Watercolor Birthday Surprise!

Hello Friday Fans!

The only thing good about how fast the week whooshes by is that it's the weekend! Course then the weekend whooshes by, too, so there you go. Or rather, there it went.

I want to start by saying that my heart goes out to everyone in southern California impacted by the terrible fires. Our entire state is suffering from a severe drought and we worry that wildfires may become commonplace throughout the state with the heat of summer. We don't normally get rain in the summertime, but prayers for no wildfires would be most welcome.

My card today is brought to you by the fact that it is the birthday of my little friend Sandie of Purple London Days! Happy Birthday, Sandie, and many, many more!! Sandie's other friends are linking up their birthday cards over at the blog of the delightful party hostess, Nonni. Her blog is Korttikarkuri - Runaway Cards. Nonni's cohost is the also delightful and well-loved Lynn of The Mango Boys and Me.

The linky button will be open for two weeks over at Nonni's blog, so if you would like to join the party and make a card to link up for Sandie, we would love to have you!

I've had a super busy week what with lunches and whatnots so I'm still stuck way behind with my homework for the watercolor course I'm taking. Oops. Suffrice to say, you'll be seeing watercoloring on this blog for days and days to come, weeks even, depending on schtuff happening like tomorrow we are gone all day.

At last, here is my watercolor birthday card for Sandie:

I colored the beautiful Penny Black flower stamp with my Marvy markers, spritzed it with water, stamped it on the paper, and art happened. Seriously, you can do this! I scored the card to correspond with the sketch seen below, added a sticker birthday sediment, and adheesed the watercolor panel to a gold card.

I hope you like it, Sandie!

~~~

I am entering Sandie's card in these challenges:

Penny Black and More Challenge ~ Anything Goes!

Seize the Birthday challenge ~ Anything Goes with a topping of May flowers.

Seize the Sketch challenge sketch by Lesley, which I turned on its side.

The Paper Players ~ color challenge chosen by Sandy. A different, but no-less superb Sandy.

The links provided will take you to the challenges where you will find all the details regarding rules, sponsors, and prizes and where you will be inspired by the wonderful works of art by the Design Teams. Do join in!!

Online Card Classes

~~~

In honor of the birthday sock hop, I'd like to share this birthday fairy tale which I recently saw on a friend's store-bought card:

A Birthday Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a

Princess who was like a size four or 

something. She could eat and drink

whatever she wanted and always

stayed really skinny and had

flat, firm abs even though she

never went to the gym.

Every time she tried on jeans, the

very first pair fit perfectly and

made her butt look amazing. She lived

in a great big beautiful castle with

her handsome, multimillionaire husband,

who was busy all the time buying her

giant diamonds, taking her to

Hawaii, giving her foot massages, and

telling her how beautiful she was.

One day she was eaten by a 

dragon and no one cared.

The End.

 ~~~

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 leave a comment and/or 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 the pop-up box opens.
Click Jump to Comment Form; no more car pool tunnel!
Mwah!

Watercolor Notes ~ NBUS #131

Hello, my friends!

I hope all is well with you and if you celebrated Mother's Day, I hope it was very special! I'm very blessed to say that mine was delightful!

After taking a break on Sunday, I had a chance on Monday to squeeze in some homework for the online watercoloring class I'm enjoying. I am three days behind in class and, boy, does that bring back memories of my school days. Actually, I'm kidding, I was pretty much a straight-A student, except for physical education and deportment. I learned about imports, exports, transports, airports, supports, reports, and comports, but I was always lousy on deports. So was the Mister, which explains why we were attracted to each other!

Anywhistle, I spent some time trying to mimic and CASE the extraordinary Shari Carroll. She showed us how to use markers and Gelatos to produce watercolor cards and this is my attempt:

This card is the first-generation image which I achieved by coloring my NBUS stamp from Rubbernecker with my Marvy markers. I colored directly onto the stamp, spritzed it with water, and stamped it on my watercolor card. The sediment is from SU. I cut the card down to note size and poof, you're a muffin.

I am entering this card in:

Addicted to Stamps where the challenge is CAS (clean and simple).

Less Is More where the challenge is one-layer and the theme is thank you.

~~~

Here is my second card, which is the result of respritzing the stamp and giving it another press:

The NBUS sediment is from the Waltzingmouse Stamps "Compact Sentiments" set. For this card, I brushed the flower center with Wink of Stella for a little extra pizzazzle.

I love that the second generation stamping gets you two cards for the effort of one, so it couldn't be any EZPZier.

I am entering this card in:

Seize the Birthday where the toppings are May flowers.

