Air-Blown Thanks and Two Oddballs

Hello Stamplings!

What DAY is it?! Have you ever had one of those weeks with unexpected events that make the week seem like it's two weeks long? I'm having one of those weeks. But it sure started out nice as we wrapped up a terrific long weekend with Adam and Henry and Duke and Jack. The weekend's photo, however, features the Mister in all his glory*!

But first, I want to share these alcoholic backgrounds I made recently using a can of air.

There are talented artists out there who make the most sensational flowers and other art using their cans of air! I am not going to be one of them. It requires much, much, much practice, but I had fun playing and loved the results.

I used several of them to make thank you cards using vellum and a thank you sediment embossed in platinum and simply stapled to the panels. 

I still have a couple of the backgrounds I haven't used and Hammy spends hours staring at the imaginary critters he sees in the colors!

Twofer

I recently saw this Stampingbella "Oddball Boy Elf" on someone's blog (sorry, I can't remember whose it was) and I had to immediately open a new window and order it. Haha, that conjures up a funny image, doesn't it? The day will prolly come when I can just open my Playhouse window and a drone will pull up, take my order, zoom off, and return a half hour later with my item!

Anyways, normally my NBUS sits on Mt. NBUS for a few months or years before it sees ink, but not this goofy elf! I used my Ziggies and Artezas to color him. Hammy winked his shoes and knit cap and I added a piece of Washi tape to ground him. Please don't mention his eye condition. He's very sensitive. And the odd color of the candy cane which is normally red/white or green/white? Why, i's chocolate!

The sediment comes with the elf. I may or may not have partaken of some spirits of my own before stamping it a schmidge too close to the edge. Hic.

Challenges

• Moving Along With the Times: CAS.
• Rudolph Days: Anything Christmas goes.
• Simon Say Stamp Wednesday: Anything goes.
• TIME OUT: Funny.

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*Another Oddball!

Fact: Guys who go to county fairs turn into adolescents and eat all the garbage food they can get their hands on! This particular treat is a foot-long hot dog wrapped in a corkscrewed raw potato and then the whole thing is deep-fried. Disgusting. Even the twins were disgusted. The man has an iron stomach. And before you ask, yes, he had a sore jaw for three days. If we were on the Tweeter platform, I'll bet he would go viral. #viralspiral!

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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!)

Batchin' It With Christmas Cards

Hello Stamplings!

Gosh, how quiet Blogland is as we all hunker down to work on our cards! How are you doing with yours?

Over here it's been a week of interruptus and I need that right now like I need a bee in my bloomers.

First of all, on Sunday I cleaned up my desk feeling all smug because all my cards were sent out and I even had four left over. Then I discovered two sheets of labels that had slipped under other papers on my desk. 😱

Monday morning I walked into the Playhouse and was greeted by the sight of itty-bitty creepy ants all over the floor as they filed in out of the cold and rain. They were dispatched, but the Playhouse was filled with fumes so I did what I could in the Bighouse, which wasn't a whole lot. 😒

Tuesday was doctor appointments and then the faucet in the hall bathroom started dripping. That meant a lot of interruptions over several hours because the poor Mister ran into one problem after another with what "should have been a five-minute job! Bleep, bleep!" 😠

Yesterday, I slipped on the floor and wrenched most of my torso and all my extremities. Wait. What? Is that everything? Well, that's what it feels like. 😧

Some weeks are like that. That's why God invented potatoes. And people smart enough to turn potatoes into wodka. And, no, I hadn't been in the wodka before I fell.

Through it all, Hammy and I were not to be deferred and we managed to make more cards in between apostrophes:

Yes, more uber QACAS! This NBUS stamp from The Ton is so gorgeous simply heat-embossed. The sediment is from Stamping All Day.

This design was so easy, I made a bunch of them using different card and different e/p:

    

Challenges

• Double Trouble and Three Amigos: Any kind of embossing.
• Lost Coast Portal to Creativity: Cold and frosty.
• Stinkin Inkers: Winter Wonderland.
• TIME OUT: Joyful.

