Septimus Alredius!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you feeling well!

Following last Monday's post, I did call in Scour and Reorg. The timing turned out to be good because the busyness helped take my mind off yet another senseless school shooting in this country which left two children dead, many injured, and anyone there mentally troubled for the rest of their lives. I want to rant on about it, but that's not why you're here. 

We've turned the calendar today for the ninth time in 2025! Happy Labor Day to those celebrating! There are only three more turns to go and the yuletide will be coming in! This week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is I = Ink/Color Medium. With the Playhouse turned topsy-turvy by my crew, not to mention my mental state, I consorted with B.O.B. and I found two inky panels previously made with Brusho powders. And, thus:

Onefer

Some of my bloggie friends made cards a coupla weeks ago using the Northern Lights technique. This isn't that, but a shoutout to them for the inspiration to see this panel as very Northern-Light-ish, so I simply used an old wooded SU silhouette tree stamp in the foreground. (I meant to say wooden stamp, but you have to love the English language because ha-ha, it's also wooded!)

This left me with turkoyce hills, so I covered them with snow using my NBUS Simon Hurley Astro Paste. It's crazy how impossible (especially in the sun) it is to photograph the stunning schparkle of this paste when it dries. In real life the whole bottom area is covered like in the lower left-hand corner. 

I'm playing in Jingle Belles where the brief is "Cardstock Christmas." I used black and watercolor cardstock only.

Twofer

For this design ... wait. Where's the rest of this Brusho panel? Wheeeel, what happened was, I went to CASE my friend Susan's card because her design reminded me that I have the same Santa and his sleigh silhouette stamp which I thought would be perfect for a Northern Lights sky. Using my MISTI, my first stamping of the sleigh in black with a heavy hand still wasn't enough coverage, so I reinked the stamp and stamped it a second time. When I lifted the lid of my MISTI, I saw that the Brusho panel had moved in spite of a grip pad and magnets. Wah. Wah.

My cursing made Stanley dive under his blankets, but Hammy calmly suggested that I just cut off Santa and his sleigh and use the partial panel on a card. B.O.B. provided the die-cut sediment and Pinkfresh Studio Washi butterfly which led to the Sizzix cloud e/f and, well, B.O.B.'s your uncle! And now I'm on Santa's naughty list. (Like I wasn't already!)

I'm playing in Addicted to Stamps and More where they are celebrating Challenge 500! Congratulations!! This time the brief is Die Cuts / Stencils. Also, Simon Says Stamp Wednesday where the brief is Anything Goes featuring Pinkfresh Studio.

Bonus!

After I stamped the trees for my Onefer above, I put a white folded card in my MISTI and stamped off the heavy black ink. Bonus! It gave me another perfectly useable card for my Christmas stash. I've always had a fondness for black and white evergreen trees and simple sediment for a Christmas card design. For this card, I used a sediment from SSS "Holiday Greetings Mix 1." I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to add a period to that sediment.

I'm playing again at ABC Christmas Challenge under Q is for Quick! It doesn't get much more QACAS than this!

Lesson

And then what happened was, bless my heart, I thought why not run it through my Gemini using an embossing plate to add falling snow for, you know, interest. Only I didn't ask my little rompers, so I grabbed my 3D snow when I should have grabbed my 1D snow and now here's a lesson for all of us on how sometimes cards don't need more interest!

That poor little bird is about to be knocked out of the sky by that snowfall those snowballs!😆

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I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: I = Ink/Color Mediums

