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!!

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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!

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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!

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Mwah!