Krafty Chicks ~ All Occasions

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you well. 2022 seems to have hitched itself to the back of 2021 on a bullet train to Who Knows Where because I looked down, looked back up, and there is February right around the corner! Nevermind. All we can do is sit back, buckle up, and try to enjoy the ride. And if your skies are gray, I'm bringing the sunshine, so please put on your sunglasses!

Thank you to everyone who played in the Krafty Chicks "CAS" challenge last week! I'm enjoying being the Guest Designer for this month. For this fourth and final Thursday of January, our theme is "All Occasions" and here is my card to inspire you:

I send a lot of general thinking of you cards and I like the variety of using "hello" or "just because" for the greetings. In a pinch, I've been known to send a Hello card for a birthday or get well, so hello is a very Versa Tile! I have dies that also say hi, hello there, and hey there. I have several of each, as one does. This one, however, was a gift from a friend. The 3D NBUS embossing folder is from Sizzix and the leaves are from PTI. 

I look forward to seeing your creations! You can find all the details and the linky tool on the Krafty Chicks blog. I'd like to thank the gals in the Hen House for the honor of being their guest designer this month!

I'm also playing in these challenges:

• HLS Anything Goes With Dies.
  
• Use Your Stuff: Embossing.
  
• Watercooler Wednesday: All about occasions.

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The embossed panel used above was made during a crafty Zoom I had with friends a few months ago. Once you start embossing metallic paper with 3D e/fs, you can't stop. That's a side effect of all these cool background techniques you all come up with. I love to learn and play, but it does add a lot more panels to my Backgrounds container drawer cabinet storage unit. 

I'm trying to get better at using my backgrounds in a more timely manner, so I also made these metallic cards:

Let me know if you have any questions about any of these. The blue one in the middle of the bottom row was a fun discovery. The flowers weren't showing up very well, so I took a chance and followed the ridges with my white gel pen and it worked!

Twofer

Isn't that a great quote? It's NBUS from an ancient set of four large sediments that are, unfortunately unmarked. I heat-embossed it twice in platinum on a one-layer glossy paper tent card. Hammy picked out three random hearts for me to add (also double-heat-embossed in platinum) so I can use it as a Valentine. 

I don't know why I've never used the set before except to chalk it up to embarrassing largess. That's similar to a large cee, but further along in the alphabet.

Challenges

• AAA Cards: No layers + a big sentiment.
  
• Bastel-Traum: With heart.
  
• Try it on Tuesday: Add a quote.
  

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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!
If you think you're a person of some interest, try ordering somebody else's dog around.

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!)

Happy, Happy, Hopeful!

Hello Stamplings!

Happy New Year! I hope this finds you doing well and avoiding Omicron and I hope you enjoyed your holiday! I was so optimistic that 2021 would find us completely back to normal with good times and good health and no more stress and depression. Wrong. My heart goes out to you if you've had illness or death of a loved one this past year.

So now I am heaping even more optimism onto the back of 2022 ~ The Year of High Expectations! I hope it is strong enough to bring us to a place of sanity and a return of human kindness and common sense, which, in turn, will lead to an end to the pandemic and political infighting. Well, I don't know about that last bit, but a girl can dream.

And make you a card:

For the base, you'll see a layer of handmade paper, shot through with gold tinsel. Over the top is a platinum circle of stars which was a gift from a friend; I think it's made by Papertrey. The inner circle is adorned with a NBUS bottle of champagne (vad elsk?) from Cottage Cutz (which I paper-pieced in different appropopo colors of glossy paper) and a NBUS sediment from Hero Arts which was heat-embossed in gold.

Here's a better angle of the schparkliness and color!

Challenges

• Cardz 4 Galz: In with the new year/new stash.
  
• Double D: Lots of white.
  
• Krafty Chicks: AG.
  
• Simon Says Monday: Party
  
• Simon Says Wednesday: It's time to party.
  
• Watercooler Wednesday: Marsha's AG.

