Eclipse It!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you well wherever you are! So many storms, floods, and fires. 

We had a grass fire only two miles from us last week that scorched a thousand acres. It was scary, smoky, and the acrid smell is still in the air days later. Considering it was such a small fire, I cannot imagine how terrifying and awful it is near the huge wildfires in France, Spain, Italy, and in many America states. Keep safe, my friends. Praying for those impacted and for all the brave firefighters, farmers, and individuals helping in ways large and small.🙏🫶

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This week is A = Anything Goes on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. Whoop! I wanted to play with the Eclipse technique at the newly reopened CAS Mix-Up Challenge. It's also known as Hidden Words, or as I like to call it, Camel Flodged.🐪I haven't done this technique for quite a while and it was great fun!

Onefer

This sweet NBUS image is called, "Birthday Presents Wrapping Paper" from Your Next Stamp. The NBUS happy script word die is from The Greetery. I stamped the image in black and colored the presents in red in order to play in the Color Hues Challenge.

I liked the idea that this could be an all-purpose card, but after wards, I decided it needed a second word. I looked through all my word dies, and now I have car pool tunnel but nothing fit the area, so I made another card instead! Go me!

This script die is from Simon Says Stamp. In addition to the above challenges, I am playing in the Anything Goes category at Seize the Birthday

Twofer

This image is NBUS from Spellbinders called, "Christmas Florals and Sentiments." It consists of five stencils and made me question again why I don't stencil more often? I find it very relaxing. The word die is from GKW. The berry nipples are blobs of Lawn Fawn schparkle glaze. (Have I said how much I miss Hammy and Stanley!)

The Eclipsing technique works perfectly for those large pretty images you have which you hate to cover over with a greeting.

To give the design a little extra nubbiness, I popped the tripled image over a panel embossed with a Park Lane e/f called, "Holly Berry." I also miss having a Jo-Ann Store. Actually I miss all of the stamping stores that used to be in my community. And the sweet ladies who ran them. I sound old. Well, duh.

Playing in: 52 Christmas Card Throwdown (Stencilling); Rudolph Days (A/G Christmas); Jingle Belles (Colors: Unicorn Holiday); Inkspirational (Word Prompt: Christmas in July); and Just Us Girls (A/G Stencil Week). This Eclipse card won't go in the CAS Mix-Up Challenge because there is no stamping. However, because there is no stamping, it can go in "N = No Stamping" challenge over at the ABC Christmas!

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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! Mwah!

*Life is too short!

Sending Love From Our House to Yours!

Hello Stamplings!

Happy Monday from the Playhouse! I hope you are doing well! What a day for watching sports yesterday!

This is E = Embossing week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. Recently, my friend Hilary posted beautiful embossed cards covered with vellum on her blog, Fiddling About. She had gotten the idea from another friend of ours, Leslie, of Running With Scissors. I couldn't wait to CASE their cards!

Onefer

For my summery card, I used a NBUS e/f from Gina K.'s kit called, "Sunny Days & Breezy Nights." I chose a pretty pink color for the strawberry design and I covered it with thin vellum using a double-stick adhesive sheet. I've embossed with vellum before and sometimes it cuts right through in places if the vellum is thin. But I have never thought of adding the vellum to an adhesive sheet first, which not only gives it weight, it is easy to stick to the colored card without any adhesive showing or vellum flapping.

However, then I had my usual comedy of errors with basic embossing. For some reason, I am embossing-folder challenged. I look at a folder and decide which side is the embossed side and which side is the debossed side, run it through and more often than not, it comes out backwards. I do wish all manufacturers would put their company name on the front. Or maybe, "this side up." I wouldn't even mind if they added the word, "dummy." 

I'm not sure why, but some of my embossing folders looked better debossed in vellum and some looked better embossed in vellum, but either way, no loss. If the vellum gave me a bit of a blurry image, I just made a card using the other side of the panel face up, even though it does waste a piece of vellum and adhesive sheet. (I think of the person who decides to upcycle one of my cards and finds a pretty white slip underneath the front panel! Erf?)

Speaking of slips, I still have a full-slip and a half-slip in my "You Never Know" drawer. Styles change, history repeats itself. There are also old swimsuits, bras, and pantyhose. And knee socks for the day when I stop getting flushed and I'm cold all the time. Don't tell The Mister about this drawer or I'll never get him to clean the garage!

Where was I? Sorry. Anyway, that's why the above card is debossed. This one happened to be prettier debossed than embossed. I chose a simple NBUS sediment from Simon Says Stamp called, "Simple Sending Love" to finish it off without covering up too many juicy strawberries.

Playing in: Little Red Wagon (Pretty in Pink); Just Us Girls (Mood Board Week: Strawberries in pink = Summertime); and Allsorts (A/G).

Twofer

Using the same process for my Christmas card, I chose a NBUS e/f from Simon Says Stamp called, "Poinsettia Oval." The sediment is from Creative Expressions by Sue Wilson. This card is much prettier in person, but looking at it now, I'm thinking I might run off another one in just vellum or in white to match the sediment and then fussy-cut the poinsettia to pop it on top. Mmm?

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This vellum embossing process was so fun and addicting! As Hilary told me, "You will love the thrill you get when you open the embossing folder." (Even if it is accidentally debossed!🙃)

Playing in: Inkspirational (Christmas in July); ABC Christmas (N is for "No Stamping"); and 613 Avenue Create (A/G, option of "Any Holiday").

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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! Mwah!

