Seasonal III

Hello Stamplings!

How the heck are you doing? I hope all is well in your little corner of the world! 

Please be careful as you join me in getting down on your knees or up on a chair to bring your holiday dishes out from their 11-month hidey-hole hibernation. Actually, I don't have holiday dishes, but I do have my big roaster back up in there where the the light doesn't shine. I suspect it's where the dust bunnies meet for Friday night tipples.

Wish I had a pool boy for times like this. Then again, that might be odd since I don't have a pool. But I do have a Twofer of "Anything Goes" seasonal cards for the last-week-of-November I.D.E.A.S. schedule.

Onefer

The leafy background is a NBUS stamp and die from Altenew called, "Climbing Leaves." I stamped and white heat-embossed the leaves and then I painted them using my old beloved Ziggies. Once dry, the lads put on their daubers and blended over the whole thing with DI Antique Linen to bring out the autumnness and polish the white lines of the embossing. I attached the panel to a black background panel. The sediment is from Altenew's "Autumn Bounty" set.

Twofer

This QACAS and NBUS design stands alone and I couldn't think of a way to add a sediment without marring the pure delight of the ornaments and snowfall of this 3D e/f from SSS called, "Verdant Ornaments." I thought the gold foil background gave it a nice frame to focus the eyeballs on the gorgeous details.

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Where's Stanley?

I will be taking a break to finish Christmas cards and we will doing some traveling over the holidays, so I wish you well until mid-January. Please enjoy yourself as you celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, or whatever brings you joy! 

No, seriously, enjoy! Life is too short! And special hugs to all of you who are not well or who sadly know firsthand how hard the holidays can be.🫂

As we wrap up our 13th year, Hammy, Stanley, and I thank you for another year of great fun, friendship, and creative inspiration! Thank you for your visits, comments, and your participation in I.D.E.A.S. and NBUS this year! Mwah!

Happy New Year!!

Challenges:

Addicted to CAS: Ornaments. (2)

Alphabet Challenge: Q is for quick and easy. (2)

Addicted to Stamps and More: Make your mark. (1)

Four Seasons: Fall (1)

NBUS: Never-Before-Used-Schtuff (1)

Rudolph Days: A/G Christmas.

Simply Clean and Simple: Christmas is coming. (2)

Group of Seven ~ Stencil Monoprints

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well! I'm sorry I wasn't here last Monday as planned. All of the week before, I had both computer woes and migraine woes. Layering that onto jet lag made things very, um, trying. 

But it's all good and I got my cicada rhythm back, too. Wait. What? I think I mean Canadian. No, stop. It's circadian. What is? Nevermind. 

Thanks to the Group of Seven Cardmakers, I managed to have some creative fun and I've lots of photos to share with you. For this month, we used our stencils and concentrated on making monoprints. The technique works best with open stencils which are inked using your choice of watercolor medium. After inking and spritzing, the stencil is flipped over onto watercolor paper as many times as the ink will last and gives you a useable image. 

1.

I used a sunflower stencil from Technique Tuesday and Lindy Magicals. 

For the technique reference, I should have first shown you this photo of all four of the monoprints I got. 

And below are the other three cards I made: 

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3.

4. This last one is very faint, but I liked it anyway.

I think you will enjoy trying this with your powdered inks, distress inks, watercolors, or sprays. For more incredible design inspiration, please check out the Go7 website where you will also find more instructions and video information! Group of Seven Cardmakers.

But wait, there's more ...

I went to clean off my stencil and when I started swiping with a baby wipe, I noticed a cool design was transferring onto my scratch paper. I stopped and grabbed three more panels of Tim Holtz watercolor paper and made these patterns, just swiping across the stencil with my baby wipe, cleaning more of the ink off each time:

I wasn't able to get a very good photo because it was evening, but in person each one is really cool. So cool that I didn't want to cover them up, so I made these very simple matted cards with foiled sediments which I've had in my stash:

5.

6.

7.

Such a fun bonus!

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Enjoy your weekend! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Unless something unforeseen comes up, I hope to be back Monday with more stencil designs per my fifth Monday I.D.E.A.S. schedule. And I'm also hoping to finally share some of our vacation photos!

Thank you for your patience and your forgiveness for my lack of visiting. Next month is going to be another busy month with visitors first one week and then the next. And then it will be full on Christmas cards!

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

1. Colorful Options: Be bold.

2. Beautiful Blossoms: A/G Floral w/ optional mood board.

3. Triple B: Birds, Blooms, and Butterflies.

4. Simply Clean and Simple: Signs of fall.

5. Cardz 4 Galz: Any coloring medium.

6. Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers: A is for Autumn.

        

Surprise Party Guest for Seize the Birthday!

Hello Stamplings!

I was delighted and honored to have been one of the winners of a recent fruit challenge at Seize the Birthday, which makes me delighted and honored to be one of today's Surprise Party Guests for their new challenge where the brief is one of my favorites ~ "Cute Critters!"

Another of my favorite things is placing images from different stamp companies together so that they look like they were meant to be that way! For this card, I used a NBUS Anita Jeram (Colorado Craft) adorable dog with a birthday cupcake martini from Impression Obsession and a sediment from WPlus 9. I'm hoping this makes you smile and inspires you to look at your images in a new way. Especially if you can make your design a QACAS OLC!

I stamped the images with black ink and then heat-embossed them in clear e/p. I used my Ziggies for the minimal coloring. (I hope the very talented Ms. Jeram doesn't mind that I made her cute dog a little furrier!) 

We would love to see your cute critters over at Seize the Birthday ~ or you can link up with your Anything Goes birthday card!