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Then we cleaned off the table again and started this QACAS design:

This NBUS image and sediment are from the "Botanical Blocks IV" set from Papertrey Inc. I made a big batch of these in several colors, but I didn't get a chance to photograph them together because they were sent off as fast as they cooled off!

Then I took a break and went visiting and I saw this pretty card made by my friend Cat. Great minds! I realized that it would be even QACASier if I did it Cat's way, so I did:

Thank you for the inspiration, Cat! These cards were heat-embossed in platinum. It's simple, but very shiny and lovely in person. Sorry for the over-exposure. For some reason this card looked yellow and it's pure white so I brightened it. I took these photos inside on a cloudy day and it's the best I could do what with being gimpy and all.

Challenges 

• CAS on Friday: Make a Christmas card.
• INKspirational: Anything Christmas Goes.
• Less Is More: OLC Holiday.

~~~

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!)

Pure Fresh Snow

Hello Stamplings!

We all love pure white freshly fallen snow, unmarred by footprints, ablaze with highlights. I always loved waking up in the middle of the night when it was pitch black outside and I could see the big fat flakes tumbling over each other in the glare of the streetlight.

I would punch down my pillow so I could lay halfway in the corner of the window, alternately looking up into the light and down at the pane as slowly and steadily the light flakes piled higher. If there hadn't a storm window in place, I would have reached out to gather them on my finger tip and tongue.

The next day I had a stiff neck and in two days all that pure whiteness turned to snit, as Kelly Ripa would say, but oh how wonderful were those magical moments of pure fresh snow. I've spent all of my adult years living in a place where it doesn't snow, but I have those childhood memories ~ and loads of SU's Dazzling Diamonds glitter!

But that's not why you called. Welcome to the first day of December!! You've got about ten days to finish your cards if you have any hope of them reaching their destination by the 25th, especially those far-away destinations.

But before you go, I have a coupla snowy cards to show you.

I'm telling you, another good thing about making QACAS cards, besides ease of mailing, is that it doesn't take long to describe the process and the ingredients! The two bunnies flying through the fresh snow on my card were made from a NBUS image in the "Winter Wonderland" Penny Black set. They were black heat-embossed, Ziggified, and winked proficiently by the little Hammy, who now has permanent glossy nails and loves them! The sediment is from the "Full of Merriment" set, also by Penny Black.

Challenges

• CAS on Friday: Make a Christmas card.
• CAS(E) This Sketch.
• Less Is More: One-layer card: Holiday

Twofer

You can't get much more uber QACAS than this and who doesn't love white-on-white or, as I like to call it, W-O-W. The card base is embossed with a brick e/f. The beautiful snowflake ornament is "Snowflakes and Ornament" by Hero Arts (D1528 Fancy Die). Thank you, Lisa, for the information!

I simply added a gold glitter-embossed brad that I've also had since ... well, I'm so long in the tooth, I can't remember when I got them. The simple sediment was gold-glitter embossed.

Challenges

• AAA Cards: Mostly white.
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday: Anything goes.
• TIME Out: Black, white, and one other color.

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Enjoy your day making those cards! 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!)

Classic B/W and Red for Christmas

Hello, Stamplings!

Thank you for stopping by today, seeing as how you're exhausted after all that post-Thanksgiving shopping you did over the weekend. When you weren't eating leftovers. Or is that just me?

I won't keep you cuz you know I have tons to do. I mean, I know you have tons to do.

You can count on me for mostly uber-doober QACAS inspiration as it gets closer to Christmas. My cards today took minutes to make. The beautiful image above is NBUS from Unity. I had to buy it (cough) months ago after seeing it on my friend Shelly's blog and I finally got around to inking it up for Christmas. It was stamped onto a corner-chomped OLC base and clear-embossed. The Christmas flower was colored and shaded with Ziggies and the sediment is from Penny Black. Hammy winked the heck out of that flower. Hmm, maybe that's why the colors all blended. Bless his heart.

Challenges

• Less Is More: OLC Holiday.
• Rudolph Days: A/G Christmas.
• TIME OUT: Black, white, and one colour.

Twofer.

Another uber festive card. This full-front text image is an old wooden stamp from Stampendous. I inked it in black and embossed it in clear ep, which you can just make out in the shine here and there. I found a NBUS roll of pretty SU ribbon to tie around the card front. Tip: This is a cheater's bow you tie after you've tried twelveteen times to tie a bow. It's less bulky to mail, too.👏

Challenges

• 52 Christmas Card Throwdown: Ribbon & glitter.
• Fusion: Photo inspiration.
• The Holly and Ivy Christmas: Anything goes.

