Happy Scrabble Day! And a Pop of Poinsettia!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing great as this year is whooshing by ~ again! For heaven's sake, nearly the middle of April! And our crazy March weather continues into April with summer heat one day and winter cold the next. Bing-bong! 

And what crazy holiday are we celebrating this week? It turns out that today is National Scrabble Day! Who decides these things?! I think I would have loved to have that job. 

Onefer

I spent many happy years playing Scrabble on Facebook with my sister, Doris, until some fool decided it would be better if Scrabble were steamed, er, streamed or something, so this card will go to her. (Now we play Words With Friends.) She will see it on my post, but we are all getting old, so I'm hoping she will forget she saw this by the time her birthday rolls around next December! 

This design took a bit of doing. I started with the perfect size Dreamweaver stencil which I've had for ages. I carefully masked each square or group of squares and blended on the Scrabble colors with brushes. 

I used a NBUS set from SSS called, "Games Tiles Letters" from (cough) years ago. It was a challenge trying to figure out the placement of letters so they interlocked in a fun way. I searched the webs and the attics for ideas, to no avail. After a wodka for me and a ginger ale for Hammy, we nailed it!

Playing in Just Add Ink (Colours - used all five), and Seize the Birthday (A/G).

Twofer

This week is D = Dies on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. I haven't made a Christmas card yet in 2026, so I was inspired when I saw the "Spring Into Christmas" challenge at BYSHC Challenge! I reached for "Up Goes the Tree," a NBUS stamp and die set from Penny Black. I used my Ziggies to paint the pretty stylized tree and Hammy was beside himself with glee at how much winking he got to do!

This set allows you to add some dementia with a second poinsettia stamp which you can paint, die-cut, and pop-up over the stamped image. And, yes, I painted the one underneath, too, in case there is a gust of wind. Here is a close-up:

I'm not sure if you can see that I blended some light tan ink around the edges of the front panel, ala Penny Black, before attaching it to a red panel and then to the card front.

Playing in Build Your Stash Holiday Cardmakers, Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round (H is for Happy Holidays), Penny Black Saturday Challenge (A/G), and Krafty Chicks (Christmas).

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Speaking of flowers (what?), I will leave you with pretty pink carnations and multi-colored calla lilies, freshly watered after a spring rain. Our yellow day lilies are just starting to open, so I'll share those soon. 

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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!

Happy Say What?

Hello Stamplings!

When I was checking out what happy thing we should celebrate this week, what with wars and all, I came across something that made me laugh so hard, tears were running down my leg. I startled Hammy and he fell off the rim of the wastebasket where he had been practicing his schplattering. He fell straight onto a wad of masking tape (now covered with schplatters), which, of course, stuck to his fur. He's fine, but I've got the jiggles all over again!

Here you go. This is what the Interwebs told me we should celebrate on March 9th: The first site said, "Panic Day!" and then immediately below, the second site said, "Get Over It Day!" Okee-doekey.

Let's talk cards and forget everything else. This is the second Monday of March and my I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is D = Dies and there are a few challenges where the prompt is also dies/die cuts. Plus, I was inspired by the 12th Birthday celebration at the TIMEOUT Challenges. The talented Stef Perry of Perry Papercrafts is the Muse with a beautiful card for us to CASE. 

Stef's card is on the TO prompt below and this is my CASE:

Thank you, Stef, for the inspiration and thank you Nonni and Sandie for starting this wonderful challenge all those years ago!

I started with a piece of schplattered pp and layered that with a piece of embossed paper which I inked using a brayer. 

I'm trying to use some of the thousands of sheets of gorgeous pp I've got, so I used some of it to cut this NBUS die from Alexandra Renke. And then what happened was, I got into a die-cutting fugue and cut about 22 of them! I wish I was kidding, considering I'm trying to use my schtuff, not add to it, but they looked so pretty cut from pp. The gold-embossed sediment was in my stash.

Also playing in AAA Birthday - Die Cuts and Just Us Girls - Die Week.

Morefers

Ahem, speaking of die-cutting fugues! I didn't even count the dozens of butterflies I made. It gets rather addictive! I'm happy to say that I made three of each color before I stopped, which was good for my stash because I was out of birthday cards. And now it occurs to me that I can tuck one or two butterflies in the cards when I send them out. I used a Tim Holtz plaid stencil and the charming sediment is from HLS.

