Butterfly ~ Butterfly I

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I hope you've been doing well. Have you missed me? I took a bit of a break the last coupla weeks. We celebrated both my birthday (2nd) and the 4th of July very quietly. Thank you for all the messages and beautiful cards! The Mister gets jealous because I have one of those first week of the month birthdays where you turn the calendar and slap your forehead because you forgot to send someone a card. He's jealous because that means my cards keep coming in for days and days!🥳

It felt good to step back from the computer and television and accomplish all these things:

1. Cleaned and purged all the clothes closets and dresser drawers.
2. Cleaned and purged the linen cabinet.
3. Deep-cleaned the house.
4. Cleaned and purged the garage with The Mister's help.
5. Cleaned and purged the Playhouse with Hammy's help.
6. Worked in the yard.
7. Prepared my July cards for Twofer.
8. Started on my Christmas cards.

Pretty good, eh? 

Oh, shoot. Wait a sec. I'm sorry. That's the wrong list. That list is my list of things to do!

Sorry about that. Here's my list of what I've accomplished:

Well, never mind. I did do #7! This month the prompt for the Twofer Card Challenge is the always-popular:

🦋BUTTERFLIES!🦋

Once again, someone will have to help me out with who the manufacturer is of these butterflies. I thought it was an old set from PTI, but I spent an hour trying to find it online without success. I even searched my own blog, thinking I've used it before, but apparently it's NBUS.

Anyway, it's a great set of butterfly stamps and dies, with these three sizes and three teeny-tiny sizes. ETA: Thank you, Colleen! It is a set from Mama Elephant called, "Butterfly Kisses."

Onefer

I stamped and cut several butterflies and painted them in rainbow colors using my Ziggies. Hammy added his winking. I thought it would be fun to have the butterflies bordering the scored sediment in opposite directions. The sediment is NBUS from PTI's "A  Bit More: Butterfly Blooms" set. QACAS and done!

Challenges

• Dies R Us: Anything goes.
• Retro Rubber: Anything goes. Butterfly Blooms released May 2018.
• STAMPlorations Summer July Challenge: Anything goes.

Twofer

For this simple encouragement card design, I stamped the NBUS floral border from Altenew with watermark ink and embossed it in gold. The gold-embossed sediment is also NBUS from the same set. I attached the panel to an aqua card base and added two painted and winked aqua butterflies as a pop of bling. QACAS and done!

Challenges

• Mix It Up: AG + Optional Twist of Open Technique. (Heat Embossing.)
• NBUS: Anything goes never-before-used-schtuff.
• TIME OUT: Days Gone By. I keyed on the word "Day."

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Join Us!

I really enjoy seeing your creative designs in the gallery, so I hope you'll join us for this month's Twofer Card Challenge! For more awesome inspiration, check out what our talented Guest Designers Barb and TK and the entire Design Team have made for you!

Please remember that you can make two conventional designs or one conventional design and one unconventional design using your butterflies. We have winners for both categories. 

Also, do you Instagram? We are resurrecting our presence there, so please share your art by tagging the new account (#thetwofercardchallenge), so everyone gets used to the change. Mwah!

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From Facebook

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Stay safe! Be a racoon!

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!

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!)

I Think of You Each Day

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well and hanging in there. I mean that. It's hard. Like so many of you, my mojo is laying around like a 17-year-old dog in the sunshine. "Hey," you yell, "Hey, get up!" 

Nope. Not happening. The dog just shoots you the eyeball as if to say, "Go walk yourself." 

So what do we do? We turn to many of the wonderful challenges that are plugging along, coming up with brilliant ideas and inspirational designs to help us keep interested and active in this hobby we love.

A burrow around Blogland lead me to this:

Less Is More is looking for clean and simple border cards. Hammy and I put our heads together and discovered that we both thought of the definition of border that represents the horizon. Webster gives one of its definition as, "the edge or boundary of something, or the part near it." 

I have a small box of letterpress cards and envelopes that I purchased a few years ago. I'm not sure now what I was spose to do with them, but I grabbed one for this card. I used a piece of tape and blended both DIs and DOs in peeled paint, bundled sage, salty ocean, and wilted violet to make the border between the ground and the sky, representing a new day. The ink loved the letterpress paper and I'm happy to find a way to play with it. 

