More Rainbow Daisies For Dieday!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you had a lovely weekend! I was very productive in the Card Department because it was way too hot to be outside. That's normal for this time of year, so we just carry on, naked. 

Oh, sorry, you did not need that visual! 

This week is D = Die Cuts on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar and I went to town. I had to stop there and look up the origin of "went to town" because I can't stand not knowing where these idioms come from.

Plus, I like to know if what I imagine the origin to be matches, in any way, the truth. I think of the early settlors and how they had to "go to town" if they wanted anything store-bought. Or Reba McEntire singing about Ruby going to town. I love that sad earworm song.

Turns out there is no explicit origin for this idiom, but it is thought to be early American English. Boo. I built you up and then I let you down. But, wait, that could be the start of a country song!

Where was I? 

Oh, yes. You might remember that I recently cut a bunch of "Rainbow Daisies" from Pinkfresh Washi tape and made some cards with the wreath image cut. For this post, I'm sharing what I did with the rest of all those pretty floral die cuts:

These simple designs are self-explanatory and super EZPZ which is the awesome thing about the beautiful Washi tape designs made by Pinkfresh and other companies.

Challenges

AAA Birthday: Summer Birthday.

CAS Colours & Sketches. Sketch, flipped. 

Tic Tac Toe: Diagonal, top right to bottom left: CAS/free/flowers.

And the rest:

For these cards, I added The Greetery's "Pretty Pot" die and the "Garden Watering Can" die from Memory Box. It took a long minute, but it felt good to actually use up those die-cuts. (You can tell as the process wore on that I added more and more flowers to each card, lol!) It also felt good to use up BOBs and pp and now I have more cards ready to send!

~~~

Hammy and Stanley are back home! Yay!

They worked very hard and they're bezausted. All they could muster was schplattering one of the card panels, but I'm fine with that. They deserve to be relaxing in their cooling pool, slurping their Burpees!

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar:  D = Die Cuts

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creation using die cuts. Your entry may help lift a fellow crafter out of her creative schlump!

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your design! Thank you to everyone who visited and linked to the gallery last week. Mwah!

~~~

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

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks 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

Mirrored Ovals

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you all enjoyed last week and you're ready to bust this new week wide open! Things slow down a little online this time of the year as we spend more time outdoors when the weather is fine. As much as we love paper flowers, there is nothing like the real thing!

If you do have time to garden and craft, this is the first full week of July, which means the motivation I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is I = Ink/Color Mediums.

Onefer

I was also busy last week with my birthday and America's birthday, so I turned to Freshly Made Sketches for inspiration and this is my take on the sketch. The "Lush Greenery" is from Pinkfresh. It comes with two halves, but I only used one-half and stamped it as a mirror image.*

*Edited: I can't change the title after publishing, but I wanted to edit the wording here so it's not confusing. I did not stamp the above in the traditional sense of the "mirror technique." Using my MISTI, I stamped the image once, cleaned the stamp, and removed it from the MISTI. Then I repositioned the stamp on the paper, so that it was "upside down" and butting up against the first image. I inked the stamp, closed the MISTI, and stamped a second image. In that way, they mirrored each other. I hope that makes sense! If not, let me know.

I used my Ziggies to color the greenery and the lads very carefully winked the wee leaves. I used Poppystamps NBUS pointed oval die for the sediment and their pointed rectangle die to add a frame. I used the "aloha" die from Your Next Stamp because it's perfect for a birthday card for my friend who spends half the year in Hawaii! Poor dear.😂🌴🥥

Other Challenges

CAS on Friday: Botanical.

Tic Tac Toe: Diagonal, top left to bottom right: foliage/free/any sediment.

TIME OUT: Travel.

Twofer

I liked how my first card turned out so much that I used the sketch and dies again to make a Christmas design. Like with the first card, I stamped the Magenta poinsettia trio, cleaned the stamp, turned it (the stamp) upside down and stamped it again. Then we painted, winked, and framed them using a sediment from Simon Says Stamp.

Challenges

Holly & Ivy: Anything Christmas Goes.

Jingle Belles: Poinsettia Perfection.

Merry Little Christmas: Anything Christmas Goes.

