UCBs and a Perk Up

Hi, stamplings!

First of all, thank you again for the good wishes and cards that keep pouring into the Playhouse! I appreciate your kindness very much! The place is looking very cheerful and Hammy is having a great time building castles and tunnels using your envelopes!

My recovery continues as expected, so all is well! I'm still a wee bit tender pretty much all over and round tother side, but that'll be gone soon. I'm not on the computer much yet, but I've been able to spend some fun minutes diving back into my "Unfinished (sometimes ancient) Card Bits" box, so I've got a few finished quickies to share. 

First up:

This goofy bird panel was colored for me by my friend Jim of Love the Details and sent to me by his wife Jill of Ribbon Challenged. They have been good friends for many years. I added the perfectly appropopo sediment, matted the panel with a Memory Box Cross-Stitch Frame in black, and attached it to a tangerine card base. (Bonus using some of my colored cardstock.) Thank you, Jim and Jill! 

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Isn't that butterfly panel just glorious? Believe it or not, I cut it from an envelope that accompanied a stunning matching card from my friend Linda of Life in the Craft Lane. She has prolly long ago forgotten about sending it, but I saved a bit of the envie all this time to use on a card because it was just too beautiful to bin. I'm pickled tink to have finally made it into a simple card. Thank you, Linda!

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The above three QACAS cards were made with toppers that were a gift from my friend Nonni of Nonni's Handmade Cards. I made cards from a couple of others when they first arrived (cough) ago, but then these three toppers just sat neglected as UCBs. I mean, honestly, it took only minutes to make these cards, so slap my biscuit and call me lazy for not doing this sooner!! Thank you, Nonni!

