Happy Holloween and LIM 300!

Good day, my stamplings!

I wish you a bewitching day of good health, good weather, and lots of candy in your bag of tricks! And I wish you that whether you live in a country that celebrates Halloween, or not!

As usual this time of year I hate Costco for being evil and putting out 35-pound trick-or-treat bags of chocolate candy bars the end of September. I tell myself that I'm only buying the bag to be a good neighbor for the kids who come 'round. Even though it's a.month.away. Then I have to taste a few to make sure they aren't poison, as one does. You know, for the sake of the children.

Then suddenly it's Halloween and the Mister has to make an emergency run to Costco to buy another bag so we don't have to hide in the back bedroom with the lights off when the liddle children in their adorable costumes come to the door looking for a tiny candy bar.

Darn you, Costco.

Speaking of purchases, a while back, like a year ago, I bought a package or pre-emboss-resist paper from Stampin' Up and in the package there were two Halloween designs. Anita and I colored the pumpkin one with Brushos at the Lake House, but I forgot to take a photo. Here is the other design "witch" I also Brusho'd.

Pretty fun, I must say. I'm not hugely into Halloween (well, okay, I can hear you thinking, not counting the candy) so it's nice to have this decoration.

Challenges

• City Crafter Challenge: Hallo-ween.
• ColourQ: Halloween palette.
• Make My Monday: I put a spell on you.

~~~

A Celebration

I was going to get back to my Christmas cards when Hammy, bless him, saw the new Less Is More post celebrating their 300th challenge! Well, we had to play along!

I used a NBUS "Watercolor Wine Bottle" stamp from Rubbernecker. The sediment is also NBUS from SU and perfectly suited for Chrissie and the ladies of LIM. I added some score lines, a shadow, and a strip of glitter paper to round out the festive design. I drinked winked the wine so it's glittery, too. I used my red WOS so it's quite bloody bright, isn't it? Well, it is Halloween, after all!

Challenges

• Less Is More: Time to celebrate! Congratulations on 300 challenges!
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Anything goes.

~~~

Sights of Autumn

I'm sharing some fall color we are enjoying now, in addition to the lovely maple trees on our street:

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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!

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Bluebird of Merriness

Hi there! How's it going?

We are over Humpty Dumpty and cruising into the weekend. I'm actually going to be super quick today. Wait. What? I know, check my forehead for fever!

My card:

My OLC was pretty quick, too, heat-embossed in black and colored with my Ziggies. I have a coupla busy days ahead and didn't decide until late in the day yesterday that I wanted to play in some challenges. When I finished, the sun had gone over the yard arm, so please excuse the odd shadowing on the left and my over-exposing myself trying to make it less so.

This one looks a little better maybe:

Anyway, I used this stamp.

The artist is the phenomenal Carolyn Shores Wright. I took some liberties and turned her sweet posy into a Christmas poinsettia. At least I tried to do that. I was sort of happy with my masking and freehand drawing until I saw on the monitor that it looks sorta like a filleted strawberry. Well, hey, that's fine. It can be either a poinsettia or a Christmas filleted strawberry!

The sediment is from the "Jingle All the Way" set by Technique Tuesday. It underwent surgery a year or two ago and it's never grown back together so I can still easily use it in a variety of ways.

Challenges:

• 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown: Embossing (wet or dry).
• Addicted to Stamps and More: Make your mark.
• Christmas Card Challenges: Anything goes.
• Jingle Belles: Critters, including birds.
• Merry Monday Christmas Challenge: Birds.
• Rudolph Days: October

~~~

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!

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Becca's Hop and More Fall Foliage

Hello, my friends!

I hope you had a lovely weekend doing what you enjoy and that you are looking forward to the start of a brand-new week!

I've got a medley of cards to share today. First, this card to support my friend Becca Cruger (The Damsel of Distressed Cards), who is running her annual hop to focus on stopping domestic violence. 

My card has a purple base, matted with a plaid layer and bejeweled with sequints. The beautiful NBUS sediment is from My Favorite Things. The branch and bird are from Memory Box: the branch is from "Meadowbird Branch" and the bird is from "Finnegan Fronds."

It's wonderful of Becca to spotlight domestic violence. It's important to talk about the help that is available to anyone who is the victim of physical abuse. It's also good to remember that domestic violence sometimes comes in the form of emotional abuse. 

Actually, that's true of any relationship. Words can cut deeply and emotional bruises sometimes take the longest to heal. Because our high-level politicians practice schoolyard nastiness and immaturity, it's easy for that behavior to trickle down and be reflected throughout society and in all ages. Kudos to today's parents! It's a lot harder being parents now than it was 30 years ago! 

Oops, I went off track. That's a hop for another day. Thank you, Becca, for continuing to keep the issue of domestic violence in the light of day and tell your story. Mwah!

Challenges

• The Hop to Stop: Use purple. (Please take a minute to read Becca's moving post.)
• Addicted to Stamps and More: Anything goes.
• Double D Challenge: Use plaid.
• HLS: CASE the Designer: Birgit Norton.
• Memory Box Challenge: Use sequins.
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: Use snippets.

