Watercolor Birthday Surprise!

Hello Friday Fans!

The only thing good about how fast the week whooshes by is that it's the weekend! Course then the weekend whooshes by, too, so there you go. Or rather, there it went.

I want to start by saying that my heart goes out to everyone in southern California impacted by the terrible fires. Our entire state is suffering from a severe drought and we worry that wildfires may become commonplace throughout the state with the heat of summer. We don't normally get rain in the summertime, but prayers for no wildfires would be most welcome.

My card today is brought to you by the fact that it is the birthday of my little friend Sandie of Purple London Days! Happy Birthday, Sandie, and many, many more!! Sandie's other friends are linking up their birthday cards over at the blog of the delightful party hostess, Nonni. Her blog is Korttikarkuri - Runaway Cards. Nonni's cohost is the also delightful and well-loved Lynn of The Mango Boys and Me.

The linky button will be open for two weeks over at Nonni's blog, so if you would like to join the party and make a card to link up for Sandie, we would love to have you!

I've had a super busy week what with lunches and whatnots so I'm still stuck way behind with my homework for the watercolor course I'm taking. Oops. Suffrice to say, you'll be seeing watercoloring on this blog for days and days to come, weeks even, depending on schtuff happening like tomorrow we are gone all day.

At last, here is my watercolor birthday card for Sandie:

I colored the beautiful Penny Black flower stamp with my Marvy markers, spritzed it with water, stamped it on the paper, and art happened. Seriously, you can do this! I scored the card to correspond with the sketch seen below, added a sticker birthday sediment, and adheesed the watercolor panel to a gold card.

I hope you like it, Sandie!

~~~

I am entering Sandie's card in these challenges:

Penny Black and More Challenge ~ Anything Goes!

Seize the Birthday challenge ~ Anything Goes with a topping of May flowers.

Seize the Sketch challenge sketch by Lesley, which I turned on its side.

The Paper Players ~ color challenge chosen by Sandy. A different, but no-less superb Sandy.

The links provided will take you to the challenges where you will find all the details regarding rules, sponsors, and prizes and where you will be inspired by the wonderful works of art by the Design Teams. Do join in!!

Online Card Classes

~~~

In honor of the birthday sock hop, I'd like to share this birthday fairy tale which I recently saw on a friend's store-bought card:

A Birthday Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a

Princess who was like a size four or 

something. She could eat and drink

whatever she wanted and always

stayed really skinny and had

flat, firm abs even though she

never went to the gym.

Every time she tried on jeans, the

very first pair fit perfectly and

made her butt look amazing. She lived

in a great big beautiful castle with

her handsome, multimillionaire husband,

who was busy all the time buying her

giant diamonds, taking her to

Hawaii, giving her foot massages, and

telling her how beautiful she was.

One day she was eaten by a 

dragon and no one cared.

The End.

 ~~~

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 leave a comment and/or join as a follower! Please let me know you came by, so I can be sure and return the flavor! 

  

 

*Life Is Too Short!

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Butter Flies and Bunny Presents

Happy Sunday Funday everyone!

I hope the weekend is treating you well! I had such a mammoth post toastie last time, that I will try and keep this brieferish.

I could NOT not play in this week's CASology challenge where the cue card word is JOKE! And where the Guest Designer is the funny and fabulous Gay of Crafty Musings!

The hardest part was choosing from the funny options I had! I finally decided that it was too close to Easter not to use the ol' standby Easter stamp that makes me laugh year after year. It turns out, as it so often does, that there are lots of challenges that fit my card today.

Which card is this:

 Um. Okay. It looks pretty. It even looks a bit fancy. What's so Darnell funny about it?

Take a peek inside: 

I love that line! I know some of you may have seen it last year. 

I prominently featured a butter fly in butter yellow on my card so that I could also play in the current Butterfly Challenge hosted by the fun and talented Mrs. A. This week the brief is "Springtime at Last" and our spring butterfly cards should have some yellow on them. I know Mrs. A. will love the outside and sniggle over the inside.

Also asking for butterfly cards this week are two other wonderful challenges:

I always enjoy The Card Concept which celebrates all the different styles we use when making our cards. 

I believe my style this time is Clean and Layered. I was thinking about calling it Classy and Elegant until I read the bullet item that said Classy and Elegant cards might feature a "sophisticated sentiment." Bwahahaha. Not prezackly, no. Not as such.

And we have the second-ever challenge of the brand-new Time Out Challenges also featuring butterflies this week:

My sketch foundation came from the current Sieze the Sketch which was designed by the gifted Jen Mitchell:

And my color choice was determined by the current Pals Paper Arts:

There are a few other challenges asking for Easter, spring, bunny, funny, or "Anything Goes" cards, but that's enough for my card today. I like to comment on other entries and that's hard to do if I enter too many. I hope to see you joining in, too! Just click on the links for all the details regarding rules, sponsors, and prizes.

