Hanging Round the Christmas Tree

Hello, Stamplings!

What a grand Thanksgiving holiday weekend we had! It's always so nice to see family and friends and carry on timeless traditions!

Now it is full-steam ahead with getting those holiday cards made. Today I'm honored to be the Guest Designer for this week's CASology Challenge #277! This week the cue card word is ROUND and here's my inspiration for you, starring you-know-who:

Nothing says Christmas like a hamster in an ornament!

I watercolored my NBUS ornament from "Hammie Holiday Fun" by Your Next Stamp after heat-embossing it in black. The evergreens were die-cut from blended paper snippets using my NBUS die, also from Your Next Stamp. You can faintly see that I used the negative die cut to stencil a few fronds directly on the card panel for extra depth.

Here is your cue card badge:

I hope you get a chance to play along this week! You can find the linky tool and lots of outstanding inspiration from the Design Team over at CASology!

Challenges

• Merry Monday Christmas Card Challenge: Color Combo.
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: AG using your snippets!
• Your Next Stamp: Color inspiration.

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Another "round" design idea using jingle bells:

The background paper is a shiny gold glossy paper and if you look closely, you can see that it is made up of row after row of teeny-tiny jingle bells! The banner is from Simon Says Stamp, the sediment is from The Ton, and the jingle bells are from Lil Inker, cut from gold metallic paper.

Challenges

• Cards In Envy: It's only paper.
• INKspirational: Christmas card using neutral colors.
• Rudolph Days: AG Christmas.

  

I had similar DSP in glossy red, so I made a few more like this:

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Real quick. I forgot to show you this photo last week. 

It was taken on our walk through the park. As I held up the pretty leaf rimmed with ice, the rising sun lit it from behind. I had The Mister take a photo over my shoulder to share with you.

And, of course, I had to share the grandtwins!

You haven't seen them for a while, so that's Henry on the left, Adam on the right. They were not happy to be stopped in their tracks as they were about to dive into a box of See's candy! Check out Adam's itchy finger, primed and ready to pounce!

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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!

*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 the pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! P.S. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Mwah! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Greetings, Stamplings!

Happy, Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends! And happy fall or spring to all my friends in other parts of the world! I'm so very thankful for YOU!!

The NBUS flowers and sediment are from PTI's "Mum's The Word" set designed by Dawn McVey. The wonky stitches are from MFT. The flowers were stamped, heat embossed in SU maize e/p, and washed with Ziggies. 

Of course, I'm playing in some challenges. On this day of thanks, I'd like to thank them (and all the others) for all their hard work and inspiration!

• AAA Cards: CAS (clean and simple) Celebrate.
• The Flower Challenge: CAS.
• HLS Anything Goes With Dies

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Talking Turkey

The American phrase "to talk Turkey" is now part of the world's vernacular and the accepted meaning is to engage in "straight talk" and get down to business. 

In articles, scholars have provided us with this specific example cited in the Niles' Weekly Register in 1837:

An American Indian and a white man went shooting together for sport. At the end of the day the spoils were a crow and a turkey. The white man suggested they be divided, thus: "You take the crow and I'll take the turkey. Alternatively, I'll take the turkey and you take the crow." The Indian retorted: "Don't talk turkey to me!"

So was he saying, "Don't straight talk to me?!" I don't think so. I think this might be one of those phrases that originally meant the total opposite of the accepted meaning! Rather, it sounds to me like the Indian was saying, "Don't double-talk gobble-gobble me!"

Makes you cock your head and think for a minute!

But just for a minute, because I want you to go off and enjoy your day, your food coma, and your leftovers! No, seriously, enjoy, and please don't get trampled in the Black Friday sales! It's so much easier to click "add to cart" from the comfort of your home.

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse! 

MWAH!!

Hammy and 

A Case of CASEing

Greetings, Stamplings!

Happy Monday! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and your plans for this week are shaping up well. We had a beautiful fall weekend. Crisp and clear with bright blue skies after our rainy week and Thursday looks like it will be sunny and dry for our Thanksgiving pig-out feast. That's always nice so the kids and dogs can play outside.

I'm getting inspiration from several challenges for my Christmas cards. What would we do without our challenges? They are all definitely on my Thanksgiving gratitude list!

Here are a few cards Hammy and I made this weekend.

The inspiration for this card came from the TIME OUT challenge where we are to CASE (copy and share everything) the talented Michele Ferguson with our own little twist. My twist is that I made my CASE of Michele's thank you card into a Christmas card. There is a slight shadow from the sun on the bottom half of the word "Noel," but looking at it straight on, the word is completely hidden! This was fun to make and used a lot of my Christmas pp, so I made several!

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This card was an absolute bugger to photograph between the dark navy card base and the gold-embossed sediment. The view below shows a bit better how the entire card background is splattered in fine gold, but it still doesn't do justice to his golden Winked tunic.

Many of you will recognize that this little elf was inspired by the current Less Is More challenge where we are celebrating DT member Susan's birthday and CASEing her adorable Christmas card. My NBUS elf is from The North Pole Hero Arts and so is the sediment.

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Finally, here's another example of how pretty a tag can look just popped onto a card base. This was the little reindeer tag I posted not too long ago. I thought the woodgrain pp made a lovely backdrop for the dear little deer!

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I'll be offline for a few days (except to pop back with a Thanksgiving card on Thursday) for the happy reason that the twins have this entire week off so Papa and I get to have them to ourselves for a while starting tomorrow! Yippee!!

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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!

*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 the pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! P.S. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Mwah! 

Tag Time III and a Card, Too!

Hello, Stamplings!

