Happy Easter, Bunnies!

Hello Stamplings,

I hope you're having a good day and maybe even a wonderful vacation if the kids or grandkids are off on spring break from school!

I don't know what's gotten into me. I'm normally an uber-CAS card designer. A tiny image of a frog and a sediment made a card, or maybe a bevy of mature ladies holding up a bar with their elbows, etc. Hence the term QACAS for quick and clean and simple. But this past week, when I have a million other things to do to prep for company, me and the lads decided to try scene building! 

Onefer

This is week two of April, so the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is D = Dyes. Ha ha, see what I did there? Did you dye your Easter eggs yet? Of course not. Eggs are too expensive. 

The wooden fence is a piece of pp and the grass was made using a NBUS stencil from Waffle Flower and then painted. The fence hole is a stitched oval and the sediment is a sticker, propped up. The hanging leaves are from Altenew's "Leaf Canopy," still one of my favorite leaf stamps and dies.

This Paper Smooches bunny has clearly been working a triple shift or else she is over-sampling the liquor cabinet, but we don't judge. And I think you can see that the lads did a bang-up job winking up the place!

I'm playing in the Inkspirational Challenge where the mood board is decorated Easter eggs and in Inspired By ... Bunnies. 

Besides the white snippets used for the leaves, bunny, and grass, I used lots of pp snippets for the eggs, so I am hopping over to the Snippets Playground with this card. There will be a perpetual Easter egg hunt this week and lots of eggnog. 

Wait. What? Isn't eggnog for Christmas? Turns out the original eggnog recipe dated 1482 has just been unearthed and the eggs used in the recipe were removed from their shells by a small blow hole, so the shells could then be beautifully decorated for Easter!  (Source: a very small AI encyclopedia located in the core of my brain.)

Twofer

Ah, what an idealick springtime scene this is, combining old and new. I started by stamping the NBUS hill and tree line stamp from Stacy Yacula's MFT stamp set called, "Scene Builder." The clouds and the stamped grass and flowers are from the same set. After stamping the horizon, I fussy-cut a mask and blended the grass and sky. I think the wee bunnies are from PTI and the sediment is from GKW. 

This stamp set is from 2019 and I couldn't wait to use it. But then it came and I asked myself why I ordered it because, as I said, I've never been much of an all-over scene-builder kind of card designer. Turns out it's really fun and there are more stamps I haven't used, so hopefully it won't be six years before I do another landscape.

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Die Cuts and/or Stencils.

NBUS: A/G using never before used schtuff.

Shopping Our Stash: Hippity Hop.

~~~

Happy Passover and Happy Easter to you all! Enjoy this time with your family if you are fortunate to be together! I'm resharing this fun photo of the grandtwins I ran across yesterday ... which is when it seems like this was taken!

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar:  D = Dies

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using dies. Your card may help motivate and lift others out of their creative schlump or just give someone a design idea of their own! 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! 

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

I.D.E.A.S. Die-Cut Day!

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome and good day to ya! I'm feeling okay and I'll feel even better once I get off the shingles meds. Thank you for all your wonderful birthday and get well wishes and prayers! You're the best!❤

I have my usual twofer for you. One is a card I made a coupla weeks ago and one I managed during the week.

Onefer

The beautiful vellum butterfly image is from a company called Stamp On It. I attached it to a stitched and scalloped pink square and then attached that to a sheet of vellum, which was attached to the card front with a fold over the top. I then added the die-cut thanks from poppystamps and the sequints.

Before I added the vellum to the card base, I thought a layer of text on the card front would look lovely under the vellum crinoline, so I used my old SU En Francais stamp:

Twofer

A simple W-O-W Christmas card on hammered cardstock to kick-start what will hopefully be weekly Christmas card makes from now on. Tick-tock, tick-tock! I love pure white-on-white cards, but when I go to make them, I usually end up adding a bit of color, a touch of gold embossing, a little bling, something. I'm pickled tink that I managed to restrain myself for once! (It helped that the lads are away at summer camp right now!)

The corner die is actually NBUS and it's from 2015. I mean, seriously? I really am a bad offender of not using my schtuff, aren't I?! And I have a set of these, Christmas and non-Christmas dies. Slap! Never mind, better late than never as I always tell you with your NBUS!

Sorry, I digested. The ornament is ancient (but often used) from Spellbinders, called, "2011 Heirloom Ornaments." The sediment has escaped its packaging. I'm imagining you imagining the die ripping apart the thin cellophane envelope and flinging itself into the drawer. 