I was inspired by the current sketch by Karren at Freshly Made Sketches and the "Anything With Wings" challenge at Seize the Birthday and 613 Avenue Create Also: Inkspirational - Use stencils (option plaid) and Krafty Chicks - Birthday and Just Add Ink (Stencils-Dies or Both).

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

And remember, go ahead and panic, but only for a little bit, and then get over it! 

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!

A Tiny Cow or Tiny the Cow

Hello Stamplings!

How're you doing? Times are again a bit uncertain and the weather is again all over the place around the world and for the bazillioneth time, I'm grateful I have an escape. Otherwise, I don't know, I might have a drinking problem, or possibly be in jail for spousicide, or locked in a padded cell blowing bubbles through my nose. 

Who knew a few hundred thousand dollars worth of craft supplies would make such a difference in lives?! We did! It's our little secret.🙊

I just have one quick card for you today:

And here with her arm raised to toast you is our cow friend, Tiny. Tiny is from the Penny Black Vintage Collection. As you can see, the sun is starting to set and in Tiny's family (and ours) that means cocktails, especially during the holidays. You may remember that Hammy often takes a vaycay in early December after all the Christmas cards are mailed. He took this photo of Tiny a couple of years ago (pre-Covid) while visiting her in Baja. 

Tiny has since mooved into the Udderly Divine Bovine Retirement Village so in future she will have to hide Hammy in her Santa hat if there are any other cows around. Because you know ~ cows and rodents. (Great Chicago Fire of 1871.)

The photo of Tiny was too good not to frame and put on the mantle every year at Christmas time, so I used red glitter paper for the mat and for the sediment. I used a torn piece of paper to delineate the sand and ocean. I used a cloud stencil and blended CP ink for the sky and I used a colored pencil for the sand and sand dollar. The Flying Gulls are NBUS from Memory Box.

(If you're nautical by nature, you might notice that the ocean horizon is not level. It's because the little photographer had had a few cocktails himself and not because a Sue Nami was about to hit unsuspecting Tiny.)

Challenges

• Day of the Month Card Club: Cow Appreciation Day.
  
• Just Add Ink: Just add two: sky, sea, trees.
  
• Penny Black Saturday: A/G (optional monochrome).
  
• Rudolph Days: Anything Christmas goes.

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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! 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!)

A Puppy and QACAS Christmas

Hello, my dear Stamplings!

I hope that you are having (or had) (or are about to have) a great day whatever you do (or did). Can you imagine how irritating it would be if I did my whole post that way? I won't. But I'm tempted.

The reason I'm tempted is because I'm really, really punchy right now. The Mister and I have been kept up every night for four nights by a rotten critter under our house. It's a small house so every scratch and movement of a pebble sounds like a monster is about to burst through the floorboards and devour us in our sleep. (Gee, sorry if you are reading this at bedtime!) The soonest exterminator we could find isn't available until Monday.😫

Always something! But, never mind. A card will take your mind off that.

I used one of my many Nestability label dies for the aperture on this cute card done up in black on a pink card base. Gosh and golly, I think I have every size of those labels and I never think to use them. (Slap!) I heat-embossed the sediment (from PTI) using SU's blushing bride e/p. The little dog is an ancient button I've had in my stash for years. Hammy added the little bone from Doodle Bug . . . 

Challenges

• AAA Birthday: For a child.
  
• Seize the Birthday: No toppings.
  
• Watercooler Wednesday: Helen's all about occasions.

. . . There is a story behind this card. One of my nieces recently lost her beloved Chesapeake Bay Retriever and to help fill the loss, she got this darling little dog:

She's a Havanese and her name is Mimi. She only weighs four pounds now, but she'll get to seven or eight pounds. Quite a change from an 80 pound dog, eh? Can you believe those eyebrows? They karack me up! 

Here's a closeup of the button:

You'll see that I colored the tan button with my black marker, except for the snout, eyebrows, and paws to make the button look as much like Mims as I could make it, if you ignore the ears. I had a lot of fun creating this card to make it personal for Katherine.

