NBUS Flowers II

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you're doing great as we run headlong into May! As one month rapidly comes to an end, I'm constantly reaching up and lifting the page of my wall calendar to see what I have coming up the first week of the next month. Right? I should find myself a calendar that has the whole month and the first week of the next month on the same page. I'm pretty sure someone has thought of that before. 

Even with the birds and bees and lizards entertaining me through the window, I've kept on track in the Playhouse. I've got lots to share today, so here we go.

Three

The NBUS flower on this design is a die from Memory Box called "Dreamy Freesia." I had the cutout NBUS frame in my BOB (box of bits) and I found a snippet of the same textured paper and cut the freesia to match. The frame is from Altenew and it's called "Leaf Frame Cover Die."

The background came from BOB also. It's from a Zoom class a long time ago where we blended ink on glossy/photo paper and then used baby wipes to polish. Hammy sprayed water over it with the tiny water gun he got from Adam and Henry. I love how dreamy the card turned out, considering the name of the flower die.

Four(s)

The NBUS flower stamp silhouette used above is from North Coast Creations, called "Something Marvelous." I made four of them to use up more of the floating alcohol backgrounds I showed you the other day. I was really pleased at how well the Archival ink dried on the Yupo paper after leaving the images sitting on the window sill for several days. (Kudos to Hammy for not knocking them off the sill!) The pierced frame is from Papertrey Ink.

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This similar NBUS silhouette stamp is also from North Coast Creations. This one is called "Heaven's Masterpiece" and it is also stamped on an AI bath background. The NBUS sediment is from Waffle Flowers "Elegant Sentiments" and the stitched die is from Reverse Confetti. 

I am very sad to say that I will be sending this card to the husband of a dear blogging friend, Suzy "Ike" Eisenhower (Ike's World). Ike and I met through What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday (WOYWW) and she left her first comment on my blog on May 1, 2013. It was the beginning of a lovely friendship. She was immensely talented, extremely thoughtful, and well-loved. She died too young after a valiant battle with cancer and she will be greatly missed. RIP Ike.

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Cards For Ukraine 🇺🇦

We've been making cards to show our support of Ukraine and now I'm happy to say that we have a place to actually send our cards so that they will be received by Ukrainian soldiers to lift their spirits! Yana has the information on her blog or you can go directly to Free Ukraine 2022, "Cards for Soldiers," for all the necessary information and the collection address in Arizona. Thank you Denzil for providing this service for those of us who want to contribute! 💛🙏💙

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* Thank you for spending so much time with me today.

*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!)

Let's Make a New Plan, Clan!

Hello Stamplings,

How're you doing? How is the change of seasons treating you, whatever part of the world you're living in? Mother Nature can be a force, but I do love that we have four seasons to keep things interesting and fresh.

Speaking of keeping things interesting, I've decided I need to change up how I create because I'm in a rut. I wish I knew how to make and upload videos for this post, but even if I did, I'd talk too much and the video would be too long and I'd take the train off onto sidings and around curves and we'd get lost and ain't nobody got time for that.

So here's the thing, which I think I've told you before. I love flower card designs that other artists make. I love flower stamps and dies. Over the years, I have amassed more flower stamps and dies than any other type. In my row of cabinets, one whole cabinet is dedicated to flowers:

Here's the second thing. Considering the above display of outrageous commercialism, you'd think I would mostly make flower designs, wouldn't you? In fact, I rarely do. I'm such a goose. I have had this goal to change the situation for at least four years now, but I've successfully ignored it. 

Now, because I've had to take a break for health reasons, I'm finding it hard to jump back into my former routine, so I thought this would be a good time to change things up. And, if I make my plans public, maybe I will hold myself accountable and stick to it. I'm also making it public because some of you might be in a Rudderless Rut, too, and maybe you would like to join me with your own twist and tackle that creative thing you never get around to or you've been putting off. We can be support systems for each other!

To begin, I went through all the drawers in the Flower Cabinet and pulled out every stamp set and die that is NBUS. I mean, to me, it just makes sense to first use those things that I've purchased, or been given, and never used. I'm a bit embarrassed to show you how much schtuff there is:

Yes, this is going to take awhile. There are over 50 items in those baskets 😯 and that's after I pulled out things to give away. (Hoard much?) I hope to make my designs different enough and interesting enough that you won't get sick of the focus pocus always being flowers. 

My plan is to use challenges as inspiration (because I appreciate them and don't want them to close) and/or to finally CASE (copy and share everything) some of the wonderful flower designs I have saved over the years.

One.