Simons Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge where the theme is "Spring Flowers." I'm telling you, you should bookmark this one for future reference! There are TONS of wonderful spring card designs from the DT and the gallery to inspire you!

 

Remember to click on any of the challenge links to find out the details about rules, sponsors, and prizes! I hope to see you in the galleries!

I am not sure when the deadline is to register and join in the watercolor Online Card Class, but if you click on the link, you can find out more information on this outstanding class.

~~~

New Friends Corner

We have more new friends who would like to meet you! Please help me welcome:

Anne F. of Stamps and Paper. Anne is a fountain of knowledge and inspiration! She has been making cards for 15 years and blogging since 2009. She has a supportive husband, two daughters, and four grandchildren. In addition to her terrific card art, Anne loves any kind of crafting and sewing.

Caroline of Pink Blossom Creations. Caroline has only been blogging since last month, but she has jumped in with both feet, playing in challenges, and making wonderful card art to show you! I would love it if you could make an extra effort to stop in and welcome Caroline to Blogland and leave her some love!

Carole Pollard of The Things I Love. Carole started blogging in 2013, but she has been enjoying sewing, cross-stitch, scrapbooking, and making cards for years. Carole made all the stationery for her son's wedding a few years ago! You will love her enthusiasm and wonderful designs.

Hazel of Hazel's Handmade Crafts. Hazel has been blogging since 2011. She is an award-winning card artist who also enjoys many of the fun challenges available to us online. Her cards are lovely, very detailed, and impeccably executed.

Janet McLaughlin of Mainely Cards. Janet lives in a small town in Maine near the border with Canadia with her husband, three cats, and two birds. Wait. What? Janet has been blogging her unique and beautifully-designed cards since December 2012 and she is a proud member of the Outlawz Design Team. 

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

~~~

Real quick, here are a few photos of our bruncheon on Sunday:

With son Daniel, grandsons Adam and Henry, and DIL Rachel

And in tribute to the watercolor class I'm taking, I had to take a photo of this dazzling ice cream color we found on our walk along main street. The flavor was Lavender (only in California!) and it was a bit over the top, but the color was glorious!

~~~

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 leave a comment and/or 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 the pop-up box opens.
Click Jump to Comment Form; no more car pool tunnel!
Mwah!

Goose and Potatoes, Off the Edge, and Addicted to CAS!

Happy Weekend Hello!

I am pickled tink to be coming to you today as the Guest Designer for Addicted to CAS! What an honor to be in the inspiration parade along with the extremely talented Design Team card artists! Thank you very much for asking me to join you for the month of May!

The theme for this challenge is "Off the Edge" as you already figured out from the title . . . unless you thought I was just talking about how I normally conduct my day-to-day life inside my hamster-sized brain. This fun theme was chosen by our challenge hostess, the wild and crazy, off-the-edge, and extraordinarily talented Marie!

For my card, I made a concentrated concert of consecutive concentric circles. I was planning to have the circles be off the edge with a huge die-cut greeting emanating forsooth from the smallest circle, but if any of you have ever had a pet goose, then you know how inquisitive they can be. 

Hello?

Many of you have met my goose, "Gunther." Gunther needs dental work and he has a thyroid condition resulting in protruding eyes, but when he puts on that baseball cap and manages to extricate himself inside my stitched circles, well, he is nothing short of adorable!

I made him stay all stuck in the layers that way until I took his picture. To keep him from flopping around and flapping his webbed feeties in the air, I put some Hello Steps under him to steady him. Thank goodness for digital cameras. You don't wanna know how many shots I had to take before I got this great photo of him resting his wings on the rings and his  tippy-toes on the letters!

What a goose!

[He comes from a company called Mostly Animals which is sadly now out of business. But you can get the hello from Stamps for Life and the stitched rectangles and circles from Lil' Inker.]

I hope you can come and play with me over at ATCAS with your own Off the Edge creation! The generous sponsor for this challenge is Kathryne of Stamp Art Design!

Thanks to a lovely friend, I am editing my post to add my stitched circle card to the wonderful new challenge in Blogland hosted by everyone's friend, Virginia Lu. The third Virginia's View Challenge is to add stitching to your card. Thankfully, faux stitching is allowed!

There's More!

I made a second card for you at the last minute last night. I am now a little behind on my watercolor classes, but I still have all kinds of watercolor Perry Fanalia all over my desk and I happened to notice a postie note reminding me to make a card using a potato stamp.

So, of course, I queried of myself, what if I made a potato stamp, watercolored with it, and made a design that went off the edge? (I could say I killed three birds with one card, but with Gunther on the page, I won't say it.)

Here is the potato result:

I made you a little scalloped potato casserole of photos to show you how I made my heart stamp out of a potato using a cookie cutter. You just never know what you'll see here!

I think the pictures explain the simple process better than I could with words. There are people who can make the most awesome "stamp" designs using a potato, but with Hammy already in bed, I'm not one of them, so I simply used an EZPZ cookie cutter.

This is actually my second time stamping with a potato. I potato-stamped a year ago (here), but that time I literally just cut a potato in half and stamped it in ink and then onto paper. Next time maybe I'll carve out a design free-hand. Or not. I have a lot of cookie cutters languishing about that are really excited about becoming potato cutters.

I used TH alcohol inks which I placed on an acrylic block, splotched with blending fluid, and fussed with a paint brush, so I will enter my card in the Day Four Gallery at class. The sequints are a pretty aqua green, but they turned pink in the lights. I didn't know sequints were embarassed to have their pictures taken, but there you are, you can see for yourself how they blushed. The sediment is from "Signature Greetings" by Papertrey Ink.

The hearts are a bit rumply because I accidentally grabbed a piece of calligraphy paper for my potato stamping instead of watercolor paper. I liked the colors so much, however, that I decided to use them anyway, rumples and all. I slathered them with WOS and I have to tell you, this is one of those cards that looks really cool in IRL. (f you look closely, you can see the potato/paper combination gave my potato hearts capillaries!)

The potato challenge I mentioned is the Craft Stamper "Take It/Make It" challenge for May. The link will provide you with all the details on rules, sponsors, and prizes. You will also see awesome inspiration examples made by those potato stamp designers I was telling you about. Try it, you'll have fun!!