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar:  I = Ink/Color Mediums

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creation using some form of coloring, inking, painting, etc. which might help lift someone out of their creative schlump!

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your design! Thank you to everyone who visited and linked to the gallery last week. Mwah!

~~~

Enjoy your week! No seriously, enjoy! LITS!

Here's an example from my little friend on enjoying life, taken from the Playhouse window. As always, thank you for visiting and commenting!

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Wintery Birthdays

Hello, Stamplings!

Well, that first week whooshed by already, dinnit?! For Christmas the Mister got me a seat belt for my desk chair because of how fast last year flew by! Vertigo is real, dude.

Even though Christmas cards have all been sent, I decided to make similar cards for those wintery birthdays of friends and family! Like this:

I did make three of these birthdays cards, so I'm proud of that, but I wish I could say I also made several more cards with this design with Christmas sediments for 2018. Sigh.

I have to admit I did have a lot of fun going all layer-y with this card and, as usual, I liked using ingredients from several different companies: A NBUS "Snowfall Panel Die" from Your Next Stamp; stitched hills from Lawn Fawn; NBUS "Polar Bear Fun" stamp and die set from Poppystamps; North pole stamp from "Cool Day" by MFT; hello, shadow, and cardinals from GKW; and sediment from PTI.

I think you're spose to knock all the snow out of the holes on the panel die, but I liked the look of some in and some out. Besides it's so cold in some places right now that the snow IRL would be frozen in the holes!

Challenges

• Little Red Wagon: Winter Wonderland.
• Poppystamps: Snow Day.
• Tic Tac Toe: I managed three matches with this game: Row one across, diagonal row from bottom left to upper right, and column two.

~~~

My card was also made to inspire you to play along in the current challenge at Inspired By All the Little Things which I am hosting! Here is the fun photo inspiration for this challenge:

Eep! So cute!

As host, I also get to pick a talented card artist to introduce to you and she, in turn, will make you an inspiring work of art! For this challenge, I have chosen my talented friend Linda Snodgrass of Lin's Craft Corner. To see what Linda and the amazing Design Team have created to inspire you, please click over to the Inspired By All the Little Things challenge!

Noteworthy: When you pop over to the challenge, you will see that we have made some changes effective as of now. The challenges will now run two weeks, rather than one week, and our guest designer will be with us for both challenges in the month. (If there is a fifth week in a month, there will not be a challenge that week.)

In addition, as the challenge name implies, we would love to know what "little thing" in the photo inspired you to make your card design! It was that cute little bear that inspired my design and I can't wait to see what inspires you!!

~~~

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

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and a 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 to return the favor!

*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 the pop-up box pens. 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!

Tis The Season

Hello, Stamplings!

I hope this finds you well!

I've been making a lot of cards, but I've only gotten one photographed so far. I decided to do a quick post so I didn't miss the challenges.

The pretty holly garland and bold sediment are both NBUS from the "Fa La La" set by Avery Elle. The red is Washi tape. The textured card is linen from Handy Hippo.

And here is the sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch! that inspired me:

Other Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Make Your Mark.
• HLS CAS Challenge: Christmas.
• Tic Tac Toe Challenge: "Die Cut, Free, Leaf." And "Sentiment, Die Cut, CAS."

~~~

I thought I would show you some yard art by Mother Nature. It's lovely to see a bit of color this time of year. This is an annual that has burst to life this fall:

I think it's a type of Phlox? Aren't the teeny-tiny buds within the sphere of flowers so fascinating? They are like little pillows.

Maybe not so cute, but equally fascinating, is this leaf bug:

Can you see it? I'm pretty sure I've shown you one of these before, but it's been ages since we've seen one. That's a good thing because I think they are pests and bad for the trees if you get an infectation of them. The leaf pattern on the body really mesmerizes me, though. Its official name is Katydid (Leaf Bug).

