Penguin Love and a Silvery Snowman

Greetings, stampers!

Hammy and I had one of "those" crafty days yesterday where things went off the rails design-wise. It happens. Sometimes as your working, Serena Dipity stops by and takes your design to dizzying and wondrous heights you hadn't even imagined and then sometimes she's off having a coffee and Mr. Murphy, the cad that he is, drops in and takes your design to Meh-ville.

The day started, as it usually does, when the shadow of a challenge or two crossed over the Playhouse sunroof and my onefer came to be.

Here's the darling card I was using as my inspiration:

It was made by my friend Tracey McNeely of In My Creative Opinion. She is this week's MUSE over at the challenge of the same name. She's one of my penguins.

As I looked at Tracey's cute card, I thought: I have penguin stamps and dies from the Stamps of Life. Okay. I don't have a palm tree, but I do have a beach umbrella. Okay. 

Tracey made incredible stylized surf and sand with her stenciling. That gave me pause. Since her sediment is about love and I needed a coupla anniversary cards, I visualized stenciled hearts somewhere in my design instead of sand and surf. As I was mulling that over, I went through my "love" sediments and shazambam, when I saw the NBUS Alley Way stamp "love is in the air," I thought it would be awesome if stenciled hearts were floating in the air over the penguins. Okay.

As it happens, I don't have a heart stencil, so I used the negative of my Memory Box "Heart of Hearts" die and sponged ombre pinks through the heart holes.

I should have stopped there. 

But Mr. Murphy loomed large with his flirty eyes and his deep voice and he suggested that if I sponged a circle around my hearts, it would look like the sun setting on the beach. Well, shure, I stupidly agreed. Darn it, Darnell. It's not even centered and, of course, that bugs the heck outta me. Owell. It's guudenuff and it's going to noncardmakers, so they'll love it, even if I don't.

Today's Twofer

I just couldn't let it rest, because I still thought the original idea was a cute one. This time I used a stamp with a cluster of hearts just perfect for the drawing up in my head. It's NBUS from SU's "Perpetual Calendar" set.

I likit. Hammy wanted to pop up the penguins and I'm not prezackly sure why, but I do like that he glossed up the beach umbrellas for the cards.

Challenges

You might have noticed that my cards are black and white with just the one color, Al B. It ombre in the first case. That's because, besides MUSE, I'm playing in the current challenge at Uniko Challenge which is, "black and white with the optional twist of a splash of colour!"

Today's Threefer

Next we toyed with whether or not that first card was even going to make it onto the blog. If it wasn't, which seemed likely at that point, I still needed a "twofer." Hmmm. And I need Christmas cards by the dozenzes, so we brainstormed.

If I use a snowman instead of a penguin and a Christmas tree instead of a palm tree, I could still use Tracey's great design layout. I found the perfect NBUS snowman stamp from PTI's "Friendship Jar Holiday Fillers" and when I was looking at my tree dies, I saw my NBUS die from MFT, "Tree Lines," which I was dying to use, so I cut that out of a scrap of gently patterned green paper. Then, if I cut it in half, I found a fitting sediment from Technique Tuesday's "Jingle All the Way." Whoop Dee Do La La!

Then it was ME who went out for coffee. When I left, I told Hammy to just draw and glitterize a few stray snowflakes spots over the snowman's head for Cuteness Sake, like we did with the floating red hearts stamp. Then he could have a macaroon. The instructions were very straight-forward.

But, grapes preserve us, when I came back I found Hammy prostate on the chaise clutching the pen in one paw and the glitter glue in the other, eyes rolled back in his head and criss-crossed. The evil sod, Murphy, was slithering out the Playhouse window, laughing sardonically.

Say What?

And people wonder if retirement is boring! I've gotta run and reapply the Epsom Salts to Hammy's soaking tub. He is going to miss running on his wheel for a few days until those paws unclamp, poor dear. He's had a rough time lately, but goodness what a sparkly card this is!

Oh, wait, I wanted to show you a close-up of the specialty paper that started the whole blizzard. I have a half sheet of this beautiful ancient white paper with embedded silver dots:

Paper-piecing the snowman with this gorgeous paper made it quite the focus pocus until the blizzard of July 2015 came along!

The good news is, it fits in the current Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, which is "No Ordinary Paper" and, of course, it's another entry in the snippet challenge at Pixie's Snippet Playground!

~~~

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

And Happy Birthday, Bobby, my friend! Enjoy your special day!!

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!

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