~~~

The Mails and The Mister

I have one of those first-of-the-month birthdays that are a surprise when you turn the calendar, so I'm fortunate to get cards for many days after wards. I have to say that this year the mails have been extraordinary! I have received many cards from England and Canada in less than a week! Bravo!!

But then, this:

It is so sad to see a lovely handmade card mangled, especially when there was nothing on the card which should have caught in machinery.😢 On a positive note, I am happy that the mail personnel didn't just throw it away! 

❤❤❤   

Per tradition, The Mister made me a copier paper handmade birthday card, which I treasure each year. He is not usually one for quips, but he really made me laugh out loud when he wrote this in the card:

Happy 75th Birthday!

If you were a building,

this would be quite

an accomplishment.

And you still have all your shingles!

😂😂😂

~~~

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!

Challenges:

Triple B: July 

Shopping Our Stash: NBUS!

Peace On Earth: A/G Christmas.

Go7: Masked Stenciling

Hello Stamplings!

Me, again! It's the 28th of the month and time to share our Group of Seven Cardmakers technique, which this month is Masked Stenciling. I'm delighted that my friend Pat from Colourful Card Creations is our Guest Designer! To see Pat's beautiful card and the results of the rest of the Group of Seven, please click over to the Go7 blog.

Here is the design I came up with:

The technique is as simple as it sounds and there are lots of possibilities! You mask a portion of your card panel or an image and then stencil over the mask. I started by first going through my stencils for ideas. 

When I came to this NBUS stencil, the "Aha!" phase was done!

To make my mask, I traced the flamingo through the stencil onto an adhesive sheet and fussy-cut it. Yup, that's right, I fussy-cut those legs and that neck! Of course, after wards, I needed a sip of wodka and a brief lie-down. 

Upon rising, I placed the flamingo on my card front and blended ink through the tropical leaves portion of the stencil using CP inks and brushes. I just noticed that my flamingo is shy and somehow managed to duck her head into the leaves! 

And because that was easy and fun, I made a second card:

For this card, I used the watering can you saw on my previous post and the Floral Mask stencil from Memory Box. The result you see made me cock my head and had Hammy and the little guy laughing out loud.

So here's a little tip: If you are masking an image, rather than an edge, take a minute to visualize the finished card and how the image and the stencil will work together. For example, will part of the image (say, a watering can handle) disappear into the stencil?! Oops. I saved the card by covering the can with a die-cut, but I wanted to share my learning moment.

Springification!

We have a sunny break in the rain and it's enough to bring a riot of color to the yard!

Enjoy the rest of 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! Just a reminder, if you try out the Masked Stencil technique, we'd love to see you link your creation to the inspiration gallery at Group of Seven Cardmakers.

*Life is too short!

Linking my card to Allsorts Challenge (things that fly), Shopping Our Stash (it's not easy being green), SSS Monday (fur or feathers), Stencil Fun (a/g), and The Paper Funday Challenge.

Anemones And Snow People

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you're doing well and keeping cool! The temps have dropped a little bit here and any wee drop is very welcome! I pray for those impacted by the heat and the horrible fires.

Let's start today with a bright summer design:

I'm pleased with myself for making a watercolor card with this NBUS stamp within a few days of getting it, she says, patting herself on the back. The stamp is from Honey Bee, called "Framed: Anemones." I used my KGT paints and other than that, the stamp does all the work for you because the wide frame is part of the stamp. (Thank you, Emily Midgett.) Handsome little Hammy added liberal winking. In real life, the colors are more vibrant, the shading more pronounced, and the schparkle more schparkly.

Challenges

• Seize the Birthday: Colors: Purple, Blue, and Green.
• Addicted to Stamps and More: Any Occasion.
• Cardz 4 Galz: Get Inky.
• Double D: Colors: Purple, Blue, and Green.
  

Twofer

And now to cool you off, here is a page from a photo album of the Snowfolks. I turned to my Christmas bits binder and found these guys already die cut. Score! I colored them with my Ziggies and made the album design using panels cut with an MFT die. The four panels were placed atop a piece of silver-embossed pp. Hammy went on a deep dive into Miss Elaine Yus's box of goodies and found this old glossy holly embellie which works perfectly in the bull's eye center!

Challenges

• Christmas Kickstart: Show us your Snowfolk.
  
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: AG using snippets (snowfolk and panels). Join us for a cocktail & recipe exchange by the paddling pool! Here's mine: Vodka Lemon Drop Cocktail
  
• Rudolph Days
  
• Shopping Our Stash: WTH Embellishments!