Thank you to ALL the wonderful card challenges in Blogland and their dedicated Design Teams who work to inspire us and schpark our creativity month-after-month!

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In other happy news, this is my 10th blogging anniversary! I actually published my first post in October of 2011, but it was just a coupla practice posts. I didn't really get my feet wet until January of 2012. It's a pretty big deal to have maintained a blog for ten years, especially in the era of Instagram and with all the changes Blogger has made over the years, not all of them good ones. 

The readers play a huge part in the longevity of a blog and I am so thankful for all of you! After all, without you leaving me wonderful comments, I'm not sure I would still be blogging. More importantly, many of your comments have developed into real friendships, both inside the computer and outside in the real world. We blog because we want to share our creations and have a diary of them ~ it's an incredible magical bonus when strong bonds and friendships also develop!

In celebration of my ten years of blogging, I'm hoping to do a sort of restart this year. This pandemic has taken some of the stuffing out of the ol' blog sofa, as it were, and I want to see if I can rekindle my joy of blogging, visiting, and commenting. Know what I mean? I also want to spread more joy around the world cuz the world could use more joy.

So in louie of a blogaversary give-away, here is my plan, complete with preamble:

If you've been a friend for a while now, you've heard me talk about my dear friend Verna. I became friends with Verna in 1978 when we both worked in the same small law firm. That's a long-time friendship. Verna is 97 now and confined to a bed after breaking her neck seven years ago in an accident with her walker and an automatic door. She is an inspiration to me in terms of her stoicism and her spunk. Mentally, she is sharp as a tack in spite of the pain her body is in.

I asked a few years ago if friends would send her cards and many of you do. The joy that Verna feels from getting these cards is hard to put into words. I stand on the porch and visit with her and she shows the cards to me through the window. And her face just lights up! Thank you for that gift for her!

Rubberstamps.com

In turn, I would like to offer that gift to a senior you may know. There are wonderful people who do annual card drives and I have enjoyed taking part in them and also donating cards for seniors in my own community, but I'd like to do more. Two years of off-again/on-again isolation has been hard for everyone, but it is especially hard for seniors.

So if you, or someone you know, would love to receive some old-fashioned love in card form, please use the Contact Me form on the right to let me know and I will get the details from you. (Using the form is more reliable because comments are often un-reply-able.) 

Thank you, everyone! Mwah! And RIP dear Betty White.😇

 

 Enjoy your day and Happy New Year! 
No, seriously, enjoy! Life is too short!

p.s. I was just searching for something on my blog and ran across an old post at the beginning of 2016 that I found both humorous and depressing in that I've not yet reached any of the goals I had high hopes for SIX years ago. Slap! Time doesn't speed up for old people. Old people slow down and resolutions stay the same!😄

All That Glitters ...

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you doing well, staying busy, and enjoying some creativity ~ whether in your craft area or your garden. So many places have short summer seasons so the days have to be relished as much as possible. Well, and sure, there's hot dogs, too, to be relished. It makes me pause and wonder, what do relish companies make and sell during the winter months? Sauerkraut? Chicken broth?

I know you want to live in my mind for just one day, don't you? Let me know when you want to come by and I'll kick out some of the squirrels.

Onefer

This design turned out to be a tribute to the old Papertrey Ink company who made both the balloon circle die and the wonderfully-fonted sediment which I embossed in gold. Inspired by the current challenge at CAS Mix Up, I tried a new-to-me technique of dropping alcoholic inks onto vellum paper. What a fun trip that was! Usually I have a sort of sixth sense about knowing when to stop adding more and more of this or that to a technique or design.

I found out that I have no such sixth sense when it comes to AI on vellum. I played, loved the result, but then I cocked my head, checked my hamster, and played some more, rinse, repeat! As you will see in the close-up, at one point I added shimmery acrylic paint to the mix. Wait. What? Yep! I'm telling you, it's addicting! And so cool. The end result is dark and moody from one angle and killer bright and shiny from the other angle:

The linen card design itself using the vellum balloons is uber-duber QACAS. Is that some kind of rainbow mirror card I used for the matting, you ask? Nope. Just what the camera and Mr. Sun put together as a cheery surprise for us.

