Bumble Bees and Swirling Silver Snowflakes

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well! I've been busy traveling, having guests, and working in the garden. No, I haven't. That's a bold-faced lie. 

I don't know where time goes. I blame Covid. Ever since it arrived on the scene, I swear huge chunks of my time just evaporate. Or else I'm not just taking daily naps, I'm taking wide-awake naps sitting at my desk! I asked Hammy, but he didn't answer because he was napping. You see what I mean?!

But, hey, I did manage to make a coupla really complicated, colored, and layered card designs to share. Nope. Stop lying. Slap.

Onefer

How cute is this? And go me for using such ancient goodies! The NBUS sediment is from Paper Smooches. I gold heat-embossed it onto the card base under the vellum: 

Then I overlaid the pretty piece of vellum from Hot Off the Press over the card base. The dotty border and blue-winged bees are printed on it. Over that I attached a resin bee charm that I've had for ages. QACAS!

Challenges

• Less Is More: Use vellum.
• Cardz 4 Galz: 3 of anything (bees).
• Perfectly CAS: Emboss.

Twofer

For this design I used one of several NBUS (😏) 3D embossing folders I purchased from Simon Says Stamp recently. This one is cleverly called, "Swirling Snowflakes." I have too many sheets of beautiful glittery paper which I find difficult to use, but these 3D e/fs work beautifully with any color! The metal sediment says, "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas." I intertwined the silver and white ribbon (ribbon!!) through it and added a snowflake brooch cut in silver.

Challenges

• Rudolph Days: Anything Goes Christmas. Squeaaaaking in!
  
• Addicted to Stamps and More: Christmas.
  
• Can You Handle the Pressure? Anything Goes (without the optional twist).
  
• Peace on Earth: Christmas. What do we see in every photo on the mood board? Snowflakes!
  

(Hammy has the long Labor Day weekend off. He's gone to visit a friend over on the cool coast because it's going to be 100°-109° here for the next week.)

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I stole this funny from Facebook for your enjoyment!

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

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse, being a follower, and leaving me some love!

*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!)

Mint and Pine in the Summertime

Hello Stamplings!

How are you on this fine day? You feel like you are winning just making it through one fine day after another, don't you? Yay, go us! And isn't it fun that 'go us' are the letters that bookend the word 'gorgeous?!'

Onefer

This one-layer clean and simple design features my NBUS stamp set from PTI called "Friend Til The End." I white heat-embossed the flower and painted it with my Ziggies in lime and brown. Then I stamped the sediment in brown and Hammy winked the flower to a fare-thee-well. 

Interesting side note: Fare-thee-well originally meant 'goodbye' or 'I fare you well' on parting. Over time it has evolved to mean 'the utmost degree' or 'a state of perfection,' which is ideal for describing Hammy's winking skills!

Challenges

• Less Is More: One-layer favourite flower.
• Color Hues: Chocolate and mint.
  
• The Flower Challenge: Circle/Circles.

Twofer/Threefer

I have made designs in the past that are similar to these, but I have not posted them. They are perfect for the current CAS Christmas Card Challenge where the prompt is "Pine." I love the look of copper with lots of white. I also love bronze e-p. And platinum e/p. I should use my metallic e/ps more often. Hammy, fetch your Bulletin Board of Reminders! Oh, sorry. I forgot there's no more space on it.

Update From Last Post

I made it through my Reading List and deleted over a thousand blogs because they had been closed for at least a year.😧 Oddly, a great