WHOOSH!

Oh, my cider kegs and pumpkins!

We've whooshed around to another Friday! 

And we've whooshed through another month! 

And we are whooshing rapidly towards another Christmas!!

Somebody throw me a rope!

Happy Halloween to those who celebrate today! All the little ghosts and goblins and currently-popular-movie-characters will be walking the streets tonight, blatantly holding out containers to be filled with cavity-causing treats. WooHoo! We give each one a giant scoop of the really good schtuff. You know. All the schtuff we wouldn't let our son have when he was a kid. (Don't tell him!) 

I have a couple of cards for you today. Here is the first.

 

I came across this one-layer card base as I was flipping through my scrap box yesterday. The colored background was made by applying markers onto an acrylic block, spritzing the block with water, and then pressing it onto a piece of glossy card stock. When I picked it up, Hammy saw it and squeaked that it would be a fun background for the black raven cutout, also in the scrap box. And so it was! The sediment is from SU. EZPZ. QACAS. LMNOP. Sorry. It's like a sickness.

I'm entering my card in these FUN challenges:

• AAA Cards where the theme is Halloween.
• Fusion Card Challenge where I used the photo inspiration of fall or Halloween.
• Addicted to Stamps and More where the them is CAS (clean and simple).
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge, where the theme is Anything Goes.
• TIME OUT Challenges, where the theme is "Birds of a Feather Flock Together."

Please click on any of the links for all the details on rules, prizes, and sponsors.

~~~

My second card is in honor of October being Breast Cancer Awareness month. Honestly, I feel like every month should be dedicated to breast cancer awareness and fundraising, but since we can't have that, we'll take October and I'm squeaking in under the wire on the last day!

Here is my card.

I based my card on a card that was mailed to me with a request for funds. Unfortunately, I can't find it now to show it to you, but that was my inspiration. I'm not listing the source of all those sediments because it would be a very long list. Everything is not lined up perfectly, but that's okay; I'm just delighted that I managed to stamp them all without one of them being upside down!!

I hope you have had a mammogram already this year or have one scheduled! That's a gift you give yourself and your loved ones.

~~~

New Friends Corner

I am delighted to welcome five more of our newest friends to the Playhouse! I hope you will visit them and introduce yourselves!

Hellerlittle from ~~~~~~H3. Hellerlittle is from Germany. She has been blogging since 2010. I just love her designs and the depth and dimension she is able to achieve with her beautiful works of card art.

Cathy P. of My Creative Space. Cathy has been blogging since 2013. She is an award-winner and design team member. You can feel Cathy's joy for card making through her bright and cheerful cards!

Caz (Carol) of Pouring My hART Out. Caz has been blogging since 2012. She doesn't post often, but she is worth the visit when she does! She's a happy girl who loves anything fun and cute and she loves knitting, too!

Debi J. of Debi's Joy. Need I say more?! Debi has been blogging since 2010 and she is very passionate about this wonderful hobby of ours. When you visit, you will find tons of heartwarming and inspirational posts full of Debi's outstanding cards and layouts!

Ruth of Patterned Paper and All Things Pretty. Ruth has been blogging since 2009! She is also the owner of Fairy Heaven Designs. She is an ambitious challenge player and her cards are always charming, well-made, and inspirational!

~~~

I'll leave you with a photo of the pumpkin that will be gracing our front door to welcome the costumed children:

Bwahaha! That's MISTER Pumpkin to you! I saw the idea on a TV show where you enlarge a photo of each family member's face, cut out the bits and tape them to the pumpkin. The human Mister only brought home one pumpkin from the grocery store, so I decorated it with a photo of his face while he was away at work. Does he scare you a bit? Or are you like me and karacking up over it?!

~~~

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!

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As always, thank you for stopping by to visit. Special thanks to you if you take the time to join as a follower or leave a comment!

WOYWW 282

Greetings to the wonderful world of What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday (WOYWW) where we all share photos of our desks and what we are working on and hop around to visit each other and leave comments!

