Happy Make-More-Cards Week!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well as we whoosh around to the last Monday of February! I'm pickled tink that I managed to post every Monday this month and I so appreciate of all of you visiting and commenting!

I have to admit I "stretched" the title of the post a bit. It should say, "Play More Cards Day" and it was yesterday and only for the day and they don't mean handmade cards, but in the pocket of my tan jacket in the back of the closet you'll find a creative license under the name Art Blanch which allows me libations.

So, hurrazah, let's make more cards this week! It is also the fourth week of the month on my I.D.E.A.S. calendar, so woohoo, A = Anything Goes!

Onefer

Goodness, I'll wait while you get your sunglasses! In fact, I'll grab mine, too! The sun turned my springy lime green into sassy Char Truz! I used a NBUS stencil from the "Rising Wildflowers" set from Pinkfresh Studio. The die was out of stock, but rather than tossing the stencil on Mt. NBUS, I went to work blending CP inks and then I went over parts of the flowers with my watercolor pencils for a little more dementia. 

The scalloped frame is from Pink & Main, the NBUS "birthday" die is from Poppystamps, and the tiny "happy" is ancient from WPlus9.

Challenges: Addicted to Stamps and More (Make Your Mark); Colorful Options (Pink/Purple); and Pinkfresh Studio (February).

Twofer

When I saw Lisa's Mood Board at Just Us Girls, this design quickly came to mind. When Hammy is over at Daphne's playing with Stanley (and Daphne's dwarf hamster Dwayne), she often gets out her tea set for make-believe. It all starts out well, but before oolong, the lads start scampering, sending everything arse over teacup ~ literally. Fortunately, Daph is a light-heated lass and their antics send her off into peals of laughter! 

I used a NBUS coffee mug die from Simon Says Stamp, cut from a snippet of pretty pp. The hamster stamps and dies are from Your Next Stamp and Your Next Die. The window die is from Poppystamps and I backed it with vellum patterned with silver leaves. It still needed a little sumpthin, so I added some silver baseboard as a ground and fern bits cut from silver using a NBUS "Dainty Ferns Die" from Waffle Flower. The NBUS sediments are from Pinkfresh Studio.

Additional Challenges: Alphabet (V for Volume); Inkspirational (Mug); Critter Crazy (Anything Goes); and Snippets Playground (Use Your Snippets ~ I remembered to take a photo!).

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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! I'm becited to see all your cards this week!♣️🎴

*Life is too short!

     

Pull My Arrow!

Hello Stamplings!

Sorry to hear that many of you had a rough week with extreme heat and storms. I hope you are hanging in there and staying safe. Here we have had unseasonably coo ... 🤫 whoa! I don't want to jinx it.

I had a little procedure last week. The battery in my ICD ran out of juice and the device had to be replaced. It's perfectly normal and, in fact, I've outlived two other ICDs since I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in 2007. The only thing is, I was told this battery would last until the end of this year, so when it started faintly beeping for 15 seconds every five hours during the day (always when I was sitting at my desk), I thought it was something on my desk or in the rolling carts under my desk that was beeping.

Long story short, it took me two days of tossing the joint before I figured out it was me! So dumb. Maybe you had to be there, but I must have looked like I was doing an I Love Lucy comedy skit! 

Anyflies, all went well and I felt good enough by Friday to make a card or two thanks to this being A = Anything Goes on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar!

Onefer

For this design, I turned to Freshly Made Sketches for inspiration and I went very literal with Jen's sketch. I immediately thought of a gift card holder, so I turned the sketch sidewayz. I used some beautiful sheets of flowered paper (I think from SU) which I've had for many years. Each color family comes in three monochromatic shades and different weights, which was perfect for this sketch composition.

When the recipient follows the arrow and pulls the vellum strip out, she will find this:

Fun to make and fun to receive!

Other Challenges

Cut It Up!: Monochromatic.

Seize the Birthday: Anything Goes option.

Twofer

Scrapbook & Cards Today held a wonderful Holiday Magic event on Saturday. The mittens and sediment are NBUS items from the kit. I embossed a black panel with the Stately e/f while Hammy and Stanley scampered to the top of their cages, poised for action. They did a stellar job of schplattering the base with diluted white acrylic paint before I added the mittens and warm wishes cut from snippets. 

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Christmas.

Rudolph Days: Anything Christmas goes.

Snippets Playground: Anything Goes using snippets.

~~~

So what happened was, my friend Susan and I went shopping a coupla weeks ago. We thought it would be fun to buy identical shirts and wear them when we went out to lunch together with our husbands. We were curious if they would even notice. 

And did they notice? No, of course not! In fairness, Susan and I sat across from each other in the restaurant rather than next to each other, but still! You gotta love 'em! 

As we were walking to our cars, Susan and I sat next to each other on a bench and I asked the guys, "Do you notice anything?" 

Ask that question and you'll see a look of sheer panic flash across a man's face!🤣

~~~

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

Best. Day. Ever.