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your colorful/inky art! Your creation may help motivate someone out of their mojo schlump! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! Mwah!

~~~

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse! Enjoy your day!

No, seriously, enjoy! Life is too short!

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Deep In the Wreaths!

Hello Stamplings!

Good to see you! I hope you had a great week and that you are enjoying the last days of August, wherever you are. I'm a morning person, so I love waking up to sunshine and goin' and doin'. Which means I'd better make the most of these days before the sleepy darker mornings roll in.

This week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is A = Anything Goes, which I turned into anything wreathy goes. 

Onefer

This is QACAS at its finest, if I do say so myself, with a chorus of agreement from the hamster gallery! I used more of that brilliant textured card I found which looks like Cord U. Roy's pants. The doubled-up wreath is made from Washi Tape die-cuts from Pinkfresh Studio. The gold-embossed sediment is from GKW. After wards, I ran my Galaxy Gold Dew Drop ink pad around the edges of the pants card.

I'm playing in the AAA Cards Challenge (Anything Goes CAS with the option of green); and the ABC Christmas Challenge (Q is for Quick).

Twofer

Guess what? This card features a NBUS Penny Black stamp and die set called "Winter Blessings" which I recently purchased! I'm trying to be better at that, realizing I risk NBUS Mountain erupting one day when I least expect it because of all the jealous stamps, dies, and stencils that have been stuck there for (cough) years.😱

Anyberry, I used kraft paper and three of the five stamps in the set and there you go. Trivia: in all my years of card-making, this is the first cardinal stamp and die I've owned! Thank you, Penny! It's a beauty and I can't wait to paint it, but this time I simply cut it from red paper and dressed it. Winking of the cardinal and berries provided by my wee helpers. I added three score lines to the bottom pursuant to Lesson 41 in the Book of Compositions.

I'm playing in Christmas Kickstart (Let's Wreath It Up); Little Red Wagon (Circle of Life); and Penny Black Saturday Challenge (Anything Goes - optional: embossing).

Threefer

If you play in Freshly Made Sketches, you'll recognize this layout from their challenge #700. They are celebrating 14 years of challenges! WOW! They went back in time to re-use Sketch #14 (below) for the celebration. It's my first time using this sketch because I didn't start playing in their challenges until my early days on March 4, 2012 with challenge #24! Where has the time gone?!

To build the sketch, I started with the wreath to keep with the theme and I cut it from a scrap of green metallic paper. The wreath is NBUS from Pinkfresh Studio called "Leafy Circle." Then I went through my stitched square dies to find the right size and die cut it from metallic gold. I cut a 4.25 square card base and covered it with a gold panel. 

Then the fun begin. Hammy looked through my gold flecked vellum paper, Stanley looked through window at the squirrels (he is still very young) and I looked through my dots and stripes pp. A sheet of gold stripes won and then we had to spend another hour doing the math and trying to attach the little panels so they were evenly spaced, but differently angled for more interest. Then we had a lie down.

To add the wee corner detail per the sketch, we found this cute little gingerbread cookie which my friend Bunny sent me back in January 2024. It was a happy rediscovering and there are five more little cookies in the envelope, so you will be seeing them again. (If the lads don't run off with them as little playmates!) Bunny included a note that the cookies were from Impression Obsession.

I'm also playing in Rudolph Days, an Anything Christmas Goes challenge that runs from the 25th to the end of every month.

~~~

As we say in the industry, if you've made it this far, thank you!🫶 I actually made a few more cards and have some wreaths still to use, but it's Sunday and nearly Ni-Ni time, so I'll save them for another post. The fact that I didn't realize I had so many wreaths tells me it's time for a visit from Scour and Reorg, characters I love in the book of my life, weirdo that I am.

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: A = Anything Goes

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations with no restrictions! It's a free-for-all and you never know ~ your creation may help motivate someone out of their creative schlump! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! Mwah! 

~~~

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!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Puffy Dogs and Puffy Clouds

Hello Stamplings!

I hope the world is treating you like the good person you are!🤗

I've had a busy week with lunches and appointments and we had a wonderful get-together with the family before the grandtwins go back to college next week for another year!** The course work is getting harder, but there is nothing like the fun of your college years! 

This week is E = Embossing on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar and for my first card, the lads and I went traveling in the Wayback Machine. (Google spellcheck wants me to call it the "Swayback" Machine!😀)

Onefer

What happened was, when we went over to see the kids on Saturday, we took Nellie and Jack to the dog park. It turns out they were having a Show-Off-Your-Collar contest and I was able to get a cute shot of of several of the pups lined up against the fence. (Nellie is in the photo, too, but she is hard to see against the white fence!)

The embossed fence e/f is from Darice. The old puffy dog stickers are from Doodlebug. The stacked sediment is from The Greetery's Birthday Blooms. 

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Any Occasion.

Just Us Girls: Word week: Birthday.

The Paper Players: CAS: Critters.

Twofer

The jump-off for this design came from the current sketch challenge at Freshly Made Sketches. The linen panel was die-cut using my NBUS Distant Sun Collage from Memory Box. For the card base and to fill in the sky aperture, I again went back in time and used some gold-speckled DSP I have. After the DSP was popped in the sky hole, the whole panel was embossed using my Subtle e/f from SU. The lads each added enamel dots and I finished with a tiny gold dot of punctuation. QACAS!

Other Challenges

Allsorts: Begins With "B."

Seize the Birthday: No Flowers.

I.D.E.A.S. Gallery

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using your wet and/or dry embossing! Sharing your card may help motivate others out of their creative schlumps!

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

~~~

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!