~~~

New Friends Corner

It is my absolute pleasure to welcome two new friends for you to meet!

Dawn C. of Lily Pink Scraps. Dawn has been blogging since 2012. She may already be familiar to a lot of you from her works of art on several design teams. Her creations are not limited to cards and each one will inspire and delight you!

Marilyn C. of Who Dat Scrapper. Marilyn loves scrapbooking and making cute and clever cards and other projects. She started her blog in 2012. I met Marilyn when she came to visit my blog after seeing it mentioned by Mary H. of Carolina Cards by Mary H. Thank you, Mary, for the connection! 

And thank you, Dawn and Marilyn, for joining! Welcome to the Playhouse!

~~~

There you go, that wasn't too long! Unfortunately seeing all those bunnies on my card reminded me that there are several of them from the Dust Bunny branch hiding under our bed and in the Nooks and Grannies. Crooks and Nannies. Books and Fannies. Okay, sorry, I'll go.

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 leave a comment and/or join as a follower! Please let me know you came by, so I can be sure and return the flavor! 

  

 

*Life Is Too Short!

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Mwah!

New Dream Home ~ NBUS #119

Hello, my friends!

Happy Mother's Day to all you around the world who are celebrating today! (In this neck of the world, we won't be celebrating until May 11th.) I hope you are treated like a Queen!

I have another new home card to share with you today. Just like birds, people often move/build their nests during the springtime and I seem to know a few people upping their roots this year. Spring is a time of rebirth, reawakening, recreation, resonation, reorgani - okay, stop.

My card today started out with a button. A button in the shape of a house. It's the cutest. It came from GKW and I've had it for ever years. It was patiently waiting for me to find it a home, pun intended. Or to be more precise, a "dream" home. Because what could be more dreamy than neon-colored birds singing on a wire high above a yellow house in a cotton-candy neighborhood?

I had such fun constructing this card using both something old-fashioned and something modern. I started by choosing a modern Washi tape for the top panel on the sketch (below) and the bright pink panel is ages-old mulberry paper, not fringed around the edge. It is a cool and perfect match to the neon pink birds.

I used a NBUS sediment from PTI "Bigger Blooms" to ground my little yellow house. The small white sequints for the chimney smoke are to take the eye up and back to the colorful birds. This card is going to a fellow card maker and I think she will appreciate the marriage of the old mulberry paper with the new Washi tape!

I used the sketch from Seize the Sketch and flippled it on its side.

I used several snippets today, so I'm taking my card over to Pixie's Snippets Playground to show the girls before I pop the card in the mail.

And the current House of Cards challenge is to make a CAS or Classic & Elegant card and use a button, so I'll be joining the fun there, I think for the first time!

And thanks to my friend, Jacquie, I'm also entering my card in the current Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge, which is Anything Goes With Buttons! Thanks, Jacquie!

Be sure to click on the links for more details regarding rules, sponsors, and prizes! I hope you are able to join in and link your creation!!

~~~

New Friends Corner

I am delighted to introduce you to two new friends!

Jodi Ethington of Talking Twine and Trim. Jodi has been blogging since 2011. She can often be seen in the PTI blog hops and I really enjoy her use of Washi tape! I love her fun and happy cards and outlook! Jodi currently has 99 followers and I know you will help her reach that amazing 100-follower milestone and beyond!

Ileana A. of Sparkling Pink. Ileana started blogging just last month! I would so appreciate it if you would make a special effort to go and visit Ileana and welcome her to this wonderful community of card artists! You will enjoy her fabulous card art and be awe-mazed by what she can do with ribbon!!

