Happy Lunar New Year!

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome as we whoosh around to another week! Tomorrow begins the Year of the Fire Horse. (That's horse, not hose, like I keep reading it!🙃) If your year has started out sluggishly, get ready to feel renewed engerny! I found this little bridle bit for you:

Given that the Horse is a Yang Fire sign, its energy is audacious, exuberant, and high-spirited. “Put together these Yang qualities of Fire in the Fire Horse, and we have an extremely intense, energetic, fast-moving and action-oriented year ahead."🐎

Onefer

I  should have made you a card with a horse on it. Instead, here is a Fire Dragonfly:

Otherwise known as the Aqua Dragonfly. I used The Greetery's, "Jumbo Curiosity Moth," but changed out the moth body for a dragonfly body I found in my stash. The wings are cut from a piece of brusho'd glossy paper.

The dragonfly was inspired by the layout from Freshly Made Sketches. In order to change up the bottom half of the sketch, and because this is E = Embossing on the I.D.E.A.S. calendar, I embossed the bottom half with a Sizzix e/f. 

I'm not sure if you can see in the photo, but I wanted to add some razzahmatazz to the embossing and, you know, pretend I was a professional, so I blended some light aqua ink over the raised images. Only that was "Ew," way too much aqua per my resident hamster critic, so I really got brave and lightly blended black ink over the aqua! I know, black! I'll be viral, right? I'm also playing in the Allsorts Challenge (Embossing).

Twofer

This is a textbook QCAS design. The pretty sprig is NBUS called, "Meadow Grass" from Taylored Expressions. I die-cut it from white cardstock, but for some reason it photographed creamier than it is IRL. Sadly, you can't see Hammy's beautiful winking, which he was so becited to do again!

I'm playing with Seize the Birthday (CAS with Dies) and Addicted to Stamps and More (Die Cuts and/or Stencils).

Threefer

As I was typing this yesterday, I happened to see a couple of more challenges and before the clouds completely covered the sun, I made another CAS design.

I used one of the emboss-resist designs from Stampin' Up for the base. I started by masking off and ink-blending the candle bases in order to follow the sketch from AAA Cards. Then I had a heck off a time trying to figure out how to do the flames. All of my candle flames were too small. I tried free-hand and fussy-cutting them, but I got another "Ew" on that idea. 

Next, I took a field trip through the Playhouse and when I got to my greenery drawers, I hit the jackpot when I came across the "Leaf Canopy Die" from Altenew. It's from 2018 and old now, but it remains one of my favorites and who knew one of the pretty leaves made a perfect candle flame when ink-blended through the negative die-cut?! And even more amazing? I just noticed one of the sediment stamps in the set says, "So happy I have finally found you!"😮

I found a white die-cut balloon and string in my stash and blended them with ink and added the sediment. I'm also playing in The Paper Players challenge from Stef calling for, "CAS with Balloons and Birthday."

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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! 

*Life is too short!

Puffy Dogs and Puffy Clouds

Hello Stamplings!

I hope the world is treating you like the good person you are!🤗

I've had a busy week with lunches and appointments and we had a wonderful get-together with the family before the grandtwins go back to college next week for another year!** The course work is getting harder, but there is nothing like the fun of your college years! 

This week is E = Embossing on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar and for my first card, the lads and I went traveling in the Wayback Machine. (Google spellcheck wants me to call it the "Swayback" Machine!😀)

Onefer

What happened was, when we went over to see the kids on Saturday, we took Nellie and Jack to the dog park. It turns out they were having a Show-Off-Your-Collar contest and I was able to get a cute shot of of several of the pups lined up against the fence. (Nellie is in the photo, too, but she is hard to see against the white fence!)

The embossed fence e/f is from Darice. The old puffy dog stickers are from Doodlebug. The stacked sediment is from The Greetery's Birthday Blooms. 

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Any Occasion.

Just Us Girls: Word week: Birthday.

The Paper Players: CAS: Critters.

Twofer

The jump-off for this design came from the current sketch challenge at Freshly Made Sketches. The linen panel was die-cut using my NBUS Distant Sun Collage from Memory Box. For the card base and to fill in the sky aperture, I again went back in time and used some gold-speckled DSP I have. After the DSP was popped in the sky hole, the whole panel was embossed using my Subtle e/f from SU. The lads each added enamel dots and I finished with a tiny gold dot of punctuation. QACAS!