~~~

I also made several QACAS cards to send, but I only photographed a couple of them. 

The hello is from WPlus9, heat-embossed onto vellum in gold, which is reflected in the gold matting.

The thanks on this card is from Winnie & Walter.

I've had some beautiful sheets of fall leaf PP for ages. I simply fussy-cut the leaves and attached them to pretty embossed paper that I purchased at Michael's while at the Lake House. It's a Recollections "Embossed Neutrals" paper pad in gorgeous shades. EZPZ.

Every time I go to Michael's, I stop at the front and ask, "Is Mike here?" Some clerks laugh (he doesn't let everyone call him Mike, you know), but most of them stare through me, hoping I'll just walk on. Which I do. But, honestly, I just want to thank the man.

I do the same thing at JoAnn's, only I ask for Jo, of course. You should try it. It's fun.

~~~

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!

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Autumnal Coffee

Hi there!

Here we are whooshed around to another Friday! Why don't we change Fridays to Frydays with mandatory free french fries delivered to our homes once a day? You think I'm kiddink, but I'm not. You'll have to check out the picture at the end of this post to see the glass cozy I bought while I was in Minnesota!

Hammy and I are cozily back into a routine in the Playhouse, happy as pigs in ice cream. Here we go!

While I was at the Lake House, I showed some of the other BABES what Kylie taught me at the Happy Little Stampers retreat in England about working with Brushos and Ardyth showed us a comparison using Color Burst. It was great fun! Using one of my Tim Holtz stencils, I made this topper with Brushos and finished the card off at home with score lines and a sediment from My Favorite Things poppies stamp set. You might see some schparkle from dew drops cuz I like to photograph my cards outside.

Challenges

• Color Throwdown: See below.
• HLS October Mixed Media Challenge: Nature.
• Paper Players: CAS Leaf.
• Stamp Ink Paper: Bingo, row one down.

Today's Twofer

A simple and dirty card. The wee stain is from Waltzingmouse. All the other ingradients on my card are NBUS. The word die is from Verve, the rings are from Precious Remembrance "Positive Thoughts," and the sediment is from Concord & 9th's "You're My Person." 

Challenges

• Addicted to CAS: Code word: Coffee.
• CASology: Cue card: Coffee.

~~~

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!

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My Minnesota Lake House Adventure!

Greetings, my stamplings!

It's so wonderful to be home and back in my own bed with the Mister! Just because I know you missed me (I missed you, too!), I've made this an epic post for you!

First, I had a lovely time with my sisters for several days,

Left to right: Donna, Darnell, Doris, Diana

followed immediately by a week with the BABES for our BABES II reunion!

Left to right:
Anita (My Papercraft World), Ardyth (Maskerade),
Kim (Cupcakes, Cards, and Kim)
Me, Geri (Manitoba Stamper), and Bev (Happy Dance)

The above link will take you to my post from BABES I with more photos and information. The two years since our initial get-together whooshed by so fast! It was great to meet again and have a dedicated week of card-making with these talented friends at this gorgeous location.

Some of you may remember that two years ago we were happily visited by an albino white squirrel we named "Snowflake." 

This time we were tickled to discover that Snowflake had married and had a baby! We named the mister, "Snowball," but we never did name the baby. How does "Snowbell" sound? Too much like Snowball? How about "Snowshoe?" "Snowplow?" "Snowberry?" Slap me.

And then what happened was we were visited by Minnesota aliens! They just hovered high above the lake and never did land to come inside and craft with us. We would have shared! Spooky, huh?

Last, but certainly not least, I got to meet my bloggie buddy Jeanne of Reba Li Creates! She's very kind and fun and it was a pleasure to meet her for coffee!

~~~

I was hoping to work on making my Christmas cards while with the BABES and, happily, I managed to make over a hunnert of them! Granted, they are mostly OLCs, so they didn't take very long to make.

Not only that, but I completed 46 other card tops that just need to be attached to card bases, so I'm three and a half quarters from being finished! Shazambam!

Would you like to see one of the cards I made or do you want to just have another cup of coffee and chat some more? 

Okay, okay. Here is a card I made so I could play in the MCV challenge. I'm just getting in under the wire.

This OLC is made with a NBUS stamp from Stampingbella called "Penguideer!" (Ya gotta love that name!) I used a NBUS stem stamp from the "Wildflower" set by Concord & 9th for my Charlie Brown Christmas tree. The NBUS sediment is a masked stamp from Lil' Inkers. Of course, Hammy insisted that Penguideer needed googlie eyes and a coat of freshly fallen Stella.

This card is a CASE of the card below made by my friend Chriss Blagrave of Botanical Cafe for the current Muse: Christmas Visions. This is her adorable card:

Chriss's card

You can see why I couldn't resist playing along! I was inspired by Chriss's little critter holding his own Charlie Brown Christmas tree with an ornament. I also used Chriss's design layout which included masking and blending behind my penguideer and schparkle from WOS.

~~~

I also made a fall birthday card to share, but I'll save it for another post.

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!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling:

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Mwah!
If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me
your email address so I can respond. Thank you!