~~~

New Friends Corner

It is my pleasure to introduce you to our newest friend! Please help me welcome Char K. of Glitter in My Kitchen! Love the name! I also love that Char calls herself "Chark" from her first name and initial. (When our son was in elementary school and he had to write his name in the upper right-hand corner as one does, he would print Dan K so close together that it always looked like "Dank." I still sometimes call him Dank just to tease him!) You will find that Chark is extremely multi-talented. She is the author of a children's book on military life, and she enjoys all types of paper crafting! I know you will enjoy getting to know her!

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

~~~

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

Happy Mother's Day if you are celebrating on Sunday! I send you an extra hug if the day is a hard one for you.

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to leave a comment and/or 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 the pop-up box opens.
Click Jump to Comment Form; no more car pool tunnel!
Mwah!

A Tisket A Frisket ~ OCC Homework, NBUS #129

Happy Hump Day!

I am briefly back with two watercolor cards from Day Two of the Online Card Class, even though the class today is Day Three. Since I will prolly be behind from here on out, I'm going to stop with the day notations which are just confusing. I am loving these classes!

Here are my cards:

~~~~~~~~~~~~

For both of my cards today I used a NBUS product called Frisket Liquid Masking. I first learned about this product from the world-famous Heather Telford, but I hadn't opened the bottle before today. From the aroma, I'm guessing that this schtuff is made from the hooves of dead hippos, but once you get past that, it's easy and magical to use.

On the cards above, I masked the flowers with Frisket and applied it last night and then let it dry over night. This morning I painted the background with a watercolor wash right over the top of the Frisket biscuits. Afterwards, the cards were treated with a blow dry, and placed under lovely quilted books to relax and meditate. I loved the entire process. Hammy got a wash and curl while I was at it, and in turn he gave me a nine-figure mani. Chocolate anyone?

Once the paint was dry, the Frisket was removed with a gum eraser and index finger. On the top card, the Frisket peeled off so-so. I had to reink with a pen a few areas where the ink came off with the mask. 

I am entering this card in the One-Layer Simplicity Challenge for May. The theme is flowers and the challenge is open until the 24th, so I hope you can link up and light up the gallery with your OLC!

~~~

However. On the second card, the Frisket really peeled away the image almost completely (same paper and same ink) and even beyond the image and into the colored background. Crudballs. I salvaged the card by stamping the image again on scratch paper, fussy-cutting it, and gluing it over the top of the crudded-up image. I also rewashed the areas of color that were peeled away. It was just too pretty not to salvage as best I could.


I'm pretty sure that my problem with the Frisket was because I was using letter press cardstock. It takes color well, but I think it is just too soft to be a good candidate for hippo hooves. Just FYI. I'll be using the mask again on different paper coz it's cool and I'll show you how it turns out when I do.