Other Challenges

Allsorts: Begins With "B."

Seize the Birthday: No Flowers.

I.D.E.A.S. Gallery

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using your wet and/or dry embossing! Sharing your card may help motivate others out of their creative schlumps!

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

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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!

**It is an emotive time for me and The Mister because we were exactly the twins' age when we met 56 years ago! Even to us, we look like babies in this photo, but back then it wasn't unusual to be on your own at 20 years of age, or younger. It's too expensive for kids in college to do that now.  

I'm sure many of you can relate. Sometimes it seems like it was a hunnert years ago, sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday!

Time is a funny old thing.

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Fifth Monday ~ Stencil I.D.E.A.S.

Hello Stamplings!

Me again! Happy last day of the month of September, which is also the fifth Monday which means stencils on my I.D.E.A.S. schedule. Happily we featured stencils on our Group of Seven designs Saturday, so this is a follow-up prequel to my last post. Say what now?

Sadly, no matter how many photos I took, I could not capture the schparkle from the metallics that are a part of the Lindy's Magicals powders I used. (That's the difference between Brusho powered inks and Lindy's Magicals powdered inks.) The stencil I used is from Technique Tuesday and the sediment is from Memory Box.

In our Go7 post, we showcased the monoprints we made after inking our stencils. What you see above is the 'print' which happens first if you put a piece of watercolor paper under your stencil when you ink and spritz it and then you simply lift the stencil straight up off the panel. 

It might help if I show you a photo of my stencil all liberally inked and spritzed before I lifted it off to make a print.

After lifting it off that panel, I flipped the stencil over onto other clean panels of watercolor paper progressively, in order to make all the monoprints you saw in my last post. Honestly, it sounds more confusing than it is.

If you are wondering how I got the Lindy Magicals to be placed so accurately in the stencil, it's because I let Hammy and Stanley use these little teeny-weeny spoons that came with a box of resin I've had for a long time. I just told them where to dump the different colors of powder onto the sunflower petals, leaves, and centers. It was sort of like paint-by-numbers and it took us forever, but they haven't played in ages and I've missed them, so it was easy to be patient with them.

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Here is another stencil design that's more my usual QACAS style:

I used an unmarked stencil and Catherine Pooler inks and I simply heat-embossed the sediment in white onto a strip of vellum.

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I know how everyone loves seeing other people's vacation photos,😁so you'll be pleased to know that I did manage to put together some collages of ours. Rather than making this a 47-foot long post, I put them on a separate page. If you are interested, there is a link in the salad side bar.

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:

Allsorts: A/G. Huge congratulations on your 800th challenge!!

I.D.E.A.S.

Just Us Girls: A/G Stencil Week.

Seize the Birthday: A/G.

Stencil Fun: Fall Frenzy.

The Paper Players: Tic-Tac-Toe from Claire. Middle horizontal row.

Imagination!

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I hope you got something out of this past week, which is just a blur to me thanks to migraines and lots of appointments. We are so happy to finally be getting our new backyard fence installed, but it has been hard to concentrate with the hammering and the good-looking carpenters just outside my Playhouse window. 

Ahem, where was I? 

Sometimes I buy stamps on sale long after they are released and even then they stay on NBUS Mountain for years more. Slap! Such is the case with this little bear from MFT's "Sprinkling You With Love." He was delighted to finally be given some love. He was die-cut, colored with my Ziggies, popped up, and googly-eyed.

After wards, I went to my pp drawer (😲) looking for some grassy and or flowery paper to plant him on. Hence the froggy pp. What better scene than a schparkly froggy in the rain? Hammy added the raindrops and the clouds finished it off. The sediment is from the same set. I like that I can use this card for many occasions.

Now you may think, "Oh, dear, this time she has gone too far with a giant frog who is bigger than the bear! 

Well ... really though? I mean, if you think about it, you've got a bear holding an umbrella and on top of the umbrella is a bunny holding an umbrella! Given the imagination it took to draw that image, I don't think the artist will mind that I paired her bear with this goofy frog!

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Die Cuts and/or Stencils.
  
