Autumn Leaves

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I mean, besides being on the edge of your seat? I put myself in a media blackout bubble on election day and made a coupla cards to ease the torture. It's more than 24 hours later and it's getting hard to breath up inside this bubble, but I gotta stay in here or lose my mind. 

Given that we have whooshed into November and mails are taking longer because of the damnepic, I have to get going full speed with Christmas cards. Still, I feel a bit sorry for autumn. It always gets the bum's rush squished in between Halloween and Christmas in this country. And with Thanksgiving cancelled for many of us, I wanted to make a coupla more cards honoring the wonderful colored leaves Mother Nature bestows on us each year.

Onefer

I'm so pickled tink to have used this NBUS stencil before it got tossed on NBUS Mountain. It's called Four Layer Leaves Stencil by Spellbinders. I blended the leaves using Tim's inks, added the leafy panel to a glittery gold panel, and then added all that to a glittery plum panel. The scalloped stitched oval is from Cottage Cutz and the blessings sediment is from Hero Arts. For a bit of bling-a-ding-ding, Hammy opted for a triplet of ancient flat breads from SU. I mean brads. Flat brads.

Challenges

• Fusion: See inspiration photo and sketch. Playing in sketch portion.
  
• Just Us Girls: Wild card: word die-cuts.
  
• NBUS Challenge #20: Never-before-used-schtuff.
  
• Sunday Stamps: Fall leaves.

Twofer

My twofer today is truly an off-shoot of my onefer. After I blended the maple leaves, I spritzed the stencil and laid a piece of white card over the inked stencil. The aperture background above is the result. I think you can just make out the imprint of the leaves. Cool, huh? I always forget to do that because I always forget to even use my stencils. So much schtuff, so little brain cells left!

The inverted stitched scallop frame is from Pink & Main, the watercolored leafy stem is from Memory Box, and the sediment is from SU. This time the little furball chose plain gold sequints from the antique drawer for the bling. 

Challenges

• CAS Mix Up: November watercolor theme: Off the edge. I've stamped, die-cut, watercolored, monoprinted, and stenciled on my card.
  
• Little Red Wagon: Colour me happy. (Use coloring on your card.)
  
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: A/G using your snippets. The background, leafy stem, and scallop frame are all snippets.

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, stay safe and 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 forgive me for not commenting as much as I once did. I have had a lot of anxiety for a while and these last few months of chaotic politics, coupled with Covid, have been very trying. Hopefully the political part will end soon. Thank you for understanding and remaining friends with me. I so appreciate your visits and comments. Mwah!

*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!)

Fall Into Winter

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well and you had a nice weekend! We had three days of clear air as the winds were in our favor and it was lovely. Now we are heating up again and having an Indian Summer. 

It turns out there is no proven origin of the term, "Indian Summer." While I was researching it, I did find that in many European countries a warm period in the middle of autumn is called, "old women's summer." Haha. I'm not even lying. I mean, why? Too funny. If any of you can explain why it's called that, I'd love to know. (See below.) And is there an "old men's winter?"

Okay, I'd better get to it, so I can get outside and enjoy "my" summer!

Onefer

As soon as I saw this stamp on someone's blog, I had to buy it. I couldn't wait to get it and try coloring it with fall colors. The NBUS stamp and die set is called, "Harvest Love and Kindness," from Memory Box. I made this as a one-layer card in all it's 5x7 glory because I have all these 5x7 envelopes that come free with cards from charities I support. The gold heat-embossed sediment is also from the set. I used a combination of my Kuretake Gansai Tambi paints, Ziggies, and Karin watercolor brushes to paint it.

You know how some fabulous card artists have a real talent for zhuzhing their art just right? And you know how sometimes your hamster is nagging you to make something he can schplatter? Well, after finishing this card, which is very minimalist, we thought we'd try adding a little zhuzh.

To shrink my post a bit, I made a collage of the three different stages. Hopefully you can click to enlarge if you want a closer look. 

First, the top photo shows the card after I added a soft ink border all around using Tim's Old Paper ink and a makeup brush. In the second photo, you can see where Hammy went to town schplattering gold paint all over it.

And the third photo shows the addition of white paint schplatters by Hammy, but to make sure they landed just on the leaves, I die-cut a second image from a piece of scratch paper and laid the negative over the entire card so that only the watercolored image was showing. Then Hammy got a little heavy-pawed for the look I was going for, but don't tell him I said that. It's growing on me.

Do you have a favorite? I like them all, but to varying degrees. By taking photos in between each enhancement, it helped me see which I prefer and gives me more confidence to get a little more artsy in the future when the image calls for it. Of course, I still like the very first CAS look, too.

Challenges

• Fun Friday: (YNS) Give thanks.
  
• NBUS #19: Use never-before-used-schtuff.
  
• Sunday Stamps: Earthy tones.