My "desk" share today is actually a photo of a dining room table taken last week at a lake house near Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is 2,039 miles from my desk in the Playhouse! This craft extra vanganzia is the result of six blogging friends getting together from all over the world for a week-long craft fest!  

I did a full share on my prior post, so I won't go into detail here. Please scroll down for that post or click here. I love seeing photos and hearing about other bloggers who have been successful at meeting up in real life, so I thought all of my WOYWW friends would enjoy reading about our Fantastic International Stamping Adventure (FISA)!! 

Enjoy! And 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!

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Fantastic International Stamping Adventure!

Hello!! As promised, I'm here with the scoop of the day!

To paraphrase Wida in a recent post of hers, and as many of you have discovered in this wonderful card-making community of ours in Blogland, occasional comments and then personal emails over the passage of time create deep and lasting friendships. An innocent sharing, a teasing comment, a few "what ifs?" and before you know it, you're off on a Fantastic International Stamping Adventure (FISA)!! That's what happened to me last week! 

How did it happen? Well, it took over a year to plan and we traveled 20,350 miles (32,558 km) between us to make it happen! Six stamping card artists came together from October 18-25, 2014, at a rented lake house in Prior Lake, (near Minneapolis), Minnesota, USA! It was a marvelous opportunity to meet in real life to get to know each other better and have lots of crafty fun! 

After trying dozens of possible names for our little group, we decided to call ourselves "BABES," which stands for the Benevolent Association of Beloved and Esteemed Stampers! How's that for self-confidence?!

Some of you have seen the sneak peek photo in my last post:

Darnell, Kim, Ardyth, Anita, Bev, Geri

For those of you who wondered if that was my kitchen, ah, that would be a snorting "no!" My kitchen (seen here) is about as big as that island we are standing around in the rented house!

In Alpha Betty order, here are my fellow BABES:

Anita of My Papercraft World came all the way from France!

Ardyth of Maskerade came all the way from Toronto, Canada!

Bev of Happy Dance drove all the way from Racine, Wisconsin!

Geri of Manitoba Stamper drove all the way from guess where? 
Manitoba, Canada!

And Kim of Cupcakes, Cards, and Kim came all the way from 

San Lorenzo, California!

~~~

How lucky was I to be in the company of these stamping super stars for a whole week?! I've been fortunate to know most of them for a couple of years now, some either since I started blogging or they did. The ease with which we settled into our beautiful week together was really no surprise to me. Any onlooker would have thought we'd been meeting like this for years!

I took 273 photos, not counting the ones on my phone, between my week with my sisters (which was fantastical!) and my week with the BABES. I've put some aside for blackmail porpoises, of course, and to save your bumbum from chaffing, I've put some others into collages for you. You're so very welcome!

I'll start you off with a few photos of the house.

You'll see the spectacular views we had from the dining room table in another collage. Bev and Geri both drove, so they brought a lot of the big schtuff, thank goodness. Between the six of us we brought enough craft supplies to open a store!! We all brought two suitcases; one for crafty schtuff, one for clothes. We all agreed we should have brought less clothes, but we sure weren't lacking in product and supplies to keep us happy all week! 

In fact, we had so much schtuff, here is a photo catching Anita under one of the tables to find what she needed!

Okay, continuing, here are a few group photos:

Here are a few individual photos:

Here are a few "day trip" photos.  A highlight was a side trip to a small craft store called Creek Water Designs in Jordan, MN. The owner Mary was absolutely thrilled to have us visit her. That's her store in the middle of the top row. We also stopped for a quick peek at the famous Mall of America. Now we can say we've been there!

Next are a few photos of the scenery around the lake house:

I really had to frain and refrain from posting dozens more. We were so fortunate with the gorgeous  warm weather and extraordinary sunsets!

I must have taken several dozen photos of the Canadian geese landing and swimming in perfect formation on the lake. Ardyth and Geri found this quite amusing as Canadians don't find them quite so charming and think of them as we Americans think of pigeons!

We all agreed that it was sensational seeing a bald eagle fly over the lake!

But the highlight of the fauna was seeing an albino squirrel from the moment we arrived and every day we were there. She became our mascot and we named her "Snowflake!"

(You know the joke where you yell "squirrel" when you have moments of attention deficit disorder? Well, we started yelling "Snowflake" every time one of us forgot what we were doing or otherwise was distracted!) Isn't she something?! You can see her on the tree inside the circle on the photo below. She would hang there and watch us work and play!

Here are a few photos of the cards we made, which will be posted to our blogs in time. We also made craft aprons as a take-away. This photo does not include over a hundred cards that Ardyth and Kim made for their various projects!

Also, Kim brought us supplies to each make one of those adorable PTI felt coin purses! Here I am goofing off and yelling Snowflake every ten minutes. It turns out I can't laugh hysterically and stitch at the same time so I flunked that project! Luckily for me, Miss Kim is very generous and gave me the pretty one she made. (There is no need to mention the fact that Kim's preschoolers make these coin purses without any difficulty! Cough.)

The food needs were handled so well. We decided if we went out to lunch one day, we would stay in for dinner that night and vice versa. We each ordered something that gave us extra to take home for the next meal and the waitresses all kindly gave us separate checks so there were no calculators needed when it came time to pay the bill!

Speaking of food, we were treated like princesses by Bev and Anita. Bev brought us three different and delicious Kringle, which is a traditional Wisconsin specialty.

And Anita brought HOME MADE/GROWN honey, heather, walnut cake, and walnuts all the way from her homestead in France!

Oh, what fun we had! We laughed until we cried. I'm eight years older than any of these young ladies, so sometimes I laughed so hard, the tears ran down my leg! We also had serious discussions, lovely meals together, and learned a lot from each other. This will give you an idea of how compatible we were:

Darnell, Geri, Anita

And finally, here is a favorite photo, kindly taken by a passing stranger, which caught us all giggling about something!

Ardyth, Kim, Darnell, Anita, Bev, Geri