~~~

Enjoy this busy time of year for us card arteests! 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!)

Wrapped Up in Wreaths

Hello Stamplings!

On the Days of the Year calendar, today we are celebrating "Homemade Bread Day," "Baklava Day," and because then we need it, "Take a Hike Day!" Since we can't hike here atm because of the smoke, we'll just call it, "International Celebrate Carbs Day!"

But more important than any of those, today is our favorite son's birthday! Happy Birthday, Dan, and many, many more! And because I didn't acknowledge my favorite daughter-in-law's birthday on October 1, I'd like to do that now, too. Happy Birthday, Rachel, and many, many more! Your birthdays are even more cherished now!

Today is also reminder day over on the Twofer Card Challenge blog, so here you go with two more sets of designs to inspire you to play. In each case, I made one conventional wreath design and then I used my wreath in an unconventional way on my second design:

For these cards, the wreath I used for both designs is "Cascadia Wreath" by Memory Box. In case you think the camera played tricks, the colors of the card bases are honestly white and cream.

I thought we could all use our vivid imaginations and pretend those flowers are poinsettias, so my first design is a Christmas card, kept uber simple with white-one-white, pops of red, and a schplash of silver. The sediment is from The Ton. I'm entering this card in the TIME OUT photo inspiration challenge: red, white, gray.

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I'm pretty chuffed with how this turned out. It was one of those one-thing-leads-to-another card designs. I ended up using a perfume bottle clear stamp from The Alley Way Stamps for the pretty Ziggified vase. I've had it at least four years, but it was still NBUS cuz I've just never had occasion to make a card with a large perfume bottle. As I was looking through my schtuff, I thought the bottom of the perfume bottle would work as a vase, so I put on my surgical gown and operated on it to remove the atomizer dealiebob. 

The card base is die-cut from an MFT stitched rectangle out of beautiful schparkle paper from SU that was a gift from my friend Brenda. The NBUS sediment from Kaiser Craft is heat-embossed in silver and in Hammy's absence, I winked the vase all by myselves. Sorry I forgot to take a photo closeup to show you all the shimmer and sheen. I also forgot to add a shadow to ground my vase. Okay, let's just move on.

Challenges

• City Crafter: Friendship.
• Color Throwdown.
• Little Red Wagon: Remember when.

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For this Twofer set, I leaned towards rustic and used a wreath from Papertrey Ink called, "Cutaway Tags: Summer."

Making another Christmas card for the pile, I die-cut the wreath from a snippet of gold-embossed Bazzill paper and added another strip behind the wreath. Then I covered the sediment strip part of the die with paper that matched the card base, onto which I heat-embossed the sediment from PTI in gold. To finish it off, I flung gold schplatters all over it with Wild Abandon.

Challenges

• Pixie's Snippets Playground: Use your snippets!
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: All that glitters is gold.
• Uniko: Celebrate. Optional twist: GOLD.

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For my second design, I deconstructed the wreath, using the center sediment strip and some of the flowers, which I colored with my Zigs and winked. The sediment is NBUS from the same set. I found the cool woodgrained background paper in the same stash where I found the paper I used on my first set of Twofer wreaths last week. It feels great to have used these cool patterned papers after years stuck in a drawer! 

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The Twofer Card Challenge is open until November 24th, so you still have time to put your thinking caps on and play along! I have to say, once I got into it, it was really fun thinking of two ways to use a wreath that weren't the same underlying design.

It's all win-win for you as you end up with two cards for your stash and it's all win-win for us as we benefit from how you inspire us!

 

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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!)