Twofer

Okay, so this design is a bit far-fetched. Think of it like you would a card with a unicorn on it. Once I thought of the design and laid it out, I just loved the Cute Factor with the way these two friends adore each other. The hummingbird is from Pretty Pink Posh. The little polar bear die cut was a gift from a friend, but I think it might be Poppystamps. The sediment is from Sunny Studio.

Here is a closeup to show you that those tiny fluttering snowflakes are each touched with a bit of Nuvo schparkle and Hammy winked the hummer and the scarf. 

Challenges

• CAS October Christmas Card Challenge: Christmas birds. Here in California, we are blessed to have our hummingbirds year round, even at Christmas! (On the other hand, we don't have that many polar bears.😊)
  
• Krafty Chicks: Christmas.
  
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Make it sparkle.

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy, and please be careful out there! 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!

ETA: GerJanne from the Netherlands sent me this explanation:

In the old days 'woman' was the common word for woman. The term old wives summer comes from old knitting women (females) and spiders. In quiet late summer weather spiders make long threads. When dew is deposited on them during the night, beautiful drops glisten on the threads at sunrise. In ancient times it was thought that those beautiful strands were the hairs of goddesses or female water spirits, which they lost at night. Because this phenomenon occurs on quiet, sunny days in autumn, this old wives' summer is called. Something we still know today. Another name for this late summer is Indian Summer, because of the beautiful colors in the autumn that the sun brings out even more.

*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!)

More Flutterbies

Hello Stamplings!

Surprise! Feast or famine with me. But what happened was, I let all my butterflies out of the drawer when I was making my Twofer cards and it seemed a shame to just choose a couple of them and put the rest back in the drawer without playing with them. 

Onefer

In the last post I used a sediment from PTI's, "A Bit More: Butterfly Blooms." This butterfly and the little circle blingies are also part of that set. I masked the section where the sediment would go and then used Catherine Pooler inks in fun summer colors to stamp the butterflies. 

I don't know if you can see them, but in order to delineate the sediment area, I added score lines. To make the matching die cut, I vertically blended the same colors onto a piece of scratch paper and then die cut the NBUS Thanks Folksy Script from Poppystamps.

Challenges

• NBUS #16: Any never-before-used-schtuff.
• Stinkin' Inkers: I see spots.
• Sunday Stamps: Bright and beautiful.

Twofer 

For this card design, I used a NBUS stencil from Darkoom Door. I sprayed the stencil with Pixie Spray after first spending ten minutes patiently trying to explain to Hammy that the light tack glue was NOT, in fact, made from pixies. 😲 He was quite distraught until I assured him that pixies had formed a union (UPAG = United Pixies and Gnomes) in 1963 which protected them from such mistreatment.

With the stencil in place, I used my makeup brushes to color the butterfly with CP inks. After wards, I used my Pilot Precise ink pen to trace the stencil in black. Thank you, Nancy, for this great idea! It was uber easy and gives a really cool effect!

The sediment is from MFT. As another design feature, I planned to add score lines or a piece of Washi tape to the area between the image and the sediment. The score line was meh, I didn't have a Washi tape that worked, and since the technique I used for the die cut on the first card worked so well, I did it again. I simply blended the inks onto a snippet of paper and then cut a narrow strip to add to the card. 

Challenges

• Butterfly Challenge: Alphabet letter A. (Butterfly and apricot color.)
• CAS Mix Up: Stencil tracing.
• Inkspirational: Painting or coloring.

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I've got to run. I opened a can of worms mentioning UPAG. Hammy's been on the computer and discovered there is no mention anywhere of any union representing hamsters.

What have I done?!!

Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Keep safe and well and wear your mask!

This is so true, especially if yours are 44 x-long like mine!

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!)

Day of the Month, Day of the Rat GD

Hello Stamplings!

Lovely to see you! I hope you are keeping isolated and well!

The Mister and I are one big frayed nerve at this point. Thank goodness we don't live in an igloo and can retreat to separate rooms (or she sheds!) for brief time outs. Then we think of the gazillions of people worse off and we're grateful once again. In fact, we've started a list of the things we took for granite before Coronavirus 2020. It's embarrassingly long already!

Last month I was pickled tink to win the challenge at Day of the Month Card Club, so I'm delighted to be their Guest Designer for the current "World Rat Day" challenge. Instead of a rat, I used a cute old mouse stamp:

Or I should say an old stamp of a cute mouse. I think we should call her Edgy. She knows how we are all feeling. She knows she shouldn't be stuffing her face with comfort food, but, well, comfort food! And she still has plenty of room in her jumper. The background e/f represents the number of days of isolation. Edgy shows them proudly because she knows, even as the days wear on, that it's the only way to tackle Covid-19. And besides, how can she resist that fluffy white 7-minute frosting Hammy whipped up for her?!

Okay, not really. The numbers indicate ages because this is a birthday card for my friend's granddaughter. The little girl won't be able to have her planned party, so a few more cards than usual will help until she can celebrate. Kids of all ages are having a hard time understanding why they have to be isolated from their friends.

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ETA. Cornelia just sent me this comment. The video is hilarious. 