 ~~~

There have been a lot of meetings in real life of blogging stampers in 2014! If you ever get the opportunity to do something like this, GRAB IT!! I'm still pinching myself that we actually pulled it off and came together from different parts of the world!! 

Please make sure you visit the blogs of the other BABES for their comments and photos!

~~~

I will leave you with another autumn card. I made this one as a thank you from all of us to Bev, who was instrumental in making this FISA happen! I want to say a special thanks, too, to Geri for letting us use her car and gas all week long!

For this one I took a black pen and hand-drew lines to give the leaves some definition. I saw this idea on other blogs recently to give definition to watercoloring, but I don't remember who to credit for the idea. If you know, please tell me so I can edit this post to give proper credit. I thought it added a lot to the image, which is by Rubbernecker.com (846).

~~~

Thank you for waiting with bated breath for this post and bearing with me all the way to the end!!

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

Still not unpacked!

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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Shirley-Girley Is Having a Birthday!

I'M BACK!!

Hello there! I'm home and happy to be here today to enjoy the birthday celebrations of your friend and mine, Ms. Shirley of Shirley-Bee's Stamping Stuff! Happy Birthday, my kooky friend, and many, many more!!

The lovely and exuberant Maria F. of Rieslingmama is the hostest with the mostest for our birthday festifus today. She has a linky for you to post your birthday card and I hope you do! You will have lots of time as the linky will be open for a couple of weeks.

I made two cards for Shirley. The first one I made and sent to her before the party invitation arrived and Frank Lee, it was not my best work so I was happy to make another card for her while I was away spending time with my crafty friends:

I think it is too cute and one that will pickle the birthday girl. It was even better after I glossied it up after the above photo was taken!

I loosely based my card on this card, which was an award-winner for Shirley:

Shirley's card is a Christmas card, so I made mine a birthday card to fit the happy occasion. I slipped my cog while making a solid single line around the card, so I turned it into a double line with the urging of my friends. You would never have known, huh? Doodling's cool, dude.

Speaking of those friends, here I am with them behind all the cards we made for Shirley!

This photo is a sneak peak. The full story will go live on our blogs on Wednesday. Are you going to be waiting for the details with bated breath? Baited breath? 