It feels so good to work my way through these treasures and turn them into cards to spread the love to someone else! I'll hopefully have more UCBs to share another day soon.

~~~

And now, something I made from total scratch yesterday.

I know, you're impressed by the layers and detail and countless hours I dedicated to this design, aren't you? Haha, of course not. I whipped up this OLC for Amy's 2017 Summer Coffee Lover's Blog Hop. The NBUS perculator and sediment stamps are from Whimsy Stamps. The NBUS wee flower that I poked in the opening of the masked perculator is from MFT's "Buildable BG" set. Mr. Zig and Ms. Stella were responsible for the technicolor floral effects.

I'm also joining in the Tic Tac Toe Challenge, using the left-most vertical line of "blue, one-layer, and yellow."

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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 to return the flavor as soon as I am able!

*Life is too short!

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Hi there! Waving Hello!

Lovely to see you! How has your week gone?

I'm doing fine, considering, and happy to be a member of the Hyster Sisters now. Thank you all for your lovely get well messages and cards! With so many kind-hearted friends and family pulling for me and praying for me, I know my recovery will be smoof. And Doc assured us that nothing else will try to fall out of me in the future!

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On Monday, once the underwear drawer was organized, I had some playtime with Hammy. BTW, do you organize your knickers drawer before you go in the hospital? You know, Justin Case you don't come back? 

Anyway, I had a lot of nervous engerny, so I passed the time of day fondling, spindling, and die-cutting paper.

This is a fun NBUS die from Winnie & Walter that makes QACAS cards even more QACAS than usual! Cut some of your prettiest pp with it, pop into a negative opening in matching colored card (bonus) and you'll be reaching for an antelope. I mean envelope. It's that easy. For this design, I checked my "words, misc." stamp case and sure enough, there was a there there!

Just so you know, as soon as this photo was taken I turned that butterfly in the bottom right slightly so it angled the other way. I can tell it bugged you, too, so I wanted you to know I fixed it.

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I seriously can't remember the last time I saw someone use a stamp on a card and five minutes later, the stamp set was purchased and on its way to my house, but that's what happened with this new Wave set from The Ton. The card artist was LauraJane. Be prepared to be blown away by what she did!

It's one of those stamps (like, say, a pineapple stamp) that might be trendy and then fade away. I am usually able to resist those, but there is so much cool movement in this wave and I love the sea, so I think I will use it a lot. It's a great stamp for either gender, too, especially for those elusive guy designs.

For my card, I smooched DIs on my craft mat and spritzed them with water and then one-by-one I applied each part of the three-part stamps to my card. Then I white heat-embossed the first part stamp again to make the foam stand out and give the card some texture. I think I have both blue and aqua e/p so next time I will try heat-embossing all the layers for even more texture.

Next, I watercolored the sunsetty sky using my Ziggies and attached the panel to a colored card base that I embossed with a stitch die.

I wanted a sediment that was larger than the ones that come in the set, so I looked in my nautical stamps and immediately saw this fun and perfect NBUS sediment from the "Wicked Nautical" set by Paper Smooches.

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While we were pawing through the nautical stamps, Hammy grabbed the beach ball from the Summer stamp set by Technique Tuesday and, while bouncing it off my elbow, reminded me that I had also recently purchased a coupla Purple Onion nautical stamps that were still NBUS ... 

I loosely watercolored a piece of mixed media paper with ocean shades. I painted in the bottom portion with my sand-colored Ziggie, spritzed the panel with a few drops of water, stamped the NBUS ocean waves from Purple Onion, and that was the card base. I had an already-cut MFT stitched frame on my desk, so I played around with various stamps from the TT set and the scene was born. 

The large NBUS sediment, also from the same set, was stamped on sunshine yellow vellum. When I finally got it away from the hamster, I glossed up the beach ball so it would be shiny like the real plastic beach balls we used to blow up and play with ... I wonder if they still make those.

Challenge:

• CAS Watercolour Card Challenge: Summer.
• Make My Monday: At the beach.
• Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge:  Let's take a vacation! (You have to check out what Anne has made in the Designer Spotlight!!)

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Enjoy your day!  No, seriously, enjoy!  LITS!* I'll be back as soon as I can stay upright longer than ten minutes.

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 to return the flavor!

*Life is too short!

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We're Sizzlin'

We're having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave!
The temperature's rising, it isn't surprising,
She started a heatwave by letting her seat wave!

Snort! No, really, those are the actual lyrics!

I'm here today going all tropical since the temperatures truly are beastly, forecast to be between 100-106 for at least the next five days! 

Here we go.

I made this card for my friend Liz who came to visit the Playhouse a while back. I made it to thank her for the beautiful hummer filigreed die from Sweet Dixie! You can see I used more of one of my Brusho backgrounds for the hummer. What you may not be able to see is his black jewelled eye. The Thanks sediment die is from Impression Obsession.

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I don't think I've shared this tropically-colored wonky card yet. The whimsical cake is inset inside a wonky rectangle opening made with a die from Spellbinders. The border was completed with wonky stitches from MFT. 

It amuses me that when we were in Home Ec class, we would have failed had we turned in wonky stitching like this. "What are you? Four?" Mrs. Mary Lou Cole would have asked, needles and pins perched precariously in the corner of her down-turned mouth, definitely NOT amused. Now here we are decorating our cards with wonky stitches and I like it!

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This QACAS card was made from a single sheet of tiled text pp, over which I applied a wonkily worded and stitched Happy Birthday frame die with the positive and negative bits made matchy-matchy with the back ground.

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Anything goes. (#2)
• City Crafter Challenge: Frame it! (#3)
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: Use your snippets! (#1)
• The Paper Players: Feathered friends. (#1)
• TIME OUT Home Sweet Home Challenge: Photo inspiration. (#1)

 

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In Other News

OO, I'm having an OOphorectomy! 

You may remember that I had abdominal surgery the end of January to perk up my bladder which had decided to stop fighting with gravity and tried to escape out my hoohaw. That all went exceedingly well and I couldn't be more pleased.

Well. Except for one small problem. What happened was, lifting the bladder back where it belonged resulted in my uterus seeing an opening so it, too, took a dive and made an attempt to escape. Oy!

Which means that on Tuesday I'm again having abdominal surgery, this time to remove my baby basket and assorted lady bits which, after all, were last used going on 40 years ago. It's time they got the ol' heave ho-ho! 

I'll do anything to get out of this heat.

~~~

Now you be jolly while I'm gone and enjoy the days ahead!  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 to return the flavor!

*Life is too short!

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You're My Person and Spring Vacay

Hello, my Stamplings!

How's it going? You doing okay?

I am sorry to be away so long. We spent five amazing days with the grandtwins (photos below) and I planned to be back right after that except that a Migraine Train came roaring through here and knocked me for a loop for the last two days. I'm praying it's gone now for a long time, but if not, I appreciate the reprieve! So does Hammy. He's tired of trying to keep a cool cloth on my forehead while I'm rolling around moaning like a pig in a cactus patch.

