Summer Breezes and Winter Wishes

Hello Stamplings!

We are traveling through the seasons today, much like Mother Nature did to us this past winter. We never knew from one minute to the next what would be transpiring in the weather department. You might say these major changes in climate have turned us all into ballerinas because Mother Nature keeps us on our toes!

You thought I was segueing into a card with a ballerina, dinnit you? Nope, just to say that here in Blogland, everything is always clement, no matter what's happening outside.

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And what's happier than a cluster of puffy dancing dandelions? This playful image is by Purple Onion. I added some grasses with an old wooden My Sentiments Exactly grass stamp and colored the scene with my Ziggies. Then Hammy hopped onto his pogo stick and tapped out some little tiny black dots to give the impression of blowing dandelion fuzz. And, finally, I added glossy accents which turned the little puffballs a little creamy in the sunshine. The wonky stitching is from MFT and the sediment is an old favorite from PTI.

Challenges

• Country View: Easter and/or Spring.
• Day of the Month Club: National Dandelion Day.
• Little Red Wagon: "Everything's coming up ... dandelions!"
• Simon Says Stamp Monday: Going around in circles.
• TIME OUT: Playful.

Twofer

Whooshing over to winter, I present a QACAS ETM card. I used my NBUS MFT Striped Sentiment Strip Cover Up die over a Lawn Fawn plaid background. Then I added some die-cut match-y snowflakes and a fun foam NBUS Cutplorations sediment from STAMPlorations.

Challenges

• Fab Friday: Colors.
• Rudolph Days: Anything Christmas goes.
• Simon Says Wednesday: Anything goes.

Spring in the Garden

Bringing us right back to Mother Nature, I am leaving you with this sweet photo of a little hummingbird just outside my Playhouse window. (The lines in the foreground are the pulls from my window blinds.)

The succulents in the window box below the window are blooming and this sweet little gal is ignoring the sugar water I put in the feeder in favor of the delishus nectar of the flowers. Sometimes she settles on one of the stems to drink and I find myself staring at her for long minutes several times a day. Between this and the live eagle cams, now you understand why I haven't made it around to visit you this week! 😍

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* I hope you have clement weather over the weekend!

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 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!)

Pasted Butterflies and a Happy Little Elf

Hello Stamplings!

Another holiday under our belts ... literally! 🐷 Listen, here's my thinking. The world needs some of us round people for all the slim people to hide behind when the bad guys show up. You're welcome. I'm here to help.

Seriously, tho, we had a wonderful time ... a beautiful sunny day, a fun Easter egg hunt, and family and friends who gathered to enjoy a delicious meal and conversation. I hope you enjoyed your weekend, too, however you spent it!

Yesterday, I relaxed and got crafty in the Playhouse with Hammy.

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And look I pasted through a stencil! I haven't done that since last May when I was at Loll's craft retreat in Vancouver and I was instantly reminded how fun it is! I mixed Dreamweaver Pearlescent Embossing Paste with a bit of peachy Art Alchemy Sparks Butterfly Spells and passed it through a Stampendous butterfly stencil. The large schparkly butterfly was fussy-cut from a pretty piece of pp. The gold glitter-embossed sediment is from Concord & 9th.

Here is a photo taken at an angle so you can better see the shimmer and schparkle:

Even at that, the photo doesn't do justice to the raised dimension of the butterflies. Embossing paste is super fun and the results are hugely satisfying!

Challenges

• CAS on Friday: Butterflies
• CAS Stencil: Hosted by Barb: Embossing paste/gel.
• Less Is More: Subtle colors.
• The House That Stamps Built: DCC43 ~ Use a stencil.

Twofer

Sorry, I should have warned you to switch over to your darker sunglasses for this bright pink Christmas card! We begin with a textured card base embossed with Swiss dots*. The two pink frames are from Impression Obsession. The banner and sediment and striped pp are from PTI.

The elf from Hero Arts was cut once from white card and stamped and then cut again from the striped paper. Then the tunic and hat were paper-pieced from the striped paper. All the other areas of the elf were then colored with Ziggies and the elf was set back into the die cut. As a final touch, Hammy glittered the hat brim and puff ball with snow.

*Paper style mimics fabric of the same name. The design is said to have originated around 1750 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, which emerged as a textile center in the 15th century.

Challenges

• Cardz 4 Galz: Pretty papers.
• CAS Christmas Card Challenge: Hosted by Nance: Elf.
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: Use your snippets!
• The Paper Players: Paper-Piecing.

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Papa and the grandtwins and Duke went on one of their local hikes. As is traditional, Papa stopped at the local Donut Wheel to get everyone donuts before driving to the trailhead. After they hiked to the trail summit, they enjoyed their donuts and Papa made them smile for a photo.

You can see the remnants of their sugar donuts around their mouths ~ especially Henry's. (Can you imagine a teenage girl sitting there for a photo oblivious to sugar crumbs on her face?! 🤣) And speaking of oblivious, what really karacks me up is Duke. If you look closely, his nose is practically touching that chocolate donut left laying on the bench between the boys. Did he get it?

