Seasonal Wishes

Hello Sweet Stamplings!

Isn't it a beautiful Monday, so fresh and unblemished? Seems like ages since I posted on a Monday and said those words, but I had to slip in today to play in a coupla three challenges before it's too late.

In my last post I segwayed from summer to fall and today I'm fast-forwarding straight into winter. I know that's not how you spell segue, but it's how I spell it because to me segue seems like it would be pronounced like league. 

Anywiddle, listen, if I don't start making some Christmas cards, I'll be sending out blank white cards with a note inside! Eeks!

So here you go.

These cute glittery candy canes have been in my stash for ages. You can't tell from the photo, but they are actually flattened so the card can be mailed without too much difficulty. The Zig Zag border die is from Lawn Fawn and the NBUS sediment is from MFT.

Challenges

• Less Is More: Use a real object.
• Stick It Down. A new-to-me challenge! Card sketch below.
• Watercooler Wednesday: Penny's "All About Christmas."

~~~ and another:

This NBUS "Candy Cane Gift" die is from Poppystamps. They were cut from some old glossy cream-colored card stock, held down by a single brad. The one on the left is an upside down version of the one on the right. The metallic elements are ancient from SU.

These cards both came about because of the brief from Less Is More, which is to "use a real object" on your cards. Well, geez Louise, that opened up a drawer of ancient relics from the last century that hadn't seen the light of day in a long time! So many cute things I have! Why have we forgotten about them? Now we just want to play with everything in there!

Challenges

• Merry Monday: Christmas in July summer link-up inspired by the December 5, 2016 "Candy Canes" challenge.
• Rudolph Days: Anything goes Christmas.

~~~

And now, just to keep you on your toes, lets reverse gears all the way back to springtime for all my friends down under!

When I saw the sweet metallic leaf, I immediately thought of a couple of other challenges. The little doodled flower is NBUS from MFT, which I painted on a creamy card in the pink, yellow, and green colors of the photo inspiration from Just Us Girls. I loaded my paint brush and splattered the background in the same pink and yellow colors. The sweet sediment doesn't list a company on the side, but this is printed: "©1992 Annette Allen Watkins."

Here's a closeup of the pretty metal leaf:

Challenges

• CAS on Friday: One Layer Wonder.
• CASology: Cue card: Bud.
• Inkspirational: Oldie But Goodie. (The sediment stamp is one of my very first stamps, which I think pairs nicely with the modern doodled flower stamp.)
• Tuesday Throwdown: Add metal.

~~~

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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JUGS GD #408 ~ "Aloha"

Hello there, Stamplings!

I want to first say that my thoughts and prayers are with everyone impacted by Hurricane Harvey in the days ahead.

As the Guest Designer for the month of August at Just Us Girls, I'm here to welcome you to the fourth week, which is Photo Week! It's all about the tropics and Hawaii and Florida flamingos and pineapples and wherever your imagination takes you!

And just for no reason, Hammy wants to entertain you with a bit of rhyming!

As the days of summer wane,

fall appears on the window pane.

We whisper, No! It went too fast!

What can we do to make it last?

We can hit the beach at least once more

and stretch our toes upon the shore!

I used a sunglasses sticker and pp (patterned paper) from my stash cut into rectangles. The flip flops are from Lil Inkers, the NBUS "aloha" is from Your Next Stamp, and the sediment is from MFT. 

I hope you can join in for the challenge this week! Here is the badge photo inspiration for you:

So many ways to go with this! For more ideas, please check out what the Design Team made for you on the Just Us Girls blog! I'd like to thank the Design Team at JUGS for the honor of being the Guest Designer for the month of August. It was a lot of fun! 

I'm entering my card in the Make My Monday Challenge where the theme is "Lazy Days of Summer!"

~~~

Now the sand is brushed away

As a new season has come to play.

The garden sighs and roses fade,
Bulbs are planted, beds are laid. 

The sunflower stands tall above the rest

And welcomes autumn to her golden breast.