"But I am a little worried - she may succumb to diabetes if she is going to eat like that - or she will get stuck in a manhole cover hole or some other small opening as we can see here on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFKxhsIWu9E."

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I hope you get a chance to join me and play in this month's Day of the Month Card Club: "World Rat Day!"

Challenges

• Seize the Birthday: Anything birthday. Optional: Cards for kids.✔
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday: Happy Birthday.
• Sunday Stamps: Split in two. Sketch.

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Twofer

There is just something cheery about colorful plaid! It looks like there is no stamping on my card, but the lavender polkie-dotted bunny fur is a stamp that comes with a die in the PTI set called, "Polka Dot Parade #1." The pp is from Lawn Fawn, the scalloped and dotted stitched rectangle frame is from Mama Elephant, the scalloped circle is "Lacey Circles" from Nestabilities, and the many-layered sediment is from Creative Expressions.

The snippets of paper I used for the circle and bunny are a matte white with a gorgeous sheen. Here is a closeup. I just realized I meant to add a cotton ball to her tail. Oops. That's okay, it's easier to mail this way.

Challenges

• Cards 4 Galz: Cute Animals.
• Country View: Animal Magic.
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: Use your snippets. My scalloped circle, bunny, and sediment are cut from snippets of precious specialty paper.
• Uniko: Spots & Stripes. (Optional twist: use a stencil.)

Miss A. Laneus

A. Purple Day Hop Winner! All those who commented that they wished to be in the draw were given a number and Dr. Random picked Lynn Hayes! 

11. jimlynn Two fun and fantastic cards! Great that the washi matched perfect too. And of course I'm interested in the draw! FUN! So sorry about your friend. Will get a card off to her. There are so many in the nursing homes now that can't have any visitors at all. Really sad for so many. Lynn 

B. Verna: I also want to thank those of you who have sent my friend Verna a card! The nursing home is making her wait a week before opening them and she tells me she has a huge stack waiting for her! She asked me to thank all of you! 💛

C. Some Coronavirus Advice: And, finally, many thanks to my friend Vicky who shared with me some wonderful advice she got from her friend Tony in OZ:

Heard a Doctor on TV saying in this time of staying at home because of the Coronavirus, we should focus on inner peace and we could all use more calm in our lives. To achieve this, we should always finish things we start. I looked through my house to find things I'd started and hadn't finished, so I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, tha mainder of Valiumun srciptuns, an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how feckin fablus I feel rite now. Sned this to all who need inner piss. An telum u luvum. And two hash yer wands, stafe day avrybobby!!!

Take care, be safe, and enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

*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!) Remember, if you create something with never-before-used-stuff (NBUS), you can share it at the NBUS challenge!

Inspiration II

Hello Stamplings!

I'm like a well-oiled machine at this point with the finish line just ahead. I hope you feel the same way! Next is baking ~ yummo! 

I have a few more cards to share before I take a bit of a break until the new year and I'm going to zing them out to you over the next few days. I thought about putting them all in one post, but if you're like me, you start to get gorfetful if you look at a blog post with too many photos.

Without further a dew let's start with a coupla no-line watercolor cards.

Onefer

This NBUS "Flambeau" stamp from Penny Black was colored with Memento markers directly onto the stamp, spritzed with water, and stamped onto mixed media paper. I filled in a few spots with Ziggies where the color didn't stamp completely. (So, hmm, now that I think about it, it isn't technically no-line watercoloring, but rather, the direct-to-stamp technique gives the look of no-line watercoloring.) I added a border of black glossy paper to the left-hand side of the card to balance out the design. 

I wanted Hammy to glossify the berries, but he's already in the kitchen testing the rum for the fruit cake. I haven't used it since last year and he was afraid it might have gone bad. Uh huh. Actually, I'm a great one to talk. I waz obviously init earlier or I wunta fagott'n to ground my shimage.

Challenges

• Sunday Stamps: Feeling festive.
• Sweet Stampers: Anything goes.
• Watercooler Wednesday: Dawn's All About Occasions.

Twofer

This Stampendous stamp is called "Winter Birds" and I painted and stamped it using the same technique as my first card. After it was dry, I added the sediment and, again to balance the design, I added an embossed pine bough in the upper left corner. I added a plaid mat before attaching it to the card base.

Challenges

• A Place To Start: Happy Holidays.
• Cardz 4 Galz: Cute Christmas.
• Uniko: Christmas. Optional: Tree.

Threefer

I used the same stamp in a different design for this card. Here it is heat-embossed in white on gold glossy paper. I added a vellum sediment banner, also heat-embossed in gold. To add more interest, I added dots of snow using a white pen, scored three lines, and added some gold and white stars that Hammy glued together for me. Before he went to the kitchen.

Challenges

• Alphabet Challenge: S is for snow.
• TIME OUT: Merry and cheerful.
• Words 2 Craft By: It is in giving we receive. Thank you to the ladies for the giving they did in preparing 72 wonderful challenges for us over the years!

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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!)