So now we have three Bichons in the family: our Nellie, my niece's Mimi, and her mom's dog, Cisco. We safely got together with them last week for a quick visit and photo op!

Stop it! How cute is that? They are bred to dance on their back feet, even as puppies! You're entirely welcome! You can come back and look at it anytime you get out of shorts.

Twofer

This very QACAS Christmas card was created using Altenew's Vibrant Spray Die Cut Tape! It's a Washi tape in sticker form. I ordered it after seeing my friend Di make a beautiful batch of cards using it. It comes in a wide large roll. I laid a strip of it down the center of a heavy 8.5 by 11 white card and then I cut that down the middle of the tape to get two front panels. I was able to make 64 Christmas cards with one roll of tape!

I know there are roses on the design, but I  thought it would work just fine for a Christmas design because the colors are Christmassy. The sediment is from Happy Little Stampers. And you know who 🐹 has spent the last several weeks carefully placing three little sequints on each card, bless his crafty little heart!

Challenges

• Altenew Washi Challenge: Wild with Washi contest.
  
• Just Add Ink: Inspiration photo. I thought the colors were perfect.
  
• Krafty Chicks: Christmas.

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Enjoy your day and have a great weekend! No, seriously, enjoy, but be safe! LITS!*

Can someone please tell me when the Medicare commercials will STOP???!

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!)

A Beach, a Bee, and a Baby

Hello Stamplings!

We've whooshed through another week unscathed and in lickity-split time and I hope you've done the same! 

Every Friday morning now for weeks we will be sleepily moving around the kitchen getting breakfast and one of us will start the conversation about the day and each other's plans and suddenly the one not talking will whip around, drop their jaw onto their chest, bug out their eyeballs, and whisper, "Wait. Is it Friday again?!" Every.single.week. It feels like we get up on Wednesday, step out of the shower, and it's Friday. It's positively ionic.

Fortunately, a three-day week is all I need to make a coupla cards.

Beach

Inspired by so many summer-y beach-y challenges, I made this cheer-y design which looks a little crooked-y. That happens.🙈 Just lean into it. It's Friday.

Of all things, I used a Tim Holtz woodgrain stencil to blend out a stretch of ocean and a stretch of sand. The fun NBUS beach huts are from Avery Elle, watercolored by me, and then winked by Hammy. The NBUS sun ray stencil is from Moda Scrap. 

Of course, as any sensible person wouldn't, I decided to add the top level of the sun rays to the card base after adhering the panel. I remember back in the day when I had forethought ... but that might be an afterthought. Did you know merrythought is a real word? The definition is not the one I would have given it. It means wishbone of a bird. That's crazy, right, but at least you earned something new today. 

Challenges

• The Card Concept: The dogs days of summer. I was inspired by the summer theme and the colors. My style is clean and layered.
• CAS Mix Up: August watercolor hosted by Loll: Beach.
• Country View: I do like to be beside the sea.
• Happy House: Summer holiday.
• Seize the Birthday (no toppings): Anything goes.
• Simon Says Stamp Monday: Summer memories.

Bee

I was playing in another lifetime with my friend Harriet and we were having fun with foil. This was a very glittery foil on an ancient bee from GKW. After wards I colored it in with my Ziggies and framed it with a square frame turned to form a diamond shape, as one does. I added a simple sediment heat-embossed in gold and a coupla Matts.

Here's a closeup which is a bit blurry because of all the schparkle:

Challenges

• Just Add Ink: Just add T (as in Thinking of you).
• Shopping Our Stash: KISS: Keep it simple, sister.
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday: Midsummer blues.

Baby

I told you a while back about the old lizard we call Stubbie and all the little lizards that entertain me out the Playhouse window. I have pictures of him and I was going to do this whole collage, but, you know, how many lizards do you really want to see? 🦎

Anyway, I rant out of time, so instead I will just show you this itty-bitty baby I spotted sunning himself on a large white rock in the yard. I was taking photos of my card when I saw him, but before I could turn my camera towards him, he skittered underneath the rock. I circled him so you don't have to strain your eyes. So cute!!

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy (LITS!*), but please keep safe and well!

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!)