For this card, I started with a design that I wanted to CASE. I have literally hundreds of saved cards in my To-CASE folder so even picking one to start with was a process. I chose this beauty made by Marika Rahtu:

Marika is SO talented, but she is no longer blogging or on IG. I do hope she is okay and that she comes back at some point to share her enormous talent in Blogland. To CASE Marika's card, I chose my NBUS Penny Black cling stamp called, "Full of Glee." For my coloring, I chose my inspiration from the current Color Hues challenge of purple and green. I am also entering the TIME OUT challenge (spring) and the Penny Black Saturday Challenge (A/G with option of Easter).

Two.

Okay, so that felt really good, but I felt like I wasn't really giving the beautiful PB stamp the full exposure it deserves, so I made another card. This time I CASEd Lolly. She has done many wonderful designs using this stamp and I chose this one:

For my color inspiration, I chose yellow from Colorful Options challenge for April. I am also entering Seize the Birthday (with the option of spring) and the Alphabet Challenge (B is for Blooms). Here is my card:

This reminds me of how freckled I used to get in the summertime. I want to make it clear that the over-exuberance of schplatters is not Hammy's fault. Everything was fine until I suggested he do one more high-jump off the paint brush and there you have it. Oh, well, you can never have too much gold, right? Or is that diamonds?

ETA: Thanks to my friend Cat, I'm also entering Challenge Up Your Life where the prompt is splatters! 