Challenges

• CAS Mix Up: Hosted by Coni: Alcohol Inks on Vellum. In addition, I stamped, heat-embossed, and die-cut.
  
• Seize the Birthday: Anything goes.
  
• Watercooler Wednesday: Dawn: All About Occasions.

Twofer

Uber-doober QACAS II. This little poinsettia stamp and die is NBUS from poppystamps. I simply heat-embossed it in red and then heat-embossed a few leaves in green. It was Wednesday, so Hammy was in his beanbag chair directing the composition and I like the loose minimalist design he came up with using only one leaf. (He's getting pretty old now, you know, for a hamster, so he may have nodded off, but I went with it.) The sediment is heat-embossed in gold.

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Die cuts and/or stencils.
  
• CAS Christmas: Poinsettia.
  
• Less is More: Christmas in July.

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy and keep safe! 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!)

Beautiful Bird Designs!

Hello Stamplings!

Once again I apologize for being gone so long. We were scheduled to go to the lesser-visited North Rim of the Grand Canyon this past week and that would have been a wonderful reason to have been offline for so long, but alas, we didn't go because The Mister put his back out a week ago, just at the start of the long 4th of July weekend. Why do these things always happen on long holiday weekends????

Until the doctor put him on stronger drugs, he was flat on his back for several days and I donned my Nurse Ratchet uniform once again. Little by little he has gotten better and stronger in terms of standing and walking for short periods of time. Yesterday he graduated to sitting for a few minutes, so he's getting there! 

Life is a series of curve balls, eh? ⚾

Thankfully, we have a hobby that provides distractions! It's the tenth of a new month (I won't mention the name), so I have my Twofer card designs for Twofer Card Challenge #40 to share with you. This month our prompt is:

🐦BIRDS!🐦

You all know how much I love birds, hummingbirds in particular. The hummingbird my two designs have in common is actually a stencil. I don't know who makes it; it was a lovely gift from my friend, Ang, affectionately known as "Mrs. Duck."

Onefer

I laid the stencil over a smooched background. On my craft sheet, I mixed some Nuvo glimmer paste with a few different colors of Brusho powder and then spatulated the mixture through the stencil. I was surprised that it turned out as dark as it did, but the resulting schparkle in a rainbow of colors is brilliant in person. All that schparkle made this hard to photograph and to make it even more schparklier, Hammy suggested a glittery panel as a mat. The sediment is from an ancient PTI set.

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Any occasion.
  
• Make My Monday: Anything airborne.
  
• SSS Monday: Fun and quirky.

Twofer

This uber QACAS calm design is self-exploratory. I painted the rainbow hummingbird through the stencil with my waterbrush and my Ziggies which was chance-y, but it worked. I saved that awesome piece of rainbow ribbon from something I can no longer remember, but I was tickled to find it in my stash! The sediment is from PB's "critter celebration." Hammy did his usual pro job of winking the hummer!

Challenges

• AAA Cards: Sketch, plus optional critters.
  
• Seize the Birthday: Anything goes.
  
• Watercooler Wednesday: All things feminine.
  

Come Play!

I hope you will pull out your favorite bird stamp, die, or stencil and make two different designs for two different occasions to join in the fun at Twofer Card Challenge #40! The two talented guest designers, Maria and Coni, and the entire Design Team have made beautiful bird designs to inspire you!

Thank you!💋

💕I have received (and continue to receive) beautiful handmade birthday cards and I thank you all so much! They were especially helpful to keep my spirits up through the long weekend and this past week. I love all your sweet and kind notes!💕

Before the calamity, I decided I should have The Mister take a new profile photo for the blog, considering I look different now that my hair is no longer colored. (It's more silver in real life; not sure why it looks so dark in the photo.) This time Hammy insisted that Nellie be given her turn in the spotlight! What a considerate guy!

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy, and keep safe! 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 and please let me know if you have any problems receiving this post.

*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!)