Thank you, Jodi and Ileana, and welcome to the Playhouse!!

~~~

Out of the Mouths of Babes. I will leave you with a heartwarming story that my sister Diana shared with me recently:

One Sunday morning, the pastor noticed little Alex standing in the foyer of the church staring up at a large plaque that was covered with names which had small American flags mounted on either side.

The six-year old had been staring at the plaque for some time, so the pastor walked up, stood beside the little boy, and said quietly, "Good morning Alex."

"Good morning, Pastor," he replied, still focused on the plaque. "Pastor, what is this?" he asked.

The pastor said, "Well son, it's a memorial to all the young men and women who died in the service."

Soberly, they just stood together, staring at the large plaque. 

Finally, little Alex's voice, barely audible and trembling with fear asked, "Which service, Pastor, the 8:30 or the 10:30?"

~~~

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 leave a comment and/or join as a follower! Please let me know you came by, so I can be sure and return the flavor! 

  

 

*Life Is Too Short!

Project Details
Paper	PTI white, true black, aqua mist
Stamps	PTI Bigger Bloom
Ink	StazOn jet black
Accessories	Washi tape from Freckled Fawn Die: Lil' Inkers Corner Chomper button/sequints from stash

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling:

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Mwah!

Into the Pool! WOYWW #218; CCCB #171FM #121; STS#1

Yoohoo!

Nearing midpoint, we'll soon be whooshing up to Friday, reveling in the week end, hop off, round around to the front, hop on, and then do the whole ride all over again 52 times in the course of a year.  How fun is this?!

Here's my desk.  Yes, it's mine.  I didn't pay to borrow someone else's messy desk. 

It all started when I ordered a few things I did not needed in the way of stamps and dies and then out of the corner of my eye I saw one of those damm sale slash clearance racks that get me every time and I ordered a giant bag of  assorted sequints.  Then, being ridicmeticulous, I decided I would separate them into their respective nonassorted ... aacckk!  It's taking me forever, and since I don't chuck projects, I have to keep at it and since I wanted to make a card now and then, I just worked around the project ... you know how it is.  You also know I don't do messy, especially when I couldn't find my sandals a little while ago.  Not my shoe sandals, my little card sandals.  I'm ready for the backhoe ~ again.

 

Here's the card I made.  (Feel free to click off if you're just What's on Your Workdesk? Wednesday (WOYWW) desk-hopping, but please do let me know you came by, so I can return the flavor of a visit back to you!) 

 

I love this stamp and sediment.  Since I stamped them directly onto my card base, I thought the sediment needed to be wrapped in an on-trend conversation bubble, so I drew one on by hand.  There is no NBUS (never-before-used schtuff) on my card, but I am playing in NTMC (new-to-me challenges)!

 

The first is a brand-new-to-everyone challenge called Seize the Sketch!  It's the sister challenge to "Seize the Birthday!" and it's another brain-child of the delightful and talented Lesley.  Here's the terrific in auger all sketch designed by the superbly talented Amy Tsuruta:   

The next NTMC is The Friday Mashup! challenge, where the theme is "polka dots."

As it happens, the City Crafter Challenge Blog ALSO has the theme "polka dots" this week!

 

How about that?!  This is my second time playing with the inspirational CCCB card artists.

 

I'm also reentering the "Summer" challenge at Addicted to CAS (ATCAS).  Sometimes the dials all line up beautifully!

 

~~~

 

As always, many of the challenges I enter have awesome sponsors and prizes, so I hope you will click on the links for the details, meet the fab Design Teams and Guest Designers, and join in these fun challenges!  The DT cards are always awe-mazing!

 

And I hope you will check out the addicting and delightful WOYWW, hosted by the humorous and delightful Julia!

 

~~~

 

I leave you with this smoochable face from the Grand Duke R. Dog.  He is doing us the flavor of watching us for a few days.

"I'm sorry I ate your sandal embellies.  Please forgive me.  Having said that,
may I add that if you weren't so messy, they wouldn't have been on the floor."

~~~

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 leave a comment and/or join as a follower!

 

 

*Life Is Too Short!   

Paper:  DCWV double-sided
Stamps:  Art Impressions K-1605, P-2637
Ink:  Versafine onyx black, Prismacolor pencils
Starfish from ancient stash