I was delighted to notice that my dear friend Bev (Happy Dance) is a guest designer at The Heart Desires and I simply had to play with her! So I used the colors from the photo inspiration at The Heart Desires, the sketch over at CAS Colours & Sketches, and a Brusho (or the like) theme from Just Us Girls Trend Week to make this little number:

I followed Bev's lead and used the floral inspiration. The NBUS blossoms came from the MFT stamp and die set, "Large Desert Bouquet." I cut them from a Brusho background I made. The stamps are solid and I didn't want to cover up all the background so I very lightly stamped them and then ran around the edge of each petal with my mint green Ziggie. It was a bit fussy to do, but I like the definition it gave the petals. 

The NBUS sediment is from Concord & 9th's set, "You're My Person." A Washi tape border and some triple red blingaling completed the ensemble.

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Spring Vacation

Papa and I took these two handsome and interesting 12-year-old characters away for five days to a lake near Mt. Lassen in northern California while their mom and dad had a nice long weekend in New Orleans.

Henry on the left, Adam on the right.

Short sleeves in the snow? Why not? Shoes untied? Well, of course!

The first photo in the above collage is the view of the lake from the deck of the house we rented. There was a small private dock for the boys to fish and swim from. It was a boys' paradise and we loved it, too.

A day trip to Mt. Lassen was foiled by a road closure due to the heavy snowfall this year, but it was open far enough up to play for a while.

Papa rented a fishing boat, but try as they might both on the dock and on the boat, their faces in the upper right photo tell the story: NO FISH anywhere! Hecka fun driving the boat though!

Tired of drowning worms? No problem, how about a trainyard and museum? 

We camped on this same lake and took their father to this same railroad museum 30 years ago, so it was really special to bring his sons to the same places!

Thanks for letting me share our great times with 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 join as a follower!  Please let me know you came by so I can be sure to return the flavor!

*Life is too short!

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Happy Happy Good Times!

Hello, my Stamplings!

I hope your week is whooshing by in ways that make you happy! And I hope you have ink on your fingers or glitter in your hair to prove it!

For my Onefer today, you might say that I let the good times roll!

I've been hitting the alcoholic inks again! Hic! No, actually, this pretty little background was inked some time ago and I recently found it in my box of UCBs or UFOs, or whatever you call your "Oh,-shoot,-it's-time-to-(_____),-so-I'll-put-this-in-here-and-finish-it-later" box. 

The Happy Birthday circular window is a Die-Namics die attached to a stitched card base and Justin Case the recipient wasn't clear on the concept of what a happy birthday entails, I added the NBUS "Good Times" from a clock die by Technique Tuesday. I finished the card by adding three matchy-matchy sequins for a little punch of punctuation. 

Challenges

• Inkspirational: Designers Choice Windows.
• The Paper Players: Birthday.

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Twofer, Threefer, and Fourfer

A bloggie friend sent me a few cuts she made from this whimsical Happy rounded rectangle die from Papertrey Ink. I liked it so much that I bought my own die and put Hammy to work thumbing pawing through my patterned papers for choices.

He thought these first two circular patterns worked a treat with the die:

I simply added a gold heat-embossed "birthday" word, some bling, and some twine from my stash of a thousand years' worth of neglected twine.

This Fourfer above has pp that is shot through with gold so that it glistens when the light hits it. I think it looks quite rugged and manly, so I'm entering it in these challenges:

• Cards in Envy: You're the Man.
• Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge: Masculine. My dear friend Anne has the well-deserved honor of being in the Designer Spotlight for the month of June! Congratulations, Annie! 
• Stamp Ink Paper: Masculine.

 

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Wait. What? A "Fivefer?"

Yup. School is now out for the summer and we are happily enjoying the company of the grandtwins for several days! I was on a roll in the craftroom waiting for them to arrive, but I didn't have enough time to schedule additional posts, so you get them all today.

I think I've used the Darice e/f before, but the "Graceful Cattails" from Memory Box is NBUS. For a little added interest, I lightly schplattered pink ink behind the cattails. I chose the color scheme especially to play in this week's Less Is More Challenge. It's a colour week and the colors are "Neopolitan." How fun is that?! And since I used snippets, I'm joining in the fun with my Playmaters over at Pixie's Snippets Playground!

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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!

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

Click CTL + Home. 

Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post.

Click Page Down to reach the end of the post.

Click Comments and a pop-up box opens.

Click "Jump to Comment Form" and walla, no more car pool tunnel!

Mwah!

p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me

your email address so I can respond. Thank you!