**It is an emotive time for me and The Mister because we were exactly the twins' age when we met 56 years ago! Even to us, we look like babies in this photo, but back then it wasn't unusual to be on your own at 20 years of age, or younger. It's too expensive for kids in college to do that now.  

I'm sure many of you can relate. Sometimes it seems like it was a hunnert years ago, sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday!

Time is a funny old thing.

*Life is too short!

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Bees & Berries

Hello Stamplings!

And Happy First Monday of August! You know, this whooshing by of time is a bit concerning when you are of a certain age. As I tell the Mister, "At this rate, we'll be dead before we know it!"

Too honest? What can I say? I have a wicked sense of humor. But then we both laugh and carry on because we can't slow it down or speed it up, it is what it is! And what this week is, is I = Ink/Color Mediums on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, so here we go ~ 

Onefer

For this design, I decided to use Lindy's Magical powders through a stencil. I used a NBUS stencil from Designs by Jaime called, "Mini Chickenwire." After sprinkling on yellows, orange, and golds, I liberally spritzed the panel and lifted the stencil. After the ink dried, I ran the panel through my Gemini using a Darice honeycomb e/f. 

In the photo of the finished card with the frame, it's a bit hard to see the inky honeycomb pattern that resulted from the technique, although it does look like delicious honey drippings. I took the photo on the right when I was playing around with different ways to lay my dies. Sorry for the shadow, but I think you can better see the outline that was left when I lifted the stencil off the ink. It's a fun and super-easy technique.

The bees are NBUS from Pretty Pink Posh, "Bee Friends," and they glisten from all the winking the lads added! The sediment die was in my stash. The scalloped frame is from Pink & Main.

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Birthdays.

Allsorts: Animals or Anything Goes.

Just Us Girls: CASE a Designer. I CASED Elizabeth's pretty honeycomb card.

 

Twofer

For my Twofer, I pulled a NBUS die from the mountain. It's from Memory Box, called, "Silverdale Branch." I colored it with my Ziggies and waterbrush and because it's a little too early to be picking holly, I painted it with a light hand before passing it to Stanley and Hammy for winking. The Joy die is from SSS called, "Elegantly Modern Christmas." 

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: I = Ink/Color Mediums

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your colorful/inky art! Your creation may help motivate someone out of their mojo schlump! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! Mwah!

~~~

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!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Half-Year Stenciling

Hello Stamplings!

O jp[e tjos fomds upi we;;! Oops. In other words, I hope you are doing well! So many of you around the world have been dealing with terrible long heat spells and/or days to weeks of rain and I hope you find relief soon.  

Today we wrap up June with an illusive fifth Monday. That means we get to play with S = Stencils on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. I forget about using them, but when I do have a play, then I want to play with ALL of them!

Onefer

Nothing original here as far as design, but I'm delighted with this NBUS balloon stencil from Waffle Flowers which I got on sale not too long ago. I chose three CP ink pads next to each other in the drawer and I love how summer-y and ice-cream-y they turned out. 

Hammy and Stanley added schplatters by clapping water all over the panel from their perch on the window sill. I added a black card base and sediment banner heat-embossed in white because I thought the black made the colors bop. (🎶Bop with me baby allll night long ...🎶) I say "bop," because, like, you know, you don't want to use the word pop around balloons. Duh.

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Die cuts or stencils.

Just Us Girls: Stencil week.

Seize the Birthday: Add a silhouette or anything goes.

Twofer

This week marks the half-way point in the year, so it's not too early to get serious about Christmas cards, even if it is summer. I mail my cards in November, so that gives me four months to make a coupla hunnert cards. Great, now I'm sitting here in a full-on flop sweat! Why'd I have to bring it up?!

This heart tree stencil is NBUS from 2021. It's called "Heart of Christmas." I blended ink through the stencil and then the lads used their winkers, but that schplotched the blended ink around, so then I went over the hearts with colored pencils to reblend. Happily, that did not remove the schparkle, but you'll have to take my word for it.😊

I'm playing in the June Rudolph Days Challenge where the brief is Anything Christmas Goes.

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I.D.E.A.S. Calendar:  S = Stencils

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your stencil creations this week which might help lift someone out of their creative schlump!

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your design! Thank you so much to everyone who visited and linked last week! Mwah! 

