticed how cute the eyeballs looked all by themselves on the black paper! I added a white-inked sediment and I used a NBUS embossing folder for a little texture. (It's hard to see, but it is a large conversation bubble.) 

Challenges

• HLS CAS: One-Layer.
  
• The Male Room: Black and white.
  
• Two Old Bats: Anything Halloween.

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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! 

Thank you, too, for your continued patience and all your kind emails. I'm making lots of progress on the To Dew list, making Christmas cards, and I've had a confirmed diagnosis on the hip. Just awaiting word now on a date for surgery, which won't be for some months because everything is lackbogged. Same as everywhere, so can't complain!

*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!)

CAS Christmas October GD!

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I hope you enjoyed World Card-Making Day yesterday!

I will echo what everyone else is saying: How can it be October?! Followed by, okay, no more procraftination, it's time to get making those special handmade Christmas cards!

And I'm delighted to be October's Guest Designer at the CAS Christmas Card Challenge to help inspire you to do just that! It's an honor to join an extremely talented group of designers for October and I encourage you to check out their cards for lots of great design ideas!

Onefer

This hilly scene with four trees is one stamp. I found it at a garage sale a coupla years ago in Indiana when I was visiting my friend Brenda. It's a red rubber stamp that had been removed from the wood, so I have no idea who makes it, but we think it looks like it might be an old SU stamp. I masked and heat-embossed one tree in red e/p and then reversed the mask and white heat-embossed the other trees.

While I was doing all that, Hammy operated on the unmarked sediment so that each of the starred words could then be stamped under a hill. We were just pickled at how well that worked out.

Twofer

Because it was so fun using two different e/ps, I made a Twofer. It is self-exploratory, although a bit tricky because the trees are so close together with this stamp. For the intertwined area, I used a Versamark pen. I love the movement and how it feels like Mother Nature opened her hand and blew white snow over just the one tree. Magic! In fact, I wish now that I had used a sediment I have which says, "believe in the magic of Christmas!"

I hope you can join the fun over at the CAS Christmas Card Challenge and I look forward to seeing your beautiful gray and red Christmas card designs! Don't forget if you use something you've never used before, you can also link to NBUS!

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I'm playing in: Christmas Crafts All Year Long (T is for Tree), Happy House, HLS CAS (OLC), Peace on Earth, and SSS Wednesday. 

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p.s. Look who came to have a sleepover with us last night!

Adam, Bama, Henry

I used the excuse that I wanted a photo of my new Hammy t-shirt to get them to accommodate me. (Sorry about the background glare.) Yes, I'm shrinking, but they are very tall! Because of Covid, it's been over two years since they stayed overnight and because of their ages, it might be the last time, so we had a fun and nostalgic time going down Memory Lane. 

It seems like only yesterday that they were little guys who loved spending hours with me in the Playhouse making cards. Here they are making little turkeys for Thanksgiving.

Henry, Adam

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo. I copied it from an old blog post from November 2012. Going back in time on my blog was an adventure in itself!

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy and keep safe! 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!

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!)

Oooh, Yummo! More Cake!

Hello Stamplings!

Aaaaand we've whooshed back around to another Monday! I hope you've all had a lovely weekend wherever you are!

Did I tell you we are having a bathroom reno done due to a coupla leaks? It was just remodeled fourteen years ago, but apparently the people I hired cut a few corners and I learned another 'you get what you pay for' lesson.😒This new bathroom will outlive us and never leak!

But that's not why you called. You came to see my reminder inspiration cards for the Twofer Card Challenge where the prompt is 🎂CAKE/CUPCAKE🧁!

Last week I featured cake and today I am featuring cupcakes. The stamp my two designs have in common is a fun and silly caterpillar carrying cupcakes. It's an old wooden stamp from Penny Black.

Onefer

I stamped the cupcake-carrying caterpillar in the center and then off the ends because if one cute caterpillar makes you smile, why not have a choo-choo-train of them? I colored the cupcakes with my Ziggies and did a background wash. Hammy winked the cupcakes and also added dots to the segments on the caterpillar which were blank. The Hooray die is cut from an old glossy alcoholic snippet. This is going to my niece who is taking her medical boards as you read this.🤞

Challenges

• Addicted to CAS: Bugs.
  
• HLS CAS: Fun and games.
• Sweet Stampers: Animals or critters or birds.
  

Twofer

And this old girl is one of my all-time fav stamps. She is from Stampendous. You can't tell, but her tutu and shoes and the cupcakes are all winked. After stamping and coloring another caterpillar, I fussy-cut the cupcakes off her back and then piled them up for the frog to hold in her outstretched arms. You can just make out some light stenciling on the olive green card base. The vertical sediment is from Stamps by Judith, also ancient. Not Judith, the stamp.

No NBUS was used for my card designs this time.

Instead I used OWLS (Old Well-Loved Schtuff)!🤣🦉🤣

Challenges

• AAA Cards: Happy 7th Birthday!!!
  
• HLS Watercolor: Anything goes.
  
• Watercooler Wednesday: Marsha's all things feminine.

Come Play!

I hope you are able to play along this month. Remember cakes and cupcakes are not just for birthdays ... stretch that imagination of yours! I'd love to see what you make and I'd love to know about your favorite cake or cupcake recipe if you want to share!

Recipe

Because I used cupcakes this week, I will share one of my sisters' favorite cupcake recipes. It's called Mini Cherry Cheesecake Cupcakes. It's super easy and uses a vanilla wafer cookie in the bottom for the crust. You can find an online version of it here at Plowing Through Life. Enjoy!

~~~

And enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy and keep safe! 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!

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!)