Bumps, Dots, and Flakes

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well. You know, under the circumstances. I know it goes without saying, but I'm gonna say it often anyway: thank goodness for this hobby as a feel-good distraction because making and sending a handmade card to someone is a guaranteed way to make two people smile.

Or maybe three. I've got a Threefer for you today, so here we go.

Onefer

At a recent Zoom craft session, we used 3D embossing folders with metallic paper and then we sanded the raised bits. In this case, the bumpy bits. This cool Cobblestone e/f is NBUS from Sizzix. The scalloped cover frame is from Reverse Confetti. The geezer tourist ("Golden Oldies") is NBUS from Art Impressions. The artist of these AI oldster stamps sure knows how to draw geezers and I love the little details like the title of the magazine and the smiley face button on his baseball cap!

The sediment, which is heat-embossed in copper, is from Rubber Dance Stamps. I decided not to color the dude so as not to compete with all that beautiful copper. 

You'll be seeing more examples of my play with my 3D folders and metallic paper as I make my panels into cards. Bonnie is right: it is wonderfully addicting and fun!

I am playing in The Male Room Challenge were they are celebrating their 8th birthday! Congratulations!

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During an earlier Zoom session we had a play with embossing pastes and I finally used a NBUS product called "Stone Effect Concrete" (which has been in residence for ages) to make the next two uber CAS cards. The texture is amazing and the paste is literally hard as concrete once dry so I think it might even make it through the mail with a liner. If not, contrary to my first paragraph, the recipients are going to be unhappy to have crushed concrete in their laps!

Twofer 

The seahorse stencil I used is a Dreamweaver Stencil from Stampendous. The bubble/dot/circle stencil I used is unmarked and the sediment is from SSS. Hammy added a black marker to the seahorse eye which really brought him to life. The seahorse, not Hammy. Hammy is already full of spunkilicious life.

Challenges

• Addicted to CAS: Fishy.
  
• HLS Stencil: Anything goes.
  
• Seize the Birthday: Optional: By the sea.

Threefer

The snowflakes stencil is from Memory Box and the sediment is from Creative Expression. You can faintly see that Hammy added tiny drops of snow with his winker here and there on the snowflake panel.

I'm playing in AAA Cards (one inch strip and colored card), Little Red Wagon (stencil), and the Rudolph Days (anything goes Christmas).

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You may not get this until Friday, but as I write this, it is Thursday, National Dog Day, so I thought I should send you off with a photo of sweet baby Nellie sound asleep in her doggie divan in the Playhouse. Enjoy!

And enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy, but keep safe! 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!)

Duo CASliciousness

Hello Stamplings!

We've whooshed around to another Friday Saturday and I hope you all have had some fun this past week. I can tell you that my right index finger had a lot of fun clicking the mouse to buy a few must have goodies. I call those MHG. It doesn't have the controversy of MSG, but it has been known to be dangerous to the budget.

A dear friend recently said she needed to acquaint herself with the definitions of the words "want" and "need," in order to curtail buying MHG. She was very pleased when I told her my research found an obscure definition under both words (13[f] and 9y(a), respectively) which said: "(k)nown: Universal. There is no differentiation between the definitions of want/need when applied to arts/crafts supplies. [Dw4]"

So there you go. Spend away and create all day . . . 

Onefer

I began this design by die-cutting the lady using a "Susan Silhouette" die from Memory Box. 

I then used the negative portion as a stencil to color her in hues of pink with blended CP inks. Next, Hammy chose a cool collage stamp from Design Objectives for me to over-stamp the silhouette through the stencil. Next I cut the frame using a Double Stitched Scallop Rectangle from poppystamps. And then I embossed the panel with the 3D Subtle e/f from SU. 

I was going to leave a sediment off this uber CAS design, but then I ran across the perfect sediment from GKW to go along with all those thoughts swirling in her head! I will use it for a birthday ~ which one hopes would be full of happy thoughts.

Challenges

• CAS Mix Up: Stamping through stencil.
  
• SSS Monday: Dry Embossing.
  
• SSS Wednesday: Add a sentiment.

Twofer

I think this might be one of my favorite cards I've made. I love this Penny Black Adornments stamp and I wondered if doing the direct-to-stamp-and-spritz technique would work if I used one of my ancient Kaliediscope ink pads. It did! This pad is called Blue Breeze and I have no idea if they make it any more, but I love how it worked with this slaptick cling rubber stamp.

I did use a tiny brush to smooth out the baubles in a coupla places and I added silver to the dealiebob that the hanger goes through. I also added a gray wash to ground the image and a silver-embossed sediment from PB. Finally, I let Hammy loose with a silver winker. Thankfully it's been around a while, so no matter how high he jumped on his trampoline to shake the winker, the schplatters ended up nicely understated which let the blues rock the stage.

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Christmas.
  
• CAS Christmas: August: Decorations.
  
• Christmas Crafts All Year Round: Something that stars with O or P. O is for ornaments.
  

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy and keep safe! 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!)

Dog and Cat Pals?!

