A site for my handmade cards, accompanied by my photos and written meanderings which are occasionally witty, often tongue-in-cheek, and rarely profound. Beginning in June 2013, you'll also see lots of NBUS, which is an acronym I coined for Never-Before-Used-Schtuff. Note: my Privacy Policy can be found at a tab below and you can find my NBUS Challenge online. I hope you'll join in the fun there! Thanks for coming by! Have a beverage and enjoy!

March 18, 2024

March 18: E is for Embossing (Folders)

Hello Stamplings!

It's lovely to see you! I hope you are doing well! In this hemisphere, it is the day-before-the-First-Day-of-Spring! It is also National Awkward Moments Day in the US, but more on that later. 

And it's also the third Monday of March, which means I am featuring embossing folders for this week of my I.D.E.A.S. calendar (see side bar.) I realize that I should include wet embossing on week three, so I will change that on the calendars in the future.

Onefer
This is a bit busy for me and I had a couple of conniption fits in the process of making it. If that's not a term used where you live, it means to become unreasonably angry or upset or to have an outburst of frustration or ill-temper. No one knows the exact origin, but it is thought to be related to the word canapshus which is a type of hors d'oeuvre ... no, that's not right. Sorry, I jumped the track.

What happened was, I used a NBUS 3-D e/f from Paper Roses called "Tulips" to emboss a snippet of watercolor paper in perfect Easter-y colors. It didn't fully fit the card front, so I found a piece of mulberry paper from the last century in the exact shade of lavender to put behind it.👏

And then I spent the next three days trying out every die-cut greeting, flower, bunny, bling, chicken, etc. to adorn the thing! I think the problem was that the card was so pretty with nothing else added, but I mean, I couldn't just leave it like that. As a result it has the layers that you see, which in the end feel right.

The tulips were die-cuts from my friend Sonja, which Hammy taught Stanley how to softly blend with ink. The rabbit no longer has his packaging, bless. Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you that I also took a finger dauber and added a bit of light purple to the raisiest raised bits of the folder. I held my breath because I usually make a dog's dinner out of that effort. Yes, more 👏.

The sediment is NBUS from poppystamps called, "Proper Happy Easter." Even that was cut several times in all the shades of the rainbow in order to see which one worked best. This is one of those cards you send to someone special!

Twofer(s)
This is the same folder, using an old smooched background panel from my stash and leaving the design QACAS. (This panel was smooched with some pale colors and quite a bit of watered-down gold, so in person it is quite golden and schparkly.) I just added the sediment and bling and I let the boys use it for gold-schplatter training porpoises. The sediment turquoise blue is vellum and the raised letters are gold.
Same smooching and schplattery treatment with this card, except that I used a NBUS 3-D e/f from Altenew, called "Flowers and Leaves." They look like stylized tulips to me and this bit of smooching had quite a bit of pale spring green color.

Awkward Moment

As most of you know, I've had Hammy for years and he gradually became trustworthy enough to have free reign of the Playhouse 24/7. He is patiently training Stanley, but Stanley still gets into everything, so he is locked safely in his cage at night. 

Apparently last night I didn't close the latch and when I walked in this morning, I was greeted with this:
I can't even be conniptioned because they're just too darn cute!

~~~

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! 
*Life is too short!
Challenges:
Onefer: Snippets Playground (snippets used for embossed panel, bunny, and sediment.) The Paper Funday (a/g w/ twist of "the dies have it.")
Twofer (blue): Can You Handle the Pressure? (with a twist of bling).