It turns out the proper spelling is "bated" pursuant to Daily Writing Tips:

The expression bated breath is another that we owe to Shakespeare:

"Shall I bend low and in a bondman's key,

With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this:

'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;

You spurn'd me such a day; another time

You call'd me dog; and for these courtesies

I'll lend you thus much moneys'?"

Shylock is speaking, with heavy sarcasm, to Antonio in the Merchant of Venice (I,iii). A bondman is a slave or an indentured servant who could be expected to speak in a quiet voice to his masters and betters.

The "bated" in the expression is from a shortening of the verb abate and, in the form "bate," means “to reduce, to lessen in intensity.” The expression under discussion is the only survival of the word in modern English. The person who “speaks with bated breath” is not using full lung power. The person who “waits with bated breath” is holding his breath, or barely breathing.

~~~

The only time "baited" is the correct spelling is thusly:

Cruel Clever Cat, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
~ Geoffrey Taylor, Argosy 1940

If you are going to wait for me with "baited breath," all you have to do is eat some chocolate!

~~~

It's so good to be back! I hope you will forgive my long lapse in visiting you and commenting. It will be a joy to start up again. Thank you to all of you who faithfully visited and commented while I was away! I loved hearing from you!

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!

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Autumn Cards

Hey there! How's it going?

I'm sure I'm having fun with my friends at the mo and I hope you are, too! Having fun, I mean. With whomsoever you like to have fun with! Today I'm sharing some autumn cards I made before I left. I scheduled this post for now because I'm pretty sure when I return it will be Christmas, all Christmas, all the time! I mean, not that it will be Christmas before I come home, I just mean that I'll be getting heavily into Christmas cardmaking when I get back the end of this month.

Enjoy this autumnal array!

  

 

 

That last card (a birthday card for my beautiful DIL) was made using a topper that I received as a gift from my bloggie friend Nonni. They are from LOTV and the photos do not do them justice! Since there are so many of the other cards, please email me if you would like the details on the products or techniques.

Short and schweet today! I'm missing visiting with you all!

~~~

New Friends Corner

Here are five more talented and inspiring card artists who have been waiting patiently to meet you! It is my extreme pleasure to introduce you to:

Monika Skinner of Imagine the Impossible. Monika has been blogging since 2010. If you've been in our stamping community in Blogland for any length of time, you have come across Monika's gorgeous works of art through her design team inspirations and challenge entries. She is published card artist and she also makes creative boxes, mini-books, and home decor projects. In addition, Monika recently started a separate blog solely for providing tutorials for us at Tinker Cards. There is a lot of inspiration awaiting you via Monika!

Vicki of From My Craft Room. Vicki started blogging in 2012. She is like so many of you who impress me so much as she manages to be a full-time mom of very active children and yet she still finds the time to make beautiful cards and maintain a blog! Vicki is a winning challenge player and I know you will enjoy all the fantastic card inspiration she has for you!

Carol of CM Designs. Carol has been a prolific blogger since 2011 so you will want to allow some time for your visit with her. Over the years she has served on many design teams and she has won multiple awards and honors in both hard and digi card art. In addition to engaging blog posts, projects, and photographs, Carol generously provides tutorials for you!

Milka Gubo of Crafty Milka. Milka is a delightful and passionate young card artist from Croatia who has only been blogging since September. Like two weeks ago! You would never know it, however, when you see how professionally her blog is designed and the recognition she has already received. Her enthusiasm for all things crafty is contagious and I would so appreciate if you made a special effort to visit and welcome Milka to our caring and supportive stamping community in Blogland!

Tajanna of The Other Side of Me. Tajanna is from Poland and she is also a newcomer to our community, having started her blog in May of this year. Discovering this side of herself has been a surprise and a pleasure to Tajanna, completely different from her professional side. Tajanna enjoys making her card art in order to bring a smile to the recipients. Her cards are quite stunning and exquisitely crafted! Like with Milka, I would so appreciate it if you made a special effort to visit and welcome Tajanna to our amazing Blogland community!

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 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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