~~~

New Friends Corner

In spite of the trouble in River City and parts of Blogland with regard to delivery and following and commenting, I am thrilled to find that two new friends made it under the fence and up to the door of the Playhouse! Please help me welcome:

Lisa S. of Adventures in Paperland. Lisa has been blogging since 2011. She is a mixed media artist, design team member, and award winner. You will love her energy and her works of art. All of her art is fabulous, but I think her tags, in particular, are magnificent!

Kate from Small Bits of Paper. Kate has been blogging since 2008 and judging by her followers, a lot of you know this award-winning designer and talented card artist. You will have your inspiration bucket filled to overflowing after a visit with Kate!

Thank you, Lisa and Kate, 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 leave a comment and/or 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 the pop-up box opens.
Click Jump to Comment Form; no more car pool tunnel!
Mwah!

Stamp/Stencils Are Everywhere. OCC Day Two.

Hello Crafty Friend!

I'm back with my third card from yesterday's Online Card Class on watercoloring. Today ended up being a busy day, so all I have accomplished on Day Two of the class is watch the excellent videos.

Without giving secrets away, I can tell you that the third card from yesterday was about emboss resist, which most of us have done using inks. For this lesson we were to start by using a background stamp that was "open" in design so that a lot of the background could show through. 

Well. I'll be a blue baboon if I could find such a stamp amid and among my {cough}llion stamps! I thought and thought and thought while all the while Hammy was on Skype with Ms. Thing. This love affair will be the death of my creativity! 

Finally I reached over and slapped the device into tomorrow, glaring at him the way mothers glare at their children in church. (I always thought those "if-looks-could-kill-glares in church were ironical.) Hammy wanted badly to go off in a Sulk, but seeing that none were available, he came and sat on my head and looked around the room. Suddenly, right in front of us was the answer.

I'll cut to my card and you see if you can figure it out. I'll bet you can. Here's my card:

Having used foam dots on my last card, an empty dot receptacle became my stamp! Well, it was sort of a stencil stamp, but whatever. I took my rarely used and 13-year-old Versamark pen and swirled it around inside the holes

Now there's a trick for you, for free!

I ended up watercoloring a large area over and around the "image" with my watercolors, not thinking that I would be cutting it way back for a card, so that's why the watercolors themselves are a bit underwhelming. 

~~~

That's a wrap. I'm gonna get some dinner going and then try to make a card(s) from Day Two tonight. Otherwise, I'll just move on to Day Three on Day Three and skip Day Two. Unless Day Four becomes my Day Two. Sorry. I didn't mean to make you ziddy. The cool thing about these courses (link above) is that they are available for LIFE! Thank goodness.

~~~

Blogland Boogers

Oh, wait, talking about the feed bag reminded me that there are still problems with Feedburner transmitting posts in your readers and with following again! I am not getting a lot of your posts, and I am thinking a lot of you are not getting mine. Some of you have told me that there is no follower gadget or follow button showing up on my blog side bar. I can see it and I've been able to follow new blogs, but I guess that's not true for everyone.

Carp.

Does anyone have any suggestions/intelligence/alternatives that they can share to help others with these problems? I would appreciate your advice. I don't even know who runs Feedburner. When I Goggle it, I'm not getting any information regarding a problem.

That's a bit like asking the fox if he's seen any good chicks lately.

Edited to add:

Reader Jean commented:  

As for the whole feedburner thing, as best I understand it, feedburner (which is a google tool) delivers to google email addresses but not to hotmail, msn, aol, yahoo, etc. It's because they are blocking some protocol that the feedburner sends out. There's no current fix. Bloggers that have experienced this problem appear to be switching over to FeedBlitz to send email updates from their blogs. Hope that helps! 

Thanks, Jean! That makes sense because I subscribe to my own blog to know when there are problems and my blog posts are coming in via Gmail (Google) just fine, but NOT via Comcast. So it is our servers who are restricting the delivery then by blocking the protocol from Feedburner, correct? I should be contacting Comcast then and complaining to them and the same goes for the rest of you who are using other delivery services besides Gmail.

I do hope there is a workable solution with Feedburner because the blogs that I subscribe to which come to me via Feedblitz are in "preview" format and they always have a bunch of ads in them and they often don't even show the card. I find that very irritating and off-putting and I often skip those blogs if I'm really busy. Still, I suspect ads are coming whether we like it or not.

I appreciate your comments and observations.

~~~

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 leave a comment and/or 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 the pop-up box opens.
Click Jump to Comment Form; no more car pool tunnel!
Mwah!