Why?

My heart is heavy with grief, but filled with love for the families and friends of the dead and the wounded. Their numbers are legion as this incident impacts caring individuals the world over. Why can't we stop the stupid hatred and violence?

 

*Life is too short!

Stamps are from Designs by Ryn (Rubber Art Stamp) "Trickling Water Set" watercolored with SAI watercolor brushes. The heart is ceramic. I saved it from a Hallmark card I received several years ago and recently found it in my stash.

Challenges

• AAA Cards: Watercolor
• Virginia's View Challenge: All About Color.

Just Saying Hi.

Hi.

I say that because of this.

I love the adorable and fun stamps that Stampingbella makes. You'll be seeing a few of their stamps featured in posts to come because, well, because I just bought a bunch, okay?! Mt. NBUS is excavated to the point where I can now see over it if I stand on my tallest ladder tiptoes, so I felt Justice Fied.

This NBUS tiny townie stamp is called "Penelope has a pencil." The "Hi." is a separate stamp in the same set. The written words panel is also NBUS. It's from the "Out Loud" set by Casual Friday Stamps. I stamped it off on a piece of scratch paper first so that it would look soft and not overpower Penelope.

(I don't know why Penelope's hair and the silver band of the pencil are the color of wisteria. I used my black Ziggie to paint them, which apparently photographs purple. I also have to tell you, it was really, really, really hard to hold back the hamsters from putting a dot where her nose should be. They just do not understand how she can breath. I distracted them with strawberries and got the picture taken.)

Challenges

• CAS(E) This Sketch. Below.
• Less Is More: Use 3 stamps. 
• Pals Paper Arts: Colors: wisteria, daffodil, and pool party.
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Make it girlie.
• Virginia's View Link-Up Party: Miss you, hello, any type of friendship.

Sometimes I make a card and then find challenges that coinkiedinkly match and sometimes a card is born directly as a result of seeing challenges. Either way, I want to say thank you to all the Challenges People for lighting warm fires of inspiration all over Blogland!!

~~~

So Odd

Does anyone know what's going on with JoAnn's? I sent the company three emails in the last couple of weeks regarding a problem with a gift card (after going to phone hell first). Each time they sent me a receipt saying I would hear back within 24-48 hours, but that didn't happen. (I checked my spam folder.) And BTW, they charged me a dollar fee for the gift card, which I've never had a company do before! I'm not a happy costumer and I needed to vent, so thanks. But have you heard that JoAnn's is going out of business or something? Cousin, this is odd.

~~~

Giveaways

I have new items up on the Giveaways tab at the top of my blog:

The directions for entering can be found by clicking the Giveaways tab. You have until April 29, 2016 to enter.

~~~

New Friends Corner

Please give a warm welcome to these new friends! Ladies, come on out!

NieNie Sambuco of SambuCOrona Papercrafting Adventures. NieNie began blogging in February 2015. She only posts now and then, but I think her creations are fabulous. She has a vivid and very creative imagination. And she recently made a quoteworthy statement on her blog: "Even the unintentional can be beautiful." We've all found that to be true, haven't we?!

Jamie Martin of Stamp This! Jamie started blogging in - whoa! - 2007! She is a pro at it, that's for sure. Put a pillow behind your back because there's a lot of inspiration and tips and tricks waiting for you when you visit Jamie!

Kay Wallace of Art From the Main House. Kay and I could retire away together, she in the Main House and me in the Playhouse! Kay has been blogging since 2012 and loves playing in challenges. She has also served on many design teams! Her works of art will blow your socks off so you'd better put your garters on!

Carol of Crafty Carol's Cards. Carol only just started her blog in January of 2016, so please pop over now and welcome her to our supportive community in Blogland and leave her some encouraging words about her lovely cards!

Sharon of From My Craft Desk. Just like Carol, Sharon has only been blogging since January of this year, so ditto the above! Sharon, too, makes terrific cards, especially for the Less is More challenges. It feels so great to give back and remember how thrilled we were to have visitors and receive comments! For that matter, how thrilled we still are!

Thank you for joining, ladies, and welcome to the Playhouse!

~~~

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!

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If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me
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Flakes of Snow

Hey There!

Happy weekend of card-making, shopping, and baking ~ or whatever wraps your present and makes you smile!