Thank you again, ladies! This really meant a lot to me because I've been playing in this challenge with my cards since Lesley started the challenge on December 17, 2012. I'm sure many of you have done the same and agree that all the talented design team inspiration over the years has been very much appreciated!❤

Twofer

I'm trying to make a few Christmas cards each week and I wanted to play in Nanc's other challenge, Color Hues, where the colors are pink and brown. 

After making the layerpalooza cards in my last post, I enjoyed making the STB card a one-layer design. So for my Twofer, I made another OLC. This cute image and sediment set are from Stampingbella called, "Oddball Boy Elf." Like the first card, the images were stamped in black ink and then heat-embossed in clear.

I colored the elf with my Ziggies and then let Hammy and Stanley loose with daubers on their paws to color in the snowy circle stencil using pale pink and pale brown ink for a little extra colorpawzazz.

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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! We are seeing the grandtwins tomorrow for lunch before they start out (separately) on their second year of college. Hard to believe summer is almost over already 😎 ... but I do look forward to cooler weather!

*Life is too short!

Challenges:

Addicted to Stamps and More: Any Occasion

SSS Monday: Happy 14th Birthday!

Simply Clean & Simple Anything Goes

Die-Cuts, Darlink!

Hello Stamplings!

How's things? I hope you're doing well! We've had several days of company, which was lovely, but it kept me off the grid and unable to email or comment. I hope to mustard some energy and ketchup today and tomorrow. Groan! That was a bad one. (Worse, I've prolly used it before!)

I wanted to keep up with my I.D.E.A.S. schedule, however, so before the company arrived I made a coupla QACAS cards to share:

Onefer

I used a hammered front panel for this one. (Some day I will share a video of my two wee hamsters with their little tiny hammers gleefully pounding divots into the paper! As you may have guessed, Hammy really appreciates having the help of a much younger feller with this task!) I scored three lines along the sides and added the panel to a card base.

The color inspiration came from the Color Hues challenge where the talented Karen has chosen blue and yellow. You can see that I got frisky with the sediment from Creative Expressions and added the same blue and yellow Hughs.

The flower is from Tim Holtz's wildflower dies. I think they've been around for a while, but they are NBUS to me. I recently ordered them after seeing a card on FB or Pinterest. (I lost my note.)

It was fun sponging with my CP inks, so I did the same with a number of the other wildflower dies. They will hopefully be made into cards soon and not loiter in my bits box!

I'm also playing in the Cut It Up A/G and NBUS challenges.

Twofer

This card features another die-cut from the wildflowers set. When I had my overhaul the first of the year, I came across a few sheets of this beautiful printed acetate. I think it was from SU a hunnert years ago. 

For the die-cut spider mum, I found a piece of pp that worked perfectly. This gives a better idea of the printed acetate:

To attach the acetate to the card base, I first glued the flower to the acetate and then added glue to the back of the acetate behind the flower. I also added a drop of glue to the acetate where the sediment is. 

I'm linking to the Simply Clean and Simple and the Triple B A/G challenges.

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Short and sweet! Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks for taking the time to join as a follower! 

*Life is too short!

Joy and Janis

Hello Stamplings!

How have you been? No matter which side of the world you are in, it's always exciting to welcome spring and fall! It's so great to be back in the Playhouse and needless to say, Hammy was happy to be out of the suitcase!

Onefer

A dear friend let me borrow the very large and very cool Joy and Noel word dies from Penny Black. They make such pretty QACAS cards. I cut the Joy from patterned paper and then Hammy suggested adding a snowflake from Simon Says, changing out the center star to draw the eyes in. I have to say, I may get these word dies for myself ... there are lots of fun options that come to mind for filling the large O in the die-cut words.

Challenges

• BYSH Cardmakers: Falling for the Holidays linky party!
  
• Penny Black Saturday: A/G with option of Halloween Bingo.
  
• Simply Clean & Simple: A/G with option of Autumn.

Twofer

Except for the Santa hat, all the ingredients in this recipe were made using dies and snippets I borrowed from friends. Well, the snippets weren't borrowed. My friends were happy to be rid of those! To make him look Christmassy, I added the tiny Santa hat from Memory Box to kitty's head. We couldn't find the little ball die for the top of the hat in the die envelope, but Hammy saved the day by finding a tiny flower die that worked even better!

(I am sorry that the cat from Simply Graphic looks like it is being electrocuted. His eyes did that because I used the flash.📸)

Before I left on my travels, Jo from The Christmas Kickstart Challenge called in to let me know she was doing a special tribute to our mutual friend Janis Woolwright, who sadly passed away in January this year. Every October, Janis ran her Cat Lovers Blog Hop, so Jo is holding this month's Kickstart challenge to remember Janis. Thank you for doing this, Jo! 

I'm happy to be joining the tribute and it would be lovely if you could play along, too! And, p.s., there are sponsors and prizes, so check it out!

Other Challenges

• Jingle Belles: Not a creature was stirring.
  
• Peace on Earth: Christmas.
  
• Snippets Playground: A/G using snippets. I used snippets for my kitty cat, Santa hat, and Merry Christmas sediment.

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Uh Oh.

And in other news, I flew home and came down with a cold two days later. Just to be sure it was only a cold, The Mister put on his scientist hat and did a Covid test. It was positive.😧We happened to have additional tests from a different company, so we ran the test again ... and again it was positive.😵‍💫

It has taken me a coupla days to write this post and last night the Mister had a sore throat and early cold symptoms. Sure enough, he took a test and he, too, has Covid. We aren't really surprised. Now we can commiserate together through what will hopefully be a short complication-free convalescence.🙏 

Take care out there and enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

*Life is too short!