The NBUS sediment is from the "I Like Your Style" set which was sold as part of the Simon Says Stamp 2013 Card Kit! I chose it because I decided to send this card to Verna, getting lonelier every day in the small care home she's in. It's heartbreaking to think of how many men and women are alone around the world because of Covid.

Challenges

• AAA Cards: One layer ~ no option.
• Color Throwdown.
• Less Is More: Borders.
• STAMPlorations: June CAS Challenge. A/G.

 

Twofer

Next, I saw that the current Flower Challenge is looking for navy (plus one other color) flowers, so I grabbed my NBUS Penny Black slapstick "Fabulous" stamp and did my favorite direct-to-stamp technique using SU markers and a spritz bottle to create a watercolor look. I find all these PB slapstick stamps lend themselves so well to this technique. The Happy Day sediment is from GKW. Hammy added some winking and I finished it off with a trio of dew drops.

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Holiday. (Happy 8th Birthday!!)
• The Flower Challenge: Navy and one other colour.
• ModSquad: Watercolor.
• NBUS. Never-before-used-schtuff.
• Penny Black Saturday Challenge: A/G ~ optional spots and/or stripes.

Nellie

The yard is ablaze with color from lantana, butterfly bush, two white oleander trees, and various potted plants (not shown). The Mister placed his beloved companion on the wall for a late afternoon portrait to share with you.

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Stay safe. Please.

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! Please let me know you came by so I can be sure and return the flavor!

*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!)

For Melissa

Hello Stamplings!

I'm slowly getting back to my routine after dealing with unpacking two suitcases and climbing Mt. Laundry. Unloading my "craft suitcase" and putting everything away took the longest, especially since I stopped with most items and enjoyed the memory of my time at the lake house.

I'll have more photos and fun to share another time, but today I wanted to share a card I made in honor of my friend, Melissa Lane, who passed away suddenly on October 2nd at the age of 47. You can read a very beautiful tribute to her by Shery on the STAMPlorations blog. Thank you, Shery, for putting this link up for us to contribute in memory of Melissa.

Here is my card.

The flowers are "Fancy Flowers" from MFT and the sediment is from "You're My Person" by Concord & 9th. I used my Clarity Brushes to color a stencil by Kaiser Craft (a gift from Lolly) for the background panel, which I stitched with a Paper Smooches die and backed with an aqua panel. I used my Ziggies to color the pretty flowers and Hammy wanted to join in, too, with his winking speshceeality!

I first met Melissa online in January 2015 when she joined in one of my NBUS challenges and then I had the absolute pleasure of meeting her, her husband Chris, and their four wonderful children in person at the Swindon Retreat in the UK in 2016. Of course, I had to make an entrance the first night by coming into the hotel dining room decked out in a Miss USA sash, white gloves, and a tiara! All the ladies took turns wearing the tiara for photos, but Melissa wore the whole package because she was a fellow American who loved having fun!

Rest in peace, my friend. You will be greatly missed. You have a lot of Blogland keeping your grieving family in their thoughts and prayers. 💖

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Tell your family and friends how much they are loved.

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! Please let me know you came by so I can be sure and return the flavor!

*Life is too short!

Challenges

• Back to Basics and Beyond: Stencils or Masks.
• Butterfly Challenge: Spin the wheel with the letter "B." Butterfly, burnt orange, border.
• Double D: Stripes and dots. The straws inspired me.
• STAMPlorations: A tribute to Melissa and a celebration of her life.
• The Flower Challenge: Add schparkle.

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 in Aug -, erm, September!

Hello Stamplings!

I've bookended my posts this week with a Monday wake-up call and now here we are once again whooshed straight into Friday! When you have a paying job, the weeks seem interminably long, but look out, when you're retired and slow down with your bad self, the weeks fly by like a bat out of a bag of biscuits!

Up til now, bloggers who make Christmas cards all year long advise their readers to turn their heads if they don't have the stomach for it, especially during the summer. Helluuuu! It's gonna be the first day of September tomorrow! It might even be September where you are already! You're going to have to suck it up now, ladies, cuz if you want your Chrissy cards in the mail by the beginning of December, you've only got three months. That's twelve weeks.