I've used sunflower pp from my stash behind the MFT stitched circle die cut. I colored and fussy-cut the sunflower from Technique Tuesday. The sediment is from Your Next Stamp. Of course, the sunflower is all winked up!

Challenges

• CAS(E) This Sketch!
• Tic Tac Toe Challenge: Die cut, sentiment, floral.
• TIME OUT Challenge: Autumn with the optional twist of speed stamping. (The option doesn't apply to my card cuz it took me ten minutes just to fussy cut that sunflower!)

~~~

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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your email address so I can respond.  Thank you!

Sailing the Salty Seas / NBUS Announcement!

Greetings, Stamplings!

I hope a lot of you were able to enjoy the amazing eclipse if you lived where it was visible. We had a partial eclipse here, which was still cool, but the photos on the TV and Intertubes were phenomenal! 

We couldn't find special eye wear for Hammy's wide-set eyes, but the cereal box viewer worked great! That is, until he lost interest and crawled inside to sleep, cornfused by the waning sunlight!

The whole extra vaganza gave me this design idea:

I've been wanting to play with watercolor and salt to join in the August CAS Watercolor challenge. Have you noticed the marvelous works of art around Blogland?! 

I also wanted to make you a reminder card about the current red, yellow, and blue color challenge happening at Just Us Girls. So I thought blue could be water, yellow could be sunshine, red could be sunset, et wallah!

The salt bit couldn't be easier. I just watercolored swathes of the chosen colors with Hammy's little dimestore paint set and immediately sprinkled salt over it. I set it aside to dry and then we removed the salt with the celery sticks from our Bloody Mary's. Yummo and pretty innovative if I do boast so myself.

The stitched dies are from MFT and the NBUS sailboat is a die from Poppystamps called "Marina Sailboat." The little tiny happy birthday sediment is from GKW.

Challenges

• CAS on Friday: Birthday.
• CAS Watercolour Card Challenge: Salt.
• Challenge Up Your Life: Summer. Can't imagine how I've not found this challenge until now!
• Die Cut Divas: Anything goes for August.
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: AG, but use your snippets!

 

~~~

Coming Soon!!

NBUS CHALLENGE #12!!

I'm attending my 150th high school reunion next month, so the annual September NBUS Challenge will run a bit late this year. This is just a head's-up-mark-your-calendars announcement of the date so you can excavate and arrange those virginal Never-Before-Used-Schtuffs that you've forgotten not gotten around to using! Whee!

~~~

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! And I'd love to see you play over at Just Us Girls! Thank you if you already have!

*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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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!

JUGS GD #407 Color Week ~ "Red, Yellow, Blue"

Good morneve, Stamplings, wherever you are in the world!

As the August Guest Designer for Just Us Girls, I'm happy to welcome you to our third challenge for this month. 

JUGS is taking you back in time to your nursery/elementary school days when you played with your primary colors. In fact, if you have them, bring in the children and grandchildren and greatgrandchildren and any rodent pets you have taught to hold a crayon!

How about that for bringing back those childhood memories? Is there any place in the world that doesn't have these iconic crayons? This NBUS stamp from Dark Room Door was heat-embossed and colored with my Ziggies. Eek, I see my sediment from Paper Smooches is not perfectly centered. (Medic! Bring the sequints!) A few wonky stitches and a lovely textured sky blue base and I've made another QACAS card.

Oh, wait. Not yet, girls and boys! You know we have to add a little bit of juezz sais quoi in the form of gloss!

Much better!

Here's your badge for this week:

EZPZ straight-forward no ambiglueity involved here. No fretting about finding the closest match or having a mass of colors to choose from. You can use your pencils, paints, markers, crayons, or hair dye. I look forward to seeing what you make!!

For more inspiring inspiration (the best kind!), please pop over to the Just Us Girls blog to see what the talented Design Team has prepared for you!

~~~

I don't have a second, third, or fourth card for you, but if you're interested, I did put together some photos from our recent little vacay to the beautiful Oregon coastline.