I have another scrollable photo parade for you of QACAS snowy creations without waffling from me. The theme today is snowflakes because mostly I wanted to play at Inkspirational Challenges because my friend Jane of Onions and Paper is the Guest Designer and the theme is "Flake."

I could have made a card about the guy who used to run the tire store in the town where I grew up. You never knew if he was going to open on time or open at all or close early or what. I heard the adult persons refer to him as a flake. Seriously, how does anyone ever learn English? Oops, that sounds suspishushly like waffling.

Let me know if you would like any details and thank you for the visit! I've still got more to make!

The first three are helping me use up my patterned paper from PTI.

Challenge: Inkspirational Challenges: Flake

~~~

Challenge: TIME OUT Challenges: Photo Inspiration:

All those polka dots and baubles inspired me!

~~~

Challenge: Christmas Cards All Year Round: Keep it simple.

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Challenge: Addicted to CAS: Code word: Joy.

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Challenge: CAS-ual Fridays: Snowflakes
~~~

Challenges: Addicted to Stamps and More: Clean and simple.
Virginia's View Challenge: Glitter

~~~

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!

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One Thing Leads to Another

Hi there! Thanks for popping in on this busy Sunday! No need to read, just scroll through if you're looking for Christmas card inspiration!

Perhaps you are more self-discipled than I am, but sometimes I need to take a break from making cards and go visiting other blogs and then what happens is I'll see squirrels some wonderful inspiration that makes me want to drop the ball and play along. Normally, I can count on Hammy to keep me from being distracted, but, you know, he has his own distraction problems right now.

So I went playing:

This card was inspired by my friend Chriss Blagrave, who is this week's Muse at Muse: Christmas Visions. Here is Chriss's beautiful card:

I was inspired by Chriss's black and white colors with a wee touch of gold and, of course, we need all the signs of peace we can get.

For my card, I used another one of the dies from the "Distressed Holiday Collage" set that I used in my last post. This corner die is one of two snowflake dies in the set. I embossed the white panel using a Sizzix snowflake e/f and then I cut out the peace sediment using a die from Winnie & Walter. That, of course, smashed my snowflakes, so if I were me, next time I would do all the die-cutting before the embossing.

The black underskirt is a glittered foam paper. You can just make out the schparkle if you look closely. I attached a gold snowflake brooch to the bodice and we're done here.

Snowflake Challenges: TIME OUT, Simon Says Wednesday, Virginia's View, and CAS-ual Fridays.

~~~

But wait, I thought. I might as well make a card using the remaining die in the corner set, this one in the shape of an ornament:

Which said ornament shape pairs nicely with my NBUS Merry (dangling) Ornament die by Memory Box. This time I used a red mirri card behind the corner die and sediment openings. A big juicy red sequint serves as jewelry and we're done here.

~~~

But, wait, I thought, while I have the Merry Ornament die out, why not make another QACAS card:

~~~

And then before I moved on with my blog visits, I thought why not check out the non-Christmas Muse Challenge. There I saw that Ardyth's daughter Kate is the Muse this week, so I had to play! It's important to encourage our daughters and sons and grands in the fine art of paper crafting and written communication!

Here's is Kate's darling card:

I hope Kate won't mind that I made a Christmas card. Oh, shoot, I just noticed that I forgot to write a hashtag in front of my sediment like Kate did! #Dodobrain.

For my card, I used four individual and ancient stamps placed in a row like in Kate's design, with a sediment placed under the images. These critters are from the All Night Media stamp set, "Holiday Snowglobe".

The sediment is from MFT "Stitched Stockings." I stamped it using the baby wipe ink pad technique. (You use reinkers in drops on a few layers of baby wipes; there are videos on YouTube.) It was my first time doing that and I thank Sue Rose for the inspiration.

~~~

And then what happened was, I happened to see that a very lovely color challenge is closing down. I'm sorry to see that happen. It is Colour Me ...! and I made this shaker card as a thank you for all the past challenges and hard work by the DT:

The snippet of DSP is from SU. The tag is from PTI and the ribbon is "Soft Sky" from SU. In addition to Colour Me ...!, I'm linking with:

• Freshly Made Sketches: Sketch below.
• Fusion Card Challenge: Blue Christmas. (Photo only.)