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I hope you enjoyed the weekend and that your week has started off on the right foot. And if you happen to be left-footed, I hope it starts off on the right left foot.

Because this month is the last and final challenge for my Twofer Card Challenge, I wanted to make another set of Dog/Cat designs to remind you. (The challenge closes at 11:55 p.m. on August 24th.)

For my reminder cards, I picked a fun stamp that has BOTH a dog and a cat! It's called "Picture Perfect" and it's from MFT.

Onefer

This card design uses one of the cute images in the set. I just love it and I thought the sediment from Tim Holtz was perfect for the dog's expression. I mean, he is so harassed, he doesn't even have whiskers! Hammy schparkled them with his winker, glossified their noses, and I stenciled paw prints on the background using a Simon Says stencil gifted from a friend. 

Twofer

I love that at first glance you don't even seen the white cat on this design. I stamped and then fussy-cut her to nestle her behind the tree ~ poised to jump out of her hiding place and scare someone, imp that she is! The tree is from Dee's Distinctively and I die-cut it twice so I could made the tree taller to accommodate little Ms. Abominable Snowcat!

I tried every way from Sunday to capture the schparkle on this card, but alas the sun wasn't cooperating. In real life the white heat-embossed snowfall is glistening and I love the shine from the SU Chrystal Effects which Hammy added to the hills, tree, and cat's eyes and nose. The snowflakes are an all-over "Brush Splatter Background" stamp from MFT.

Challenges

• Alphabet Challenge: J is for Just One Word.
• HLS Christmas Challenge: A/G, plus optional: Wonderland.
• Jingle Belles: Cardstock Christmas. (No DSP.)
  
• Just Us Girls: Trend week: Black and white.
• Pixie's Snippets Playground: A/G as long as it's a snippet. My entry used up a good bit of my enormous pile of white snippets for everything white on my card!

Final Challenge and Prizes

I hope you are able to find some time to play along in the last Twofer Card Challenge! Design Team member Bonnie has another pair of awesome Twofer designs to inspire you over on the challenge blog!

And when you're over on the TCC blog, you'll see that I've added two prizes for two lucky winners! Check it out!

Thank you again for all your support the last four years and for all the warm comments you have left me.

 

PSA re Cutting Plates 

If you own any warped cutting plates for any brand of die-cutting machine, here is a link to a Jennifer McGuire video on Fixing & Avoiding Warped Plates. The supplies needed are what you have on hand, plus a couple hours of your time, depending on how many warped plates you have.

I followed her video and it worked a treat. I'm now set for life with flat cutting plates and I am so grateful Jennifer figured this out and took the time to make a video to share it with us ~ even while they were away at the lake! Thank you, Jennifer. 

It bears repeating that we are a wonderfully kind and sharing community!

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy, and keep safe! 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!)

Scrap Your Stash ~ Waffle Flower Crafts ~ Guest Designer

Hello Stamplings!

I'm coming to you live at six o'clock in the morning from the House of Waffles. Doesn't that sound delish? But, no, that's silly. The truth is even better than that because I am actually here as an honored Guest Designer for the Waffle Flower Challenges - Week 2, thanks to an invite from my friend Jeanne!

This month's challenge theme is Scrap Your Stash - Unexpected Supplies and each week there is a different mini-challenge. Jeanne came up with the fun idea of having us play with our stash of embellishments, especially those embellishments that we haven't used in a while. Who knows, sometimes we bring things out of the past and they become new again!

I do still have a small supply of eyelets, brads, buttons, glitter, and ribbon in the Playhouse. After a rather amusing discussion with Hammy, we finally decided on buttons. And not just normal beautiful buttons, but a button from the Special Button Box!

It was fun going through all the button shapes and the winning button was this cute little clay pot. The gorgeous triple frame is Waffle Flower's Stitched Layers die and the leaf sprig in the pot is Waffle Flower's Sprigs die. The sprig was watercolored with my Ziggies. The teeny tag is from My Creative Time. Hammy tied it to the pot with a piece of floss because my fingers are too big for such delicate work.

I hope you will be inspired to join in the challenge! Thank you, Jeanne, for asking me to be a guest this week along with my talented friend, Nora! You have until August 31st to play and you can find the simple rules and linky here.

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy, and keep safe! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and becoming a follower. And really huge thanks for all the loving comments on my last post regarding Twofer.

p.s. I just have to share this. A new reader told me he searched on Google for the word "poycienality" from a recent post (thinking it was actually a word that he had never heard before) and the only thing that showed up in all the world was my blog! Haha! Of course, I'd rather be known for curing cancer or something huge, but still, it pickled me tink!

*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!)

It's Raining Dogs and Cats!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well. My heart goes out to all those suffering from the tragic floods and fires around the world. This on top of worrying about the Delta variant makes it hard sometimes to feel all that perkiful, but hopefully, my cards will bring a smile.

It's time for the August Twofer Card Challenge and the fun prompt for this month is 🐶Dog/Cat🐱. Here are my Twofers:

The NBUS stamp set my cards have in common is the Tim Holtz "Snarky Cat Christmas CMS416."