Because of the dreadful fires in the western US and Canada, the skies were very smoky. The sun in the lower right was actually blood red as a result of the smoke. The photo on the left was a day we had some pretty blue sky as we went south. I had to share the hydrangea photo because the size of them and the vibrant colors just blew me away! I'm in the photo for scale because I'm a large woman, so you can understand my amazement! And the hydrangea bush just out of range to my right was equally huge!

Imagine my delight to find a real brick-and-mortar paper crafting store in the heart of Astoria! The Mister (who you can see reflected in the window!) was very patient while I browsed and bought. We haven't had any small craft stores in the area where I live for years, so this was a treat! 

Another treat was this tame sea gull named "Crackers!" We innocently took the corner table inside a fabulous local restaurant in Cannon Beach. I jumped a foot when several minutes later, I heard knocking on the window right next to my ear! I mean he really knocked loud and then he'd wait and then knock again and so on. So darn cute!

The owner told us that Crackers has been coming by every evening for a number of years ~ just him, not a whole swarm of them. Because they serve a lot of chowder, they have little packets of oyster crackers, which Crackers loves. Hence the name. I wanted to bring him home with me to play with Hammy and the twins. We love oyster crackers, too! 

Our son told us to take photos of us and not just the scenery, so we obliged. Now normally we wouldn't indulge in a bakery treat just after breakfast*, but how could you not patronize a bakery with such a punny name as "Dough Dough?!" The bloke in the window is the Mister and, despite the angle, he is not wearing a tie with his shorts! He has on a windbreaker with a white lining over a dark-colored tee-shirt. It's his "grandpa uniform!"

*Haha, what a liar!
~~~

Enjoy your day!  No, seriously, enjoy!  LITS!* Thank you for making it to the end and I hope to see you in the JUGS gallery this week!!

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!

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

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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!

Schparkle and Sunshine

A happy mid-week hello, Stamplings!

How's everyone doing today? I hope you're basking in your own little happy glow, but if you're not, I have lots of schparkle and sunshine to share with you!

First up is a card I made for our local jewelry store. They plan to make into an advertising poster.

That's actually not true, but it could have been, considering all the gold and platinum and silver schparkliness!

What we have here is glittery dark gray card base covered in a glittery light gray panel. How many of you still hoard have some of that paper in your stash?

It was hard for me to use it, too, but I done did it and I'm going to keep going through this schtuff. I think it's like spring cleaning, once you clean that first shelf . . .

And how did I make that delicate gold and gray dragonfly by Clearly Besotted? Why by cutting it from a piece of neglected and ancient gold-embossed pp.

Yes, I put Hammy to work cutting out more dragonflies, so we didn't waste a single bit. He managed to get six more cut and, yes, they've actually been made into six more cards! Sorry. Too smug? I'll knock it off. But it is a super easy design that would work with butterflies and noodles of sediments.

The pretty one I used is from Concord & 9th's "Happy Day" set, embossed in platinum. The dragonfly was attached with old-timey brads.

Challenges

• Cards in Envy: Bug Me! (Insects & Bugs).
• City Crafter Challenge: You don't bring me flowers.
• Moving Along With The Times: Things that fly.

~~~

And now here's something for the kids!

This is an adorable LOTV image my friend Di stamped off and sent to me ages ago. She sent me several various fun antics that this little girl got into. (What shall we call her? I'll bet the artist gave her a name and someone will share it.) I've colored and carded quite a few of these little girls in the past and this week, I finally finished the rest! Thank you again, Di!

After Zig-coloring her and her little dog, too, I stamped the sediment from Technique Tuesday, added some Winking, and wrapped around a vellum sun cut from a Lil Inkers die. Then the whole business was matted in black and based in yellow.

Honest, there really is schparkle in those overalls, which she got all over the tree branch when she climbed up there! I'm surprised her little dog isn't covered in it!

Challenges

• Of course, I had to take this to the Pixie's Snippet Playground!
• Shopping Our Stash: Chillaxin' and relaxin'!
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: For a child.

~~~

Why all the emphasis on schparkle and shine? Why that's my way of remindink you that I'm guesting this month at Just Us Girls and this week the Trend Week word is SHINE! I'd love to see your schparkly creations there! Thank 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!

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

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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!