Ok, that's enough about my play day. I hope your day was productive, even if you saw squirrels along the way! Here's a look at my long basket of CCs, so far:

There are 102 cards there! We've been a regular hamster card mill! I am so fortunate to have so many card pen pals and I added a lot of new ones since last year. Still, I was surprised after typing my labels to see that they came to seven pages, thirty to a page. Luckily, several of those labels get a family photo card, so I only need to make about sixtcough more handmade ones. Good thing I love making them! And if you've finished all your cards, my hat's off to you!

Now I have to go teach those hamster babies how to forge my signature ...

~~~

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!

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OLC and FFL and Wait. What?

Greetings, Stamplings!

I hope you are having a great week! I have a bit of news which I'm sharing below, so I'm going to get right to my cards.

I started with two very CAS one-layer cards for the One-Layer-Santa challenge at Less Is More:

Those reindeer karack me up. This is a fun NBUS stamp from Penny Black called "Joy to the World." The sediment is also NBUS from PTI. I colored the image with my Ziggies and grounded (skyed?) it with Perfect Pearls. I wish I had embossed the sediment, but I couldn't find my red e/p. 

Then I made this one:

I happen to have two of these brick e/fs and I really wanted to use the old chimney stamp from SU with the brick e/f design and make it one-layer, so I used a ruler and my craft knife to cut a rectangle out of one of them in order to keep that part from embossing.

I think my new altered e/f will work well in the future for a floral or ivy stamp. The image and sediment were heat-embossed in black and the image was colored with my Ziggies.

I'm also entering the first card in the Merry Monday Christmas Card Challenge, where the brief is to use reindeer on  your card. And I'm also entering the second card in Leslie Hanna's The Crooked Stamper's Sketch Challenge.

Two more fun and easy-to-mail cards done!

~~~

Next I went all fancy, frilly, and layered (FFL):

I've had these vellum sheets out of the drawer to use somehow on a Christmas card so as soon as I saw the photo inspiration for the City Crafter challenge, I stopped what I was doing and made this card, using the sketch inspiration from Stamp Ink Paper.

The card base was embossed with a snowy e/f. Then the middle panel was covered half with the white swiss-dot vellum and half with the turkoyce vellum. The seam was covered with a pretty silver ribbon. The topmost panel is silver mirror partially embossed with the same snowy e/f as the card base. 

The "joy" is cut using a die from WPlus9 called "Seasonal Sentiments." I used a sparkly aqua glitter paper, which you can see better here:

The snowflake is from a MFT "Let it Snowflake" die. The silver stud is from GKW. I used plenty of snippets, so I'm also playing over at Pixie's Snippets Playground and there's plenty of texture, so I'm linking for the second time to Virginia's View Challenge.

~~~

Big News

Well, dearies, you are not gonna beleaf what happened! Remember a couple of months ago when the Mister first injured his own self and Hammy got in a tiff (he couldn't find a taxi) because I was ignoring him and he went away for a while? Apparently he had a good ol' time because the other night about sunset, we had an unexpected knock on the Playhouse door.

Well you cudda blown me over with a whiffle when I opened the door because no one was there! I was about to close it when I heard Hammy gasp from the window sill over the paper cutter. I whipped my head around to look at him and saw him looking bug-eyed down at my feet so then I looked down at my feet and then it was ME who gasped when I saw this:

I know, whoa, right?! (My friend Eve from the Playground first wondered if this might happen when Hammy took off. She should tell fortunes for a living! As near as I can tell, they're almost six weeks old.)

I won't bore you with the details like how long it took to find an expert with a magnifier large enough to decipher the hand-pawed note I found under the babies from their Momma. Suffice it to say she thinks it's time my rascal Hammy paid the piper and it's his turn to take care of them!

I was pretty upset for about a half a second which is how long it took me to realize I had six more little brains and six quads of paws that will come in handy as I make holiday cards in the short amount of time that's left. I'm happy to say they are very quick learners and so smart, even that little runty fella on top! But where did they put my red e/p?!

There are three girls and three boys. I'm thinking I might hold a contest to name them and then adopt them out after the first of the year. Hmm? Anyone? 

~~~

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!

photo source

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me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!