Onefer

Most of you know that I'm more of a dog person than a cat person, but I could not resist this snarky set with the bug-eyed cats! For this schparkly Christmas card, the image was stamped in black and clear heat-embossed. The sunshine has bounced off the shine from the embossing and washed out how black and crisp the image is in person. Everything was colored with my Ziggies and winked by my Hammy. The frame is from Avery Elle and I used gold ink through a stencil for the dotty bits.

The sediment comes from the same Snarky Cat set and if you know me really well, you'll be nodding your head right about now. My friends and family are very long-suffering because I'm known for giving them my know-it-all (expert!) opinion without being asked. I've honestly tried not to do it which involves snapping my teeth down firmly on my tongue, but still my words burst forth of their own violation! 

Twofer

For my second design, this time for a birthday, I stamped and fussy-cut Mr. Grumpola and stuck him in the corner of an MFT Peek-a-Boo die cut window. Behind him I used a piece of pp and Hammy fashioned him a birthday cap with even more pp. Woooooooo-hoooooooo for us! Okay, that's way too many oooos. Finally, I added an apropopo sediment from MFT. I tried putting googlie-eyes on him, but it didn't have the same perfect effect as those incredible eyes drawn by the stamp artist.

The Final Twofer Card Challenge

I hope you will pull out your favorite dog or cat stamp, die, or stencil and make two different designs for two different occasions to join in the fun at Twofer Card Challenge! The two talented Guest Designers, Vicky and Donna, and the entire Design Team have made beautiful Twofer dog and cat designs to inspire you!

***

I especially hope that you can play this month because this will be the last challenge for the Twofer Card Challenge. Between family health problems and priority changes, ending TCC is the best thing for me. It was a good four-year run and I had a lot of fun! My hat goes off to those of you managing card challenges for many, many, many more years than I have!

I gave this decision a lot of thought because I know so many of you love the concept of TCC which made you think hard while stretching your design skills. I'm sorry you will no longer have the TCC monthly prompts, DT inspiration, and fellow players to inspire you, but I sincerely hope you understand my decision and that you will continue on your own to occasionally design cards using the Twofer design concept. 

I couldn't have run this challenge without my excellent Design Team and Guest Designers and I'm hugely grateful to them. I also couldn't have done this without YOU, so thank you for playing and for your support over the last four years! 

I look forward to seeing your amazing dog and cat Twofers in the final gallery! Mwah!💕

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! 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!)

August Leaves and Flowers

Hello Stamplings,

I hope you're doing well! We've made it through another set of rapids on our way downstream rushing headlong into 2022. I mean, August? Holy guacamole, at this point, we might as well just throw our arms up and enjoy the pummeling.

But, hey ho, anypoo, all is calm in the Playhouse now that I've finished this:

This is for my friend Elaine's birthday a few days ago. She is one of the talented designers over at Less Is More. In order to celebrate Elaine's birthday, the brief is to CASE this beautiful card she created:

It's fabulous, isn't it? For my CASE (copy and share everything), I finally used my NBUS Altenew "Leaf Canopy" stamp and die set. I painted the leaves with my Ziggies, adding a vein to each leaf for some poycienality, and then I let Hammy loose with his winker. The sediment is from Happy Little Stampers.

And thennnn things got a bit out of the box for me because in order to wonkify my design a little bit in the same sort of cool arty way Elaine did, I found out just how OCD I am.😲It only took me a half hour to die-cut, stamp, clear heat-emboss, and paint the leaves before I popped them up on foam panel and cut the panel as you see. And then it took me three and a half hours to "unline" them up!👏

Thanks for the inspiration, Elaine, and may you have many, many more happy birthdays!

Challenges

• HLS Watercolour: Anything goes.
  
• Less is More: CASE card.
  
• Simon Says Stamp Monday: Happy 11th Birthday! WOW!!!! Congratulations! I'm delighted that my lovely friend Anne is in the Designer Spotlight this month. Her creativity is really remarkable and I encourage a visit to her!

Twofer

I dropped my camera just before taking this photo and the colors of the pink flowers are off. That's the lighting though, right, not the camera? IRL the flowers are pink, not orchid, to match the pink panel underneath the grid. And what a great grid border it is. It is a Simon Says die which they no longer make and I know so many of you wish they would bring it back. Maybe someone out there knows someone at SSS who can make that happen. Eh? 

The sediment is from IFW, heat-embossed in clear. The fun and whimsical flowers are from MFT's "Build-able Bouquet." As you can see, my little helper was very generous with his glossification, which he managed to do during the Olympics commercials.

Challenges

• AAA Birthday: Photo inspiration.
  
• Cardz 4 Galz: Dies and/or punches.
  
• Color Hues: Yellow and pink.
• Uniko: Flowers

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy, but keep safe! LITS!*

Our air conditioner pooped out yesterday, so we are waiting for a repairman to come and tell us what the problem is.🤞💵 

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!)