• HLS - Anything Goes With Dies.
  
• The Paper Players: A theme challenge from Claire: Rainy Days.

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No time for a Christmas card today, but I have a funny for you!

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

Happy Mother's Day to everyone celebrating this weekend. Extra hugs to those of you who find this day hard to get through.💕

*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!)

Welcome Spring!

Hello Stamplings,

How are you? I'm sorry I fell off the grid there for a minute. There's been a lot going on ... but like you, I try to squeeze in a bit of time for making cards when I can. 

Today I have a quick post and a quick card to celebrate the First Day of Spring. (Please keep your eyes focused on the calendar and not on what is happening outside your window.)

It's a shame you can't see how much this card glitters from Hammy's winking. This is a one-layer card (OLC) made by first inking direct to the stamps with markers, followed by a jeuzzing around with my Ziggies. The sediment is an old stamp that I think might be from Paper Smooches. Oh, and before he winked, you might be able to see that Hammy gave the background a very light pastel flickadoodledo.

I didn't have time to make a Twofer Christmas card, but I wanted to get this posted to welcome back Less Is More where the brief is OLC. It seems like they were on a verrrrry long break.

I'm also playing with:

• Beautiful Blossoms: Floral with optional mood board.
  
• Cardz 4 Galz: Spring flowers.
  
• The Paper Players: CAS from Ann: Spring has sprung!
  

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Sadly ...

Last week, my baby brother passed away after a brief battle with cancer at the age of 66. We weren't close because of circumstances outside of our control and the fact that we lived on separate coasts, but we hit it off the few times we were able to get together. He was a really good guy and his family and friends will miss him a lot. There were seven of us siblings and it is upside down that the youngest went first.😢

I know many of you have also lost loved ones recently and three of my bloggie friends have died in the last six months. It takes a toll.💔

🌬Also last week, we were finally impacted by the storms that have been rolling through California one after the other for weeks. The fierce winds took out two small trees and the whole length of our backyard fence. It's going to be a while before the fence can be repaired. Lots of other folks have lost trees and fences throughout our area and beyond, so the fence contractors are quite busy. My heart aches for the sweet birds, including "my" hummingbirds who lived in those trees.😢

Well, that's too much sadness for this blog! I don't want you leaving here sad, so how about a hamster butt to cheer you up? You can't look at that butt and not smile!

I hope you take care and don't forget to enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! As I always say, LITS*.

Mwah!

*Life is too short!

My ♥ Is a Flutter

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? We have sunshine! Everyone's disposition is going to soar after 22 days of rain and clouds! I hope Mother Nature is being kind to you, wherever you are!

Today I've got a coupla clean and simple cards.

Onefer

I've used a color challenge to inspire my Valentine. The image is called, "Bundle Girl with Falling Hearts" and it's by Stampingbella. The sediment is unmarked, but looks to be Paper Smooches. It doesn't show, but Hammy got to deploy one of his new winkers. After the coloring and winking, I ran the panel through my Gemini using the SU "Subtle" e/f. 

I know it looks like I've given her lilac hair, but the stamp package shows she has on a stocking cap to go along with her mittens and boots. It can be very cold in some parts on Valentine's Day, but a little cold never stopped romance. In fact, last Monday the Mister and I celebrated 52 years of wedded romance!🍻

Challenges

• Cardz 4 Galz: CAS (Clean and Simple).
• Four Seasons: Anything Goes Winter.
• The Paper Players: A Color Challenge from Claire.

Twofer

Today's uber CAS Christmas card features a NBUS stencil from Tim Holtz called "Stampers Anonymous Woodland Stencil." I blended the ink through the stencil and then Hammy added SU Shimmery Crystal Effects to look like snow. It looks schparkly in person.

Challenges

• Christmas Crafts All Year 'Round: A Partridge in a Pear Tree: One of Something or a Tree.
  
• Sparkles Christmas: Sparkle/Glitter Accents.
  
• Stencil Fun: Anything Goes with stencils. Option used, "Winter."

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I thought I'd share this quote as we start a new year. I'm an optimist and positive by nature, but sometimes the happenings in the world cause a lot of worry, which is stressful, which is not good. So, next to the Serenity Prayer, I love this.

Corrie Ten Boom

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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!)