It's Trifecta Holiday Time!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you have been doing well wherever you are and whatever seasonal change you are experiencing. Our hemisphere has been having xtreme weather again. We actually got over three inches of rain, unseasonably early for us, but we badly need it. Others, sadly, had wind and flood damage and my heart goes out to them.

Here in America, we are heading into the Trifecta of Holidays. First up is Halloween this weekend, followed four little weeks later by Thanksgiving, followed four little weeks later by Christmas. Followed by my usual 13.5 pound weight gain. It would be so much easier if these holidays weren't all within such a short time, but I wasn't home the day they called for my opinion on the matter.😄

For this post, I only feature two of the holidays, starting with two Christmas cards:

Are these NBUS critters from the MFT Picture Perfect set guinea pigs or hamsters? Not sure, but no matter, they are darlin' either way, so Hammy and I are declaring they are one of each! I chose the frame and coloring to play in the Color Hues kraft and red challenge, only to just discover that it ended this morning. Oops, I guess I need my head eyes examined.

Besides the sediment declaring this a Christmas design, I tried to change the sunflower seed into an ornament. Now, I'm thinking it looks more like a flask, but, hey, that's festive, too right? Maybe they had a long day planned dropping off Christmas gifts to all the relatives (hamsters and guinea pigs tend to have a LOT of relatives!) and it was cold and they needed a little nip of brandy now and then to sustainsiatate them.

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Christmas.
• Cardz 4 Guyz: Animal (actual or animated).
• Jingle Belles: Not a creature was stirring.
• Peace on Earth: Anything goes with an inspiration board.
  

Twofer

This card is art and function. Whoever gets it in the mail this holiday can always use it to light the way if the electricity goes off! I chose this pretty snowflake frame from GKW to paper-piece in metallic gold and blue to join in the October Rudolph Days Challenge. Mo is dedicating this month's challenge to Kath of Plain and Simple, who passed away a few months ago. Kath was a well-known friend to many of us and she loved paper-piecing. I love it, too. It's fiddly, but so satisfying. I finished it with a simple vellum sediment from Penny Black.

Challenges

• Christmas Kickstart: Make one for a loved one.
  
• HLS Christmas: Anything goes.
  
• SSS Wednesday: Anything goes.

Happy Halloween!

I don't make a lot of Halloween cards and this silly card is my fav this year, even though it happened by accident. What happened was, I made a few cards using the ghosts from poppystamps Groups of Ghosts. I pushed out their eyeballs and tossed them off to the side because the ghosts are intended to be sheets with empty eye-holes cut out. 

Well, I happened to push them onto a piece of discarded black card and, thankfully, Hammy looked up just then from sewing his pirate costume and he noticed how cute the eyeballs looked all by themselves on the black paper! I added a white-inked sediment and I used a NBUS embossing folder for a little texture. (It's hard to see, but it is a large conversation bubble.) 

Challenges

• HLS CAS: One-Layer.
  
• The Male Room: Black and white.
  
• Two Old Bats: Anything Halloween.

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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! 

Thank you, too, for your continued patience and all your kind emails. I'm making lots of progress on the To Dew list, making Christmas cards, and I've had a confirmed diagnosis on the hip. Just awaiting word now on a date for surgery, which won't be for some months because everything is lackbogged. Same as everywhere, so can't complain!

*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!)

This'n That

Hello Stamplings!

It feels like forever since we saw each other and I hope you are doing great! I have been making cards using my schtuff and building my schtash. Not much NBUS schtuff, in spite of my best-laid plans, but I am using a lot of BOB schtuff. Sometimes I think Hammy is up all night making more backgrounds and die-cuts cuz BOB (box o' bits) never seems to get any thinner!

I needed to take a break from that, however, so I made a couple of challenge cards.

Onefer

The CAS Mix Up Challenge is all about making prints with botanicals. There are lots of ways to do that, fun ways that I want to try, but for this session I simply picked some botanicals from the yard and ran them through my Gemini Jr. I had a fail using lantana, fared a little better with a germanium leaf, but the one that worked best was a spring I cut from my huge asparagus fern. (That's what I call it; I'm not sure if that's correct.) Here's the actual plant:

The red bits on the card are from little white flowers on the plant. Pressing it left a bit of liquid smudge, but nothing as bad as the lantana which oozed green goo everywhere ~ thankfully, not inside my Gemini! I immediately thought the fern print looked like an evergreen tree branch so I adorned it with the "Merry Ornament" die from poppystamps and made it a Christmas card. Hammy added schparkle with his winker.