I'm sorry. Steady on. Someone get a cool washcloth.

When you're ready, here's your Onefer inspiration for today:

If you don't bother with the slim mat of gold, this is a super QACAS card. If you attach the gold mat, it's still a QACAS card, just not super so. The NBUS poinsettia banner is from STAMPlorations, called "Poinsettia Row." I colored directly on the stamp using Memento markers, gave it a quick spritz, and stamped it on mixed media paper.

Then I gold-embossed the Noel and let Hammy blow gold paint all over the front with his itty-bitty paper straw. (I made four of these while I was at it, so it took him ages, even with the rest breaks required by law. Don't yell at me, the strong-willed little furball insisted, and now I have to puree all his food because he can't get his mouth unpursed!) 

Challenges

• Rudolph Days: A/G Christmas.
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Anything goes.
• STAMPlorations: Never-ending anything goes.

Twofer

I bought a pack of the SU stained glass vellum and I just love it. This is my first time using a piece. I colored it from the back and it was so satisfying I was able to cancel my therapy for the week. I attached the vellum to the diamond-embossed card base at the point where the PTI greeting was added.

When making this card, I was following the current sketch from LIM. After the card was finished I realized that I had covered up the middle section so that it looks like one big square stained glass, instead of four windows like the sketch. So here's a piece of the vellum so you can see it is four squares:

Well, I mean, it's any number of geometric shapes ~ squares, diamonds, rectangles, hexagons, but if you step back over by the bookcase, and squint your eyes, you can see the four large squares, with dividing lines ...? 

Oh, never mind. Wodka?

Challenges

• Less is More: Sketch week.
• The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge: Anything goes.
• Watercooler Wednesday: Anything goes.

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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! Please let me know you came by so I can be sure and return the flavor!

*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!)

Enjoy Life ~ With Coffee

Greetings, drinkers!

Thanks in part to the coffee and tea industries we have whooshed around to another Friday! Do you know after today there are only TWELVE more Fridays until Christmas!

I'm sorry! Please get up slowly. I don't think your knee is meant to be bent that way, sweetie.

Here, have a cuppa:

 

A QACAS OLC full of cuteness and mischief. I don't drink a lot of coffee or have a lot of coffee stamps so I am very grateful to Hammy for coming up with this fun design! 

The NBUS grinning Cheshire is from the "Joy to the World" stamp set by Penny Black. In the set, kitty is holding a Christmas present. I surgically removed the gift and now a NBUS coffee cup from "Hot Concoctions" by Paper Smooches is teetering in his hands. The sediment is from GKW. The Washi tape was applied twice as a border and then a wee piece of it was placed on the take-out coffee cup protection band. The schmear of ink covering the sediment is a NBUS stamp from "Jumbo Abstract Art" by MFT.

(I'm sitting here chuckling at that border. I simply laid down the first border strip near the card edge and then laid down the second strip without even trying to line up the pattern so I'm pretty chuffed that that happened!)

Challenges

• 2016 Fall Coffee Lovers Blog Hop. Sliding in just under the wire for Amy's fun hop!
• CAS On Sunday: One-Layer Card.
• CASology: Cute.
• Make My Monday: No Patterned Paper.
• SSS Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes.
• STAMPlorations Theme and Sketch Challenge: Monochrome.

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And I'm Off!

As a lot of you know, I get together with my sisters for a few days every year, so I'm flying off again to do that. This year I am traveling to the lakes of Minnesota to enjoy their company and see other relatives and friends. I'll be gone for a coupla weeks, so please let me know if you live in the MSP area and would like to meet!

Sadly this means my visits to you will not be happening again for a while. I feel like I've been such a bad bloggie friend this whole year and I'm very sorry about that. My hope is that next year I will be able to get back into my routine. I truly miss my visits and commenting. Thank you to all of you who have stayed steadfast and continue to visit me and leave me some love!

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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! Please let me know you came by!

*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 walla, no more car pool tunnel!
Mwah!
If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me
your email address so I can respond. Thank you!