So long, August!

Hello Stamplings!

Well, that's summer. I hope you closed the door behind you because a lot of folks don't want to see any more of 2026 summer! I know it's not official for another few weeks, but I am hoping Lady September puts on her fall hat right from the first!

When I think of fall I think of leaves, and since it is a rare 5th Monday of the month, that means this is S = Stencils on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. After that opening, I know you were expecting a card done in fall colors, but, no, I copied the example on the leafy stencil packaging because I love these spring and summer colors. I'm just trying to keep your brains confused. I don't want to be the only one confused around here!

Onefer

I actually have two Onefers. The NBUS stencil I used is "Leafy Background" from Pinkfresh Studio, designed by Inna Moreva. The sediment is NBUS from Gina K. 

Then I saw the AAA Colourful challenge which had similar colors, but with the addition of blues, so I had another play:

The die-cut sediment is from Simon Says Stamp, attached to a panel to which I stenciled random leaves and added score lines and pop bling that was popular a few years back. Hammy has gotten quite adept as picking colors to match the cards. My collection of dots are so old, the gluey backing is failing, so I remove it and glue them on, rather than have them fall off during mailing. 

I tried the Nuvo drops and still have (cough) little bottles of them, mostly brand new because I could never get them to perform for me. Not even Hammy could make them work. I suppose it's like making pancakes ~ you'd think, in time, you'd get good at forming them, but not us. Does anyone want several bottles of Nuvo drops?

But I digest. I have a feeling I will be using this pretty stencil a lot, next in fall colors, and perhaps even for Christmas cards?!

Playing in AAA Colourful (Colourboard #31); Just Us Girls (Stencil Week); and Seize the Birthday (A/G).

Twofer

For this week's Christmas card, I started with the sketch from the talented Michele F. for Freshly Made Sketches. Some of you might recognize the background striped paper as being from PTI back in the last century. I love the linen look and feel and how the bright colors make me happy. 

I used a rounded corner stitched die from MFT as the angled element of the sketch and for the middle focus pocus I used a peppermint candy stencil from SSS. After masking and blending the two shades of pink, I die-cut the candy using a circle stitched die from MFT. The Ho Ho Ho sediment is from Impression Obsession. A few silver sequints were picked out by Stanley for the finishing touché.

Playing in Freshly Made Sketches; The Paper Players (Tic Tac Toe: diagonally top right to bottom left); and Rudolph Days (AG Christmas).

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

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

*Life is too short!

ESPP!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you doing well and not impacted by all the terrible weather-related suffering that's happening around the world. There seem to be more catastrophes than ever happening all at once.

The post title today stands for Embossing and Stenciling on Patterned Paper. It all started because the brief this month at CAS Mix Up is Stenciling Over Patterned Paper. I wanted to try it and then once I got started . . .

Onefer

I went through my patterned paper and I found a half-sheet of this pretty wave pp. I knew I had an cute whale die from PTI, so I die-cut one and then used the negative space to stencil the whale onto the paper. I ended up accidentally stenciling the whale over the pattern in such a way that she ended up with a smile! 

In order to keep my design CAS and use the Freshly Made Sketches sketch (turned horizontally), I cut the pretty pp into a diagonal panel. It is E = Embossing week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, but after going horizontal, I realized that all my wave e/fs are vertical.😮 Hammy to the rescue! He reminded me that I have a horizontal wave die, so I used a rubber embossing mat and turned the die into an e/f! The NBUS sediment is from the same PTI whale set.

Besides CAS Mix Up, I'm playing in: 

Addicted to CAS (Water); Allsorts (Embossing); Freshly Made Sketches (sketch turned sideways); Seize the Birthday (Funny/Punny); and Just Us Girls (Water).

Twofer

For my Christmas twofer design, I used a JoAnn's Park Lane e/f called Holly Berry using a pretty raspberry cardstock. 

Here's a photo of the old SU DSP I used. The poinsettia stencil is from Tim Holtz, blended with raspberry ink. I cut the poinsettia stencil panel down to a banner and added a simple sediment from SSS's Holiday Greetings Mix I.

I made a few more simple cards while I was on a roll and Stanley has a pile of pp for me to match with stencils tomorrow. I'm enjoying that part as much as the stenciling ... pairing the stencils with the pp to make the best designs gets my 'ol grey matter working! 

Playing in: Krafty Chicks (Christmas); and Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round (P is for Poinsettia).

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

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse! Stay safe!

*Life is too short!

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!

Daisies and Tufts

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I hope you had a good week and that you were able to see the remarkable night sky over the weekend when five planets were visible with the naked eye! There were three in the west just after sunset (Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury) and then hours later, two in the east just before sunrise (Saturn and Mars!) 

The amazing event fell on the night of a new moon when the sky was the darkest, so if you were really lucky, you even saw the Milky Way! We only saw Venus, Jupiter, and (maybe?) Mercury, but then we had to put pajamas back on our eyes and go to bed!

Onefer

It is E = Embossing week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar and the NBUS embossing folder featured here is called, "Quilted Daisies" from Scrapbook.com. 

The floral spray die cut is NBUS from Concord & 9th, designed by Kristina Werner and called, "Daphne's Flowers Inlay." The nice thing about this flower die is that Kristina has numbered the bits to make it easy to make the leaves and flowers any colors or patterns you want. Mwah!

And, yup, I used more of the gorgeous pp from Craft Consortium, all swirly and shot with gold. It loses a bit of its gob-smacki-ness when it's used for teeny blossoms, but I like how it turned out and I do enjoy inlaying. That's different laying than napping-laying, but I do enjoy that, too.

Entering: Allsorts ~ Anything Grows From the Garden; Seize the Birthday ~ Anything Goes option; and Snippets Playground (I used lots of pp scraps to die-cut the flowers).

Twofer

As we speed towards July, I hope to make my Twofers as Christmas designs from now on.🤞   

I also used a NBUS e/f for this card. This one is from Simon Says Stamp called, "Tiny Tufts." The thing is, what kind of tufts are they? Olives? Carnations? I pulled out my Artistic License and decided to make them Christmas berries.

I used my brayer and red ink on the bumpy embossed side and, as usual, it looked like leftover pizza, so I turned the panel over and brayered the debossed side. It sort of looks like fabric because of the textured watercolor paper.

To give it more pan ache, Stanley suggested we scallop the edges with a die from PTI. Then it was a matter of finding dies that I could use for stems and berries to decorate the sediment while not obscuring the background. Yay for "Up Goes the Tree" from Penny Black! I painted the berries and stems with my Ziggies and then Hammy carefully glossified the berries, et Violet! The sediment (also from SSS) is called, "Elegantly Modern Christmas."

(If you're wondering, the scalloped borders are up-lifted because I accidentally trapped a piece of Timothy hay under the panel. When I turned back to my desk after looking through my dies, I found Stanley madly nosing his way all around the edges of the card, trying to find a way to get under the panel! I had to distract him with a strawberry to get him to stop, but after all that, I decided to leave it and call it a design feature! Never a dull mo!)

Entering: The Card Concept ~ Christmas in July. I was inspired by the colors and the white and red balls on the Christmas tree in the photo. (Love the little beagle!) Also entering: Krafty Chicks ~ Christmas, and The 12 Months of Christmas Link Up ~ Anything Goes.

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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!

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!