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome to the show! I hope you had a good week! I've been alternating between card-making and spring-summer-cleaning, both of which give me joy. I'm weird that way. I've killed a lot of dust bunnies in my day, but I still haven't solved the mystery of how the junk drawer gets messy in only five minutes!

This is week two of the June I.D.E.A.S. Calendar which means D = Dies.

Onefer

I broke out my NBUS Postage Collage Cover die from SSS for this design, using the cute playing card images from CAS-ual Fridays Stamps. The sediment is from another oldie-but-goodie: Taylored Expressions "Pawsome" set. My red ink pad needs reinking, but I can't find the reinker, nor, it turns out, the dark green reinker. Smart little Hammy wondered if I put the bottles with my Christmas schtuff~but no. (I can hear you shouting, check the junk drawer!😂)

Challenges:

Addicted to Stamps and More: Any occasion.

Cut It Up: Anything goes.

NBUS: FYI, there's a celebration this month!

Twofer

One could say this design is from the Playhouse "junk drawer," otherwise known as BOB. BOB contains beloved bits I love too much to discard. And when those bits come together as if by magic, it's a thing to behold.🪄

I wanted to use the base panel pp which was left over from a recent make. The lads and I had a rumble with BOB and every snippet we needed was right there, from the schparkly plum paper to the bold sediment to the pretty leafy branch I cut a coupla years ago from a die owned by my friend Bev.

Challenges:

Freshly Made Sketches

Just Us Girls: Die week ~ layers.

Snippets Playground: Anything goes with snippets and bits.

~~~

This is a napkin my sister Diana sent me. It's so funny in a few ways, but I kracked up at the hairdos! These ladies are not getting their hairdos wet, so they don't need to worry about drowning!🌊

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: D = Dies

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using your dies! Your card may help motivate others out of their creative schlumps or give someone a step-off for their own design! 

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! 

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

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

Gold Enough For You? I.D.E.A.S. (D = Die)

Hello, Stamplings!

I hope you are well, wherever you are! We've whooshed around the week again really, really fast! This is week two of March, which means the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is D = Dies. We all have them, love them, and use them! 

Onefer

(The Association of Obstetrics and Retinal Health advises sunglasses. Sorry, that's Optometrists.)

As often happens with my designs, this one is simples and self-exploratory. But I thought I would share what schparked the steps involved in building my design for anyone who needs a boost out of their creative ennui. Sometimes we just don't know where to start. You know, like when cleaning closets.😶

I originally picked out a different NBUS die that I wanted to use for this week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, but when I saw The Flower Challenge, I sent the lads pawing through my NBUS flower dies instead and they surfaced with this perfect springtime "Layered Tulip Die" from Waffle Flower.

The brief at TFC is to "add circles."💡💡(That's me, thinking.) After two lightbulbs, I look at the hamsters with a raised eyebrow. It was Stanley who remembered that I have a stash of vellum paper with gold and silver circles. That schparked the idea of die-cutting the tulip from gold. And since I used a snippet of gold paper, I can pop over to the Snippets Playground! They recently celebrated their 500th challenge! Well done!

When I laid out the tulip pieces over the vellum with the gold circles, we all went into gold overload. Then I tried it on the silver circles and we loved how well they played with each other.

Next, I needed a sediment and I checked out my challenges list again. Just Us Girls also has die-cuts for their brief this week, with the additional requirement that it be a birthday card. Next, I went to Seize the Birthday to check out their latest challenge. They want designs with no stamping. To play in both challenges, I chose my old classic "celebrate" die. And wallah, done! 

You can take your sunglasses off now!😎

Twofer

This little number was QACAS and needs no walk-through. Well, I take that QACAS back. It's QAS, but not 'clean' by Clean and Simple standards because there is no white or clear space. So, hmmm, let's call it QABAS then, with a B for Busy! 

The NBUS items are both the "Snowflake Background" from Poppystamps and the sediment from SSS's set called, "Holiday Greetings Mix I." The background is a textured piece of green paper. I added more texture to it with a snowy e/f from Taylored Expressions called, "Snowfall."

Playing in:

• ABC Christmas: D is for die cuts.
  
• Addicted to Stamps and More: Christmas.
  
• Color Hues: Green and White.

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Thank you to everyone who left wonderful and supportive comments on my last post about creative slumps and how we can help each other through the rudderless times.

I was delighted to see you enter your designs via the linky in order to inspire your bloggie friends! Thank you! 

You will find a linky tool below for this week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar prompt. If you use a die on your card, please link it below. I love seeing what you create!

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