Challenges

• CAS Mix Up Card Challenge: Botanical prints, hosted by Bonnie.
  
• Christmas Kickstart: Make one for a loved one.
  
• Krafty Chicks: Christmas.

Twofer

I've made a huge stack of cards using the metallic 3D images which I became addicted to making a few weeks ago. I'm sure you'll see more in future posts. This metallic plum color is NOT ombre, but I just love how the sunlight turned it that way! The NBUS e/f is "Art Deco" from Sizzix and the stacked sediment is from STAMPlorations. QACAS at its best!

Challenges

• AAA Cards: Challenge #200 ~ Celebrate! Congratulations and thank you!
  
• Day of the Month Club: It's my party!
  
• HLS Anything Goes With Dies.

Schtuff

I want to apologize for my lack of visits and comments. This whole year has been weird in so many ways. It's gone by quickly, but it's still been a drag not getting back to normal like we all had hoped. Plus, lately we've had a lot going on with home projects and health problems and doing some purging. 

As I mentioned, I am making cards when I can, but I haven't had the time or energy to blog them and that's unusual for me. I think this will be the case for a while as I continue to work on Christmas cards, go to appointments, etc., but I do hope to pop back now and then if I happen to see a challenge that I can't resist. (I don't want Hammy to be so bored that he blogs without me, offering up his services. I know you would grab him up in a sec!)

Years ago I was a bit of a collector and I had tons of fun visiting antique stores and jumbles on our vacations. I collected really old books and salt and pepper shakers and high-end depression glass called Heisey. Now I'm purging a lot of that kind of schtuff and I'm wondering if any of you would be interested in salt and pepper shakers? A lot of them are collectible Shawnee shakers. 

Here's a photo that's not the best. I'll try and get a better one and drop it in here if I do, but I think you get the idea:

I see there is a large cat creamer in there, too. If you are interested in anything, drop me an email at darnell dot knauss at g mail dot com.

Needless to say, I'm keeping these cute hamster ones, which I didn't even realize I had. Slap! They are now in the Playhouse and Hammy chatters away to them like they are real! Wonder who he gets that from?!

Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

Thank you for your patience and for continuing to visit me and leave me your love and your prayers. As Aahnald would say, "I'll be back!"

MWAH!

*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!)

CAS Christmas October GD!

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I hope you enjoyed World Card-Making Day yesterday!

I will echo what everyone else is saying: How can it be October?! Followed by, okay, no more procraftination, it's time to get making those special handmade Christmas cards!

And I'm delighted to be October's Guest Designer at the CAS Christmas Card Challenge to help inspire you to do just that! It's an honor to join an extremely talented group of designers for October and I encourage you to check out their cards for lots of great design ideas!

Onefer

This hilly scene with four trees is one stamp. I found it at a garage sale a coupla years ago in Indiana when I was visiting my friend Brenda. It's a red rubber stamp that had been removed from the wood, so I have no idea who makes it, but we think it looks like it might be an old SU stamp. I masked and heat-embossed one tree in red e/p and then reversed the mask and white heat-embossed the other trees.

While I was doing all that, Hammy operated on the unmarked sediment so that each of the starred words could then be stamped under a hill. We were just pickled at how well that worked out.

Twofer

Because it was so fun using two different e/ps, I made a Twofer. It is self-exploratory, although a bit tricky because the trees are so close together with this stamp. For the intertwined area, I used a Versamark pen. I love the movement and how it feels like Mother Nature opened her hand and blew white snow over just the one tree. Magic! In fact, I wish now that I had used a sediment I have which says, "believe in the magic of Christmas!"

I hope you can join the fun over at the CAS Christmas Card Challenge and I look forward to seeing your beautiful gray and red Christmas card designs! Don't forget if you use something you've never used before, you can also link to NBUS!

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I'm playing in: Christmas Crafts All Year Long (T is for Tree), Happy House, HLS CAS (OLC), Peace on Earth, and SSS Wednesday. 

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p.s. Look who came to have a sleepover with us last night!

Adam, Bama, Henry

I used the excuse that I wanted a photo of my new Hammy t-shirt to get them to accommodate me. (Sorry about the background glare.) Yes, I'm shrinking, but they are very tall! Because of Covid, it's been over two years since they stayed overnight and because of their ages, it might be the last time, so we had a fun and nostalgic time going down Memory Lane. 

It seems like only yesterday that they were little guys who loved spending hours with me in the Playhouse making cards. Here they are making little turkeys for Thanksgiving.

Henry, Adam

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo. I copied it from an old blog post from November 2012. Going back in time on my blog was an adventure in itself!

~~~

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! 

*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!)