I have to say, today was fun and I'm off to pull another item out of the basket! Wish me luck. I'd love to hear if you join me or if you are working on your own way to recharge your batteries ~ both in terms of creating and in sharing on your blog.

~~~

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!)

Alcoholink Floaters

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I hope you've had a great week, a great holiday weekend, and a wonderful spring break! I'm doing fine now and we enjoyed having the family and dear friends for Easter dinner. It was very nice to be together again after a two-year Covidelay. 

Even though I haven't been blogging much, I have been happily making cards over the past few weeks when I felt well enough. I made several dozen designs using my BOB (box of bits), which is always enjoyable and productive. It's amazing how panels and die-cuts and partial images will accrue in a short amount of time ~ rather like NBUS!

This past week I've been making cards from panels that I made during a craft Zoom session where we floated in an alcoholic ink bath. You can imagine the beautiful colors of my tub now! I'm joking, but it is tempting ...

Onefer

If floating paper in a bath of alcohol inks is new to you, here is a video link: Andy Skinner. I made the two above designs using Yupo paper which gives the colorful panels a lovely sheen.

Twofer

It's been a while since I made these AI panels, but if I remember right, we next tried creating patterns in the ink as soon as the panels were pulled from the bath. Here are two examples using bubble wrap:

And then, because there was ink on the bubble wrap, I grabbed some vellum and smooched a coupla panels which I made into QACAS cards like this:

I noticed that the pattern left by the patterned bubble wrap was in the pattern of a partial heart, so I added a simple love die-cut sediment. The vellum was folded over and attached to the tent card at the top and then left to hang free over the front. 

I do seem to have a penchant for blue, green, and gold, don't I? Just to surprise you, I also bathed in some yellows and reds, but I'll share those cards another day. It's an easy and fun technique and before you know it you'll find yourself with 20-30 panels which can be turned into pretty cards.

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I'll leave you with a terrific family photo from Easter:

Wait. What? Did we forget to take photos AGAIN?! I hope you did better!

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

Oh, just out of curiosity, are you playing Wordle? As you can imagine, Hammy and I are obsessed and it's now become a part of the daily morning routine. Some days it's just pure luck because the winning word could be one of many similar words! There are knock-off games out there now, but the original official game can be found at nytimes.com/games/wordle. You don't need to download anything or have an app!

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and letting me know you did. 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!)

Golden Threads and Rainbow Colors

Hello Stamplings,

I hope this finds you doing well and you aren't being blown away by the wind. I'm a very fortunate lady to have friends all around the world and talking about the fierceness of the wind is one thing (besides crafting) that has been consistent in our correspondence the last few years. Batten down your hatches! And if you don't have a hatch, have a drinkie-poo!

I had to jump in and play with Ina's Trend Week challenge at Just Us Girls where she wants us to use foil on our alcohol ink panels. Here's a portion of the panel Hammy and I created.

I decided to make an Easter card for those of you who celebrate, so I used a PTI oval to cut eggs from the panel to use on my card:

Very simples. The grass is a die from Poppystamps cut in three different colors for some dementia. Also playing in:

Double D: Easter.

Pixie's Snippets Playground: A/G, but must use snippets, which I did for pieces of Yupo and grass.

Poppystamps: Add texture.

Twofer

I made this simples card a while back using some of that gorgeous gold-outlined pp pad that I received from a dear friend. I was chuffed to find a piece of colored card that matched the beautiful shade of green in the pattern. The beautiful font sediment die is also from Poppystamps.

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Then This Happened

A botched visit to a plastic surgeon for lip fillers? Haha, no, thank you! This young woman is unnamed in an article I found on the interwebs about angioedema. I wanted you to see what the lips did and not be distracted by all the age spots and winkles I have. But my lips do look like that. I woke up that way this morning. Spider bite maybe? I hadn't eaten anything out of the ordinary.

I took a couple of Benadryl, but my upper lip did not diminish in size so we headed to the emergency room at noon. The doctor recognized it as a symptom of an Ace Inhibitor type of medication I take for heart disease and he took me off it immediately. Then he gave me a cocktail in my arm (what's the fun in that?) of all magical things that would make my lips return to normal size. Five hours later and nothing had happened so he sent me home.

Hopefully, it will just take another coupla days to get better and it won't get worse in terms of my tongue and throat swelling, too, which can happen. We don't want that. That would be very bad.

Gee, so far 2022 has blanked the blank and blank. But it will get better! It always does! Hold on and Happy Easter!

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!)

Knock, Knock!

Hello Stamplings!

It's me! I've missed you and it's so great to be back! I wasn't planning on being gone so long, but when it comes to health, plans can go out the window. First of all, thank you for your notes, cards, calls, and comments sending me your best wishes and cheering me on! Mwah!

Being back in the Playhouse creating, even for short periods, has done wonders for my mental health. I have even managed a coupla cards to share! My mojo juices were running low, so I turned to challenges for the schpark I needed to get them flowing. As ever, thank you challenge teams!

Onefer

This NBUS Altenew stamp and die set is called "Book Club." I stamped the image in black, heat-embossed it in clear, and painted with watercolors. There are several fun stamps for the center circle to use in a book or a journal, but I bought it just because I loved the flowers, composition, and versatility for any card sediment. 

Wow, you might think, that's a lot of schplattering, but I know you understand that poor Hammy, after five weeks of no winking and no schplattering, had an absolute inky blast and I let him go until he tuckered himself out. 

(In case you wondered, I didn't think it was fair for Hammy to be listless and bored while I was laid up, so I arranged for him to visit all his offspring and their offspring and their offspring ... let's just say he was always on the go and I think he's quite relieved to be home. My productivity will be low for a while yet, which is just fine with him!)

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Make your mark.
  
• Color Hues: Pink and green.
  
• HLS Watercolour: A/G.

Twofer

As I was looking through my challenge list, I happened to notice another, similar challenge in Blogland, so I stamped and heat-embossed another image to make this pink and gold Easter card. This time Hammy happily winked the flowers and then, while he was napping, I added some subtle gold schplatters to keep the card CAS.

Challenges

• Four Seasons: A/G Spring.
  
• Less is More: Pink and gold.
  
• Perfectly CAS: Die cuts.

Nurse Nellie

So what happened was, the hip replacement surgery went well, but about a week after wards, all my autoimmune maladies played up and set back my recovery. (Today's challenge: use malady in a sentence. It's such a lovely word, much nicer than disease or ailment.)

Anywhizzle, things settled down little by little and I often found myself rejoicing to have finally "turned the corner!" Then, oops, I discovered as I kept turning corners that I was actually in a maze! A maze zing! But I persevered and then wallah, I found my way out!

Part of the process of recovering is to walk, walk, walk. My doctor starts his patients out on a walker, then on to a cane, and then just your own two feet. As many of you know, before my surgery, The Mister, Nellie, and I walked between one and two miles every morning. I wish you could see how becited Nellie gets when it's time to walk! She LOVES it. So, of course, she struggled to understand the change in our daily routine.

As I did my laps around the house, I would pass through the living room where Nellie was on the coach, er, couch. One day I used the magic "walk?" word and said, "C'mon, walk with me." Well, I didn't have to ask her twice and from that point on, several times a day she followed behind me up the hall, through the main part of the house, and back down the hall. Rinse repeat. It was adorable and she helped keep me going!

I will try and get back on a schedule and make a plan in terms of crafting, blogging, and visiting little-by-little.

And then there's the fact that I'm a huge fan of spring cleaning. Do you get that bug in the spring?

I think it's something I carried over from growing up in the Midwest where winters can be long and harsh. It was just the best feeling when the weather warmed up so the windows could all be opened and everything was washed from top to bottom while the fresh air blew through! I think it will feel especially good this year. Being able to keep our own affairs and belongings in order brings a sense of calm, productivity, and accomplishment in a time when there is so much turmoil in the world.

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

*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!)