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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 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!)

Happy Easter!

Happy Passover! Happy Spring! And Hello Stamplings!

The beautiful designer pp is from Our Daily Bread. Can you spot the little bunny?

Enjoy your day! And these spring irises!

And remember, nothing has calories today!

Blessings!

*Life is too short!

Happy Birthday, Thelma Wickwire!

Poppies Popping Up All Over!

Hello Stamplings!

With all the rain we've had this year (hallelujah!), the whole state of California has had a bumper crop of our state flower, the California poppy. You may have even seen photos on television of the largest area in the state where they are super abundant this spring, bringing visitors from all over the world. It's very fitting, therefore, that this month's CAS Watercolour Challenge features the beautiful poppy!

It's one of my favorite flowers, so I couldn't not play along!

This beautiful free form poppy is from Concord & 9th. It is such a show-stopper that a card needs nothing more than a simple sediment. This one is from GKW. I used copper e/p for both the image and the sediment, watercoloring the image with my Ziggies and a water brush. The mat is also copper. Before I added the popped-up sediment, I masked the flower and let Hammy schplash around in a pool of DI and roll around on the card front. Finally, after a shower, blow dry, and a reeeeeally small glass of sherry, he winked the poppy.

Here's another angle showing the coppery scrumminess:

Challenges

• CAS Watercolour Challenge: Poppy.
• CAS(E) This Sketch.
• Work It Wednesday: Spring flowers.

 

Twofer

A few days ago I messed around with my NBUS Ken Oliver Liquid Metals. I dropped some copper onto a glossy card and then, not knowing better, I added some blending solution. I don't know if I did it wrong or what, but the two didn't get along. The metallic bits separated from the ink and looked like pepper on the paper. I then added some terra cotta alcoholic ink and blew that around with blending solution. It made the spot bigger, but it wasn't pretty with the bits in it, so I just set it aside.

So then what happened was, as I was clearing my work area after making the first card, I saw the set-aside "fail," picked it up and went "Erh?" with a cock of my head. That always gets Hammy's attention and we both realized that it was just about prezackly the size of the Concord & 9th poppy. So I sort of lined it up over the splat and stamped. And now I love it! That just shows, as many of you have said before, don't throw away those inky "fails!" 

The giant MWAH from CASual Fridays and a smattering of sequints was all that was needed to complete this OLC. Here is a closeup of the metallic bits that separated from the ink. Extra texture, right?!

Challenges

• Krafty Chicks: Flowers.
• The Male Room: A/G, optional twist: OLC.
• Simon Says: Beautiful blooms.

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And here are a coupla photos of our own local native poppies:

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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 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!)

Reminder Twofer Card Challenge #15 - Zoo Animals

Hello Stamplings,

I'm sitting here ramrod straight cuz if I slouch or move too much, everything hurts. I spent the last few days spring cleaning every closet and drawer in the house. Thankfully, it's a small house, but these old bones and mussels aren't used to being that active that long.

Oh, but it's worth it! Everything looks so purdy all clean with room to breath. I've been dying to try Marie Kondo's way of folding clothes and I do like seeing all my tops color-coordinated and tucked up in rows smiling at me. It's very satisfactory, especially since between the folding and the purging, I emptied an entire large dresser drawer in the process. I gave it to the Mister who has suffered for years with his clothes being squished into a small dresser (pursuant to Rule of Marriage #23).

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Today I have a reminder for you about the Twofer Card Challenge where we are having fun playing with our Z🐒🐘 ANIMALS.

As you can see, my shared zoo animal is the cute little baby elephant from W Plus 9's "Bubble Talk" set.

It's EZPZ to make two conventional ~ but different ~ designs using a zoo aminal! Have you got a sloth, flamingo, camel, penguin, kangaroo, otter, koala, hippo, lion, or? I can't wait to see what you choose to play with! You have until the end of day on April 24th!

Onefer

Here the baby is seen in a rare photograph with her mama for the cover of a Mother's Day card. The mama elephant was made by Fiskars. They were stamped and watercolored on mixed media paper. The sediment is from HLS gold heat-embossed to match the gold schplatters ala Hammy.

I was worried after I made the card that I had paired the baby with a daddy elephant for a Mother's Day card. I mean, not that it matters today with everybody rightly filling every role, but I was curious so I went back again to my research window. This time Dr. Google assured me that African mama elephants have tusks. He also told me that the little tusks on Asian mama elephants are called tushes, not tusks. Seriously. I thought all things had tushes, you know, to sit on, but once again we learn a word can have more than one meaning!

Twofer

And who knew that a little baby African elephant could have such enormous lung capacity?! This birthday card is literally screaming party! The bubbles are "Loopy Rings" from Memory Box. The dotty rectangle die is from Avery Elle.

Challenges

• Memory Box Outside the Box Challenge: Clean and simple.
• Seize the Birthday: Anything goes.
• Sweet Stampers: Birthday/celebrate.

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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! Rats, I just realized I forgot to thank the clothes that no longer sparked joy and were sent to a charity. What happens now?

*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 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!)