Welcome to another Friday which whooshed in here like a ..., as fast as a ...! Oh, dear, I can think of a lot of words and expressions, but this is a family blog (mostly) so none of them are suitable! I'll let you fill in the blank with your own expression in your comment, which will tell me how stressed out you are!

Today I'm up with my reminder tag as Guest Designer at Tag You're It!

Over on the challenge blog, the very talented Hazel is the featured artist with an adorable baby tag.

I mentioned last week that you did not need to make a baby gift tag, unless you needed one. I know a lot of you are making Christmas tags, but I only see one in the TYI gallery yet, so maybe you didn't believe me cuz I'm such a kidder. But it's true, honest!

So to inspire you, for my reminder tag I changed the theme to a Christmas tag, but kept to the main elements of Hazel's adorable design: I was inspired by Hazel's embossed background, pink color, main focal image, and die-cut sediment.

I used a snowfall e/f for the background, the adorable penguins are from Stamps of Life, and the joy die is from Lawn Fawn.

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Are you thinking, "Good to know, but I only make cards."

Aha! Did you know that you can also enter cards at Tag You're It? I didn't know that for a long time, but you absolutely can! So I turned my tag into a usable card to inspire you:

Your card has to have a tag layer, of course, and we still need to see how the Featured Artist inspired you, but other than that, you are free to design in the way that makes you happy!

I'd love to see your tag/card linked! You have five more days before the linky closes!

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Holiday.
• Little Red Wagon: Penguins and Polar Bears.
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: AG/use your snippets!
• The Merry Christmas Challenge: AG Christmas. Optional: Animals.

 

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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 ~ even if it might take a while this time of year!

*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 the pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! P.S. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Mwah! 

Tag Time II

Hello, Stamplings!

Another quick post from me today. I think that's going to be the case until all the cards I need get made and sent. Wait. What? Do I hear a lot of you breathing a sign of relief that my posts aren't going to be "two coffees" long?!! 😇

First up, I'm delighted to be asked by my dear and very talented friend Loll to be her Guest Designer for Day Ten of her Twelve Tags of Christmas event!

Here is my tag:

The base of my tag is a piece of glossy paper covered in bold and vibrant alcoholic inks. The die allows all those jewel-toned colors to peek through the openings. The PTI greeting was embossed in platinum on vellum.

If you haven't already, I hope you'll be able to join Loll's fun and inspirational event. In addition to tag inspiration, I get a lot of design ideas for making cards from the tags that are made by Loll, her guest designers, and the fabulous gallery! The details can be found on Loll's blog: Stamping With Loll.

Thank you, Lolly, for the pleasure of being a guest designer!

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Of course, when you're in Tag Mode, you gotta make more tags, so I also made this one:

My inspiration for this tag came from Debby Yates on Day One of Tracey's 25 Days of Christmas Tags event where the featured sponsor was Simon Says Stamp. The little NBUS reindeer is from SSS. 

The tag itself was made from a page in a paper pad from My Mind's Eye. I just cut it like a bookmark and chomped the corners. I know, right? I didn't even use a die, gasp! (I did cut a second layer to adhere to the back for my stability. I mean for more stability.)

You can't really tell in the photo, but I happily had some old ribbon in my stash that was perfect: it is the same color of coral, edged in gold. 

I liked this little reindeer so much that I made several cards with him, but I'll save those for another day.

I'm also entering the BOW challenge at Addicted to CAS.

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Real quick. I have to share this with you! Last week my friend Brenda sent me an email telling me she had received my postcard from Wales and how surprised she was that I had gone back to the UK and why hadn't I told her I was going? Wait. What? 

I was as amazed as she was since I hadn't just been to Wales ... but I was there over a year ago, which meant she just now received the postcard I mailed to her in July of 2016! I know Indiana is a long way from Conwy, but that's ridiculous!

She said it wasn't the least bit bedraggled, which makes me want to launch into a whole lie story about how bed raggling used to be a thing, but I promised I wouldn't keep you, so off you go!

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Enjoy the Hops 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 join as a follower!  Please let me know you came by and I will return the flavor as soon as possible. I'm sorry I'm falling way behind with my visits around Blogland because Hammy and I have our Yuletime card and tag factory in full operation!

*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 the pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, 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!

Tis The Season

Hello, Stamplings!

I hope this finds you well!

I've been making a lot of cards, but I've only gotten one photographed so far. I decided to do a quick post so I didn't miss the challenges.

The pretty holly garland and bold sediment are both NBUS from the "Fa La La" set by Avery Elle. The red is Washi tape. The textured card is linen from Handy Hippo.

And here is the sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch! that inspired me:

Other Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Make Your Mark.
• HLS CAS Challenge: Christmas.
• Tic Tac Toe Challenge: "Die Cut, Free, Leaf." And "Sentiment, Die Cut, CAS."

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I thought I would show you some yard art by Mother Nature. It's lovely to see a bit of color this time of year. This is an annual that has burst to life this fall:

I think it's a type of Phlox? Aren't the teeny-tiny buds within the sphere of flowers so fascinating? They are like little pillows.

Maybe not so cute, but equally fascinating, is this leaf bug:

Can you see it? I'm pretty sure I've shown you one of these before, but it's been ages since we've seen one. That's a good thing because I think they are pests and bad for the trees if you get an infectation of them. The leaf pattern on the body really mesmerizes me, though. Its official name is Katydid (Leaf Bug).

Oops, a certain little hamster is squeaking at me. I forgot I left him holding down a section of ribbon so I could finish tying a bow!

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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!

*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 the pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! P.S. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Mwah!