Oops, a certain little hamster is squeaking at me. I forgot I left him holding down a section of ribbon so I could finish tying a bow!

~~~

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 to 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 the pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! P.S. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Mwah! 

JUGS GD #408 ~ "Aloha"

Hello there, Stamplings!

I want to first say that my thoughts and prayers are with everyone impacted by Hurricane Harvey in the days ahead.

As the Guest Designer for the month of August at Just Us Girls, I'm here to welcome you to the fourth week, which is Photo Week! It's all about the tropics and Hawaii and Florida flamingos and pineapples and wherever your imagination takes you!

And just for no reason, Hammy wants to entertain you with a bit of rhyming!

As the days of summer wane,

fall appears on the window pane.

We whisper, No! It went too fast!

What can we do to make it last?

We can hit the beach at least once more

and stretch our toes upon the shore!

I used a sunglasses sticker and pp (patterned paper) from my stash cut into rectangles. The flip flops are from Lil Inkers, the NBUS "aloha" is from Your Next Stamp, and the sediment is from MFT. 

I hope you can join in for the challenge this week! Here is the badge photo inspiration for you:

So many ways to go with this! For more ideas, please check out what the Design Team made for you on the Just Us Girls blog! I'd like to thank the Design Team at JUGS for the honor of being the Guest Designer for the month of August. It was a lot of fun! 

I'm entering my card in the Make My Monday Challenge where the theme is "Lazy Days of Summer!"

~~~

Now the sand is brushed away

As a new season has come to play.

The garden sighs and roses fade,
Bulbs are planted, beds are laid. 

The sunflower stands tall above the rest

And welcomes autumn to her golden breast.

I've used sunflower pp from my stash behind the MFT stitched circle die cut. I colored and fussy-cut the sunflower from Technique Tuesday. The sediment is from Your Next Stamp. Of course, the sunflower is all winked up!

Challenges

• CAS(E) This Sketch!
• Tic Tac Toe Challenge: Die cut, sentiment, floral.
• TIME OUT Challenge: Autumn with the optional twist of speed stamping. (The option doesn't apply to my card cuz it took me ten minutes just to fussy cut that sunflower!)

~~~

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 to 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 the 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!

UCBs and a Perk Up

Hi, stamplings!

First of all, thank you again for the good wishes and cards that keep pouring into the Playhouse! I appreciate your kindness very much! The place is looking very cheerful and Hammy is having a great time building castles and tunnels using your envelopes!

My recovery continues as expected, so all is well! I'm still a wee bit tender pretty much all over and round tother side, but that'll be gone soon. I'm not on the computer much yet, but I've been able to spend some fun minutes diving back into my "Unfinished (sometimes ancient) Card Bits" box, so I've got a few finished quickies to share. 

First up:

This goofy bird panel was colored for me by my friend Jim of Love the Details and sent to me by his wife Jill of Ribbon Challenged. They have been good friends for many years. I added the perfectly appropopo sediment, matted the panel with a Memory Box Cross-Stitch Frame in black, and attached it to a tangerine card base. (Bonus using some of my colored cardstock.) Thank you, Jim and Jill! 

~~~

Isn't that butterfly panel just glorious? Believe it or not, I cut it from an envelope that accompanied a stunning matching card from my friend Linda of Life in the Craft Lane. She has prolly long ago forgotten about sending it, but I saved a bit of the envie all this time to use on a card because it was just too beautiful to bin. I'm pickled tink to have finally made it into a simple card. Thank you, Linda!

~~~

The above three QACAS cards were made with toppers that were a gift from my friend Nonni of Nonni's Handmade Cards. I made cards from a couple of others when they first arrived (cough) ago, but then these three toppers just sat neglected as UCBs. I mean, honestly, it took only minutes to make these cards, so slap my biscuit and call me lazy for not doing this sooner!! Thank you, Nonni!

It feels so good to work my way through these treasures and turn them into cards to spread the love to someone else! I'll hopefully have more UCBs to share another day soon.

~~~

And now, something I made from total scratch yesterday.

I know, you're impressed by the layers and detail and countless hours I dedicated to this design, aren't you? Haha, of course not. I whipped up this OLC for Amy's 2017 Summer Coffee Lover's Blog Hop. The NBUS perculator and sediment stamps are from Whimsy Stamps. The NBUS wee flower that I poked in the opening of the masked perculator is from MFT's "Buildable BG" set. Mr. Zig and Ms. Stella were responsible for the technicolor floral effects.

I'm also joining in the Tic Tac Toe Challenge, using the left-most vertical line of "blue, one-layer, and yellow."

~~~

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 to return the flavor as soon as I am able!

*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 the pop-up box opens.

Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, 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!