~~~

Oh, Blogger! 😕 Oops, here come's another ant. I mean rant.

• I want to apologize if a bunch of my old posts suddenly popped up in your inbox last week. I didn't do it, honest. Blogger had some sort of mental breakdown again. And it didn't just impact my posts; a lot of your posts from months ago ended up in my inbox, too. No clue why. No explanation from Blogger.
  
  
• Not only that, but I just learned from a friend via the NBUS gallery that Blogger deleted two of her posts with a terse popup saying they violated child safety guidelines ~ which, of course, is totally ridiculous. Worse still, get this: The email said that if she wished to "request a review" of their findings, she could click on a link. When she clicked on the link (in both instances), the popup said this: "400. That's an error. The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried. That's all we know." Seriously? 

• Not only that, as I mentioned in a post in May, your friends comments might be in your Spam folder. It is located under Comments on your dashboard. At the top of the Comments is "All" with a drop-down arrow. There you will see All, Awaiting Moderation, Published, and Spam. Make sure you check all your folders occasionally. In addition to legit comments showing up in the Spam folder, unpublished comments are also still showing up in my list of "All (published)" comments on the dashboard of my blog.
  
  We always assume the comments in the All list are all published because they should be and, unfortunately, you can't tell by looking at the list of comment if some unpublished comments are lurking in there. So now every few days I have to scroll down the far right side of the list to make sure there aren't any checkmarks that appear as the mouse rolls down the column. If there are, I just click on the checkmark and a popup asks me if I'm sure I want the comment published. Duh! So frustrating.
  
  (This is so hard to explain. Please email me or call me if none of this makes any sense!) I managed to blog for over ten years without having this glitch with comments. Someone at Blogger caused it, so why has it been months without someone fixing it back to the way it was?  

Nothing can be done about these things, but I wanted to give you a head's up so that if it happens to you, at least you know you're not alone. Please share if you do know clues or answers to these things that are happening.  

~~~

After all that, we need a laugh:

~~~ 

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

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse, being a follower, and leaving me some love!

p.s. I'm happy to say my meds got sorted out Monday morning by the two parties involved without any further intervention from me! Imagine that! I appreciated your sharing your experiences and your comments of support. I'm sorry that so many of you have been in similar situations.💕

*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!)

Christmas Parade ...

Hello Stamplings!

I hope those who celebrated had a marvelous and delicious Thanksgiving! You know it was a success when you feel like you never want to eat another thing for a month! It was so wonderful to see family and friends in person again! Everyone helped out and brought goodies and someone even brought along a cold.😒 A sniffly reminder that once those masks come off, the bugs get right in there! 🐛

I still need to make loads of Christmas cards, so I will be sharing more cards, less words, in case you are looking for some inspiration. Today Hammy and I have more metallic creations, primarily inspired by the silver and gold Color Hues challenge. (If you want any ingredient information, please let me know.)

Challenges:  Color Hues: Silver and Gold. Rudolph Days: AG Christmas.

 Challenges: Shopping Our Stash: Three poinsettias. SSS Wednesday: AG.

Challenges: Little Red Wagon: Cut it out. TIME OUT: DaVinci quote. Happy House: Gold and silver.

And a few more easy metallic designs:

~~~

I will leave you today with a photo of little Miss Nellie with her Thanksgiving bow, waiting patiently for company to arrive. And keeping a keen eye on the kitchen wherefrom waft some wonderful smells!

~~~

Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! Life is too short! Back soon with more Christmas inspiration. After a nap.

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!)