*Life is too short!

Die-Cuts Through the Seasons

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome! I missed you last week! I hope you are enjoying summer/winter and keeping well! 

I also missed Inky week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, but I got a wee bit inky anyway for my Onefer for this week's D = Die Cuts.

I think this is self-exploratory, but I will lay out the ingredients because it's a lot for a CASlicious design. The corduroy-effect card base is from the last century and you know from past posts that I have to spend some quiet time fondling the ridges before I can finally get to work on the card. For the frame and waves, I used hammered card.

The frame is NBUS from Papertrey Ink called, "Reflections: November Dies." The little Ziggie-watercolored sailboat is from a set of two dies called, "Marina Sailboats" from Poppystamps. The "friend" die is from Sissix. The waves are from a set by Simon Says called, "Border Waves." With all these ingredients, it really made itself with just a bit of glue from me.

Playing in the sketch (by Donna) challenge at Freshly Made Sketches; Just Us Girls (Word Week: Play); Time Out (Water); and Cardz 4 Galz (For a Friend or Friendship).

Twofer

This design is very QACAS. While I had the frame dies out, I wanted to use the largest die and I wanted to play in this month's CAS Christmas challenge (and others), so the spotlight image inside the frame had to be a snowman. 

The only hard part of the card was deciding which of my snow peeps to use, especially without my helpers here. In the end, I chose one of my favorites from Purple Onion. I don't know if the snowman has a name, but I think we should call him Button. (I'm not known for the most original names when I'm anthropomorphizing.)

But I digest. I stamped and gold-embossed Button onto a panel of creamy, lightly speckly paper. I used an ancient gold glitter pen to color the scarf, nose, button, and a bit of grounding. I decided not to use a sediment stamp. It seemed repugnant.

Playing in: CAS Christmas (Snowman); Color Hues (Cream and Gold); and Time Out (Water. Because, I mean, snow is made of water, right?)

BTW

Do you have any hacks for getting rid of ground squirrels? We've had some ground squirrels fledge, or whatever you call it when baby ground squirrels grow big enough to come out from under one's deck.😶

Luckily there are only three of them, but they (and their parents) are enough to cause a lot of tunnels to suddenly appear ... including through and under our beautiful retaining wall which I'm afraid will collapse. And we certainly don't want these young'uns having their own babies here some day! 

We have called several exterminator companies to trap them or help us convince them they don't want to live here. So far all of them have said, "Nope. We don't do ground squirrels!"  

But, golly, they sure are cute!

Oh, sorry, that's a bunny we saw on our walk. 

Here you go:

While they look like baby regular squirrels that have bushy tails, this is as big as ground squirrels get. They are little guys with enormous claws ~ little digging machines! 

And in case you are wondering, Nellie isn't phasing them a bit! They are lightening fast and just dip out of sight when she appears. (I hope they are gone before Hammy and Stanley get back!)

Speaking of Nellie, she turns 15 years old today!! Happy Birthday, fluffy girl!

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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!

Mwah!

*Life is too short!

Stenciling Through the Seasons

Hello Stamplings!

I sure hope this finds my European friends feeling much cooler! What a terrible heat wave in areas that are not used to it. (I'm not going to talk about how nice the weather has been here!🤫)

This is a rare fifth Monday of the month as we close out June, which means it is S = Stencils week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar.

Onefer

I used a NBUS stencil from Papertrey Ink called, "Wandering Petals." Now, I don't do much stenciling, but I enjoy it. Even though they all sit organized in pretty stripey binders right to the left of my face, I tend to ignore them. It's like the thigh-bone-connected-to-the-knee-bone situation, but in this case, it's more of an organic disconnect from eye to brain. 

Which brings me to sharing a dumb thing I did when stenciling this card. I'm telling you because after I embarrassed myself, then I was amused. But, also, tell me the truth, am I just getting too old for this job?

This is a simple two-stencil stencil. Two. One stencil is the stems and leaves and the other is the petals. It doesn't get much easier than that. I inked the stems and leaves, picked up the petals stencil and the phone rang. After the call, I absent-mindedly lined up the petals stencil over the stem stencil ... and loved how perfectly they lined up! This was a revelation!

But then I lifted the petals stencil and realized why no one else had shared this wonderful technique. Like a do-do, I had simply inked the petals onto the plastic of the stem stencil!🫣

Once I properly inked the petals, I used the stencil to outline the flowers with my fine-point black pen.

And where were my little helpers, you might ask? I clearly need them, but this is their vacation time and they are off to see the cousins. Hammy is slowing down, so I'm glad we have Stanley back to help him on their travels.

Playing in: Addicted to Stamps and More (Die Cuts and/or Stencils); Just Us Girls (Stencil Week); and Simon Says Stamp Wednesday (Anything Goes).

Twofer

My Christmas design was schparked by the current sketch at Jingle Belles. I hope you can see the snowflakes. The snowflake stencil is without packaging so, you know, it fits in the above-mentioned binders. I didn't start out planning to go mono chrome, but one minty green thing led to another.  The sweet little snowman is NBUS from Pink & Main. 

Also playing in: ABC Christmas Challenge (L = Let It Snow); Christmas Kickstart Challenge (Snow Day); and Rudolph Days (A/G Christmas).

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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!

I have a busy week ahead with a special July NBUS on the 1st, my birthday on the 2nd, and the 4th of July weekend, so I might not see you next Monday. Stay inky!

Mwah!

*Life is too short!