~~~

To my American friends, Happy 4th of July! May our hard-fought democracy and our precious constitution stand for another 249 years! 🎆🌭🍦

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

 

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Summer Colors and PP Blues

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome to a brand-new Monday and the start of summer in this half of the globule! Are you going on summer vacation? Or like us, do you leave this time for families with school-age kids and take your vacation after kids go back to school? That's one of the joys of being empty-nesters/retireds, although I'm not a fan of the word retired. It's so sleepy. You're re-tired?🥱 I think the word should be "rested."

"Are you still working?" "No, I'm rested now." 

This is the fourth Monday in June, so it is A = Anything Goes week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. I struggle with this week, stupidly enough. Apparently, I'm at that age where I need direction because, you know, squirrels everywhere.

Onefer +

What happened was, my friend Karen used a colored paper a few weeks ago that I loved. She shared that it was from Concord & 9th and I lucked into their annual inventory sale ... and you know the rest of the story. Kaching, kaching.

I think it's been six years since I bought an ink pad, having invested in the delicious Catherine Pooler pads and reinkers, but I decided to buy C9th's latest bundle of paper and matching ink. When the order arrived, Hammy reminded me that we had a NBUS stamp and washi tape set called, "Rainbow Daisies" from Pinkfresh on Mt. NBUS and it worked beautifully with the C9th colors!

Next, I found a NBUS sediment from "Essential Sentiments" by Ink to Paper for inside the wreath and I stamped it in the matching ink onto hammered card x six. The bling added the perfect balance and punch-uation. It's an old, but classic and timeless design.

And, bonus, I still have all the rainbow daisy flower die-cuts from the washi-tape, so the lads and I are going back into batch-production this afternoon to build up the card stash even more!👏

Twofer

My friend, one-l-Michele🥰, has her first sketch up at Freshly Made Sketches as a member of the Design Team and I wanted to make a card to support her and her great sketch! The timing works out that I'm always squeezing in under the fence with my Monday posts, but better late than never.

For this card, I celebrate stamping. I stamped and clear-heat-embossed my NBUS "Eclectic Blooms" stamp from Concord & 9th. Following the colors from the Color Throwdown Challenge, I painted the blooms and washed the sky with my Ziggies and the lads added the schparkle and the schplatter. To finish, I added a stitched frame from Reverse Confetti, and some blingadingding.

I'm also linking to the Krafty Chicks Challenge where the brief is clean and simple (CAS).

PP Blues

As a distraction from the scary world, I thought I would share this photo of me holding a piece of paper over a magazine article to show how thin the paper is. As a cardmaker, you are thinking it's a thin piece of vellum or if you're old like me, you will be reminded of the "onion skin" paper used for carbon copies back when I started secretarial school in the 1900s. 

But, no. Sadly that paper is toilet paper. Yup. If you're a longtime reader, you know I've complained about this before. No one listens. I would think by now there must be some women in charge of the toilet paper products ordered for use in public washrooms in stores and on planes, ferries, trains, etc. 

Pinterest

I'm all for being economical and ecological, but are they really? When a woman has to unroll 58 yards of the stuff in order to get enough to cover her tiny hand after a tinkle, how is that either economical or ecological? Rant over.

And, by the way, we don't sit on the seat, so it's not that easy to be bent over with our heads even with our knees and our butts in the breeze, as we twist to the side in order to unroll long narrow ribbons of the stuff! Sorry. Now I'm done.

Except to say that it's also unhealthy! It's not just that we don't want to get our hand in our business. It's that our doctors have told us that we have to be dry our precious bits thoroughly in order to prevent urinary tract infections. 

Also ~ slap! Okay, okay.

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: A = Anything Goes

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations with no restrictions! Your card may help motivate others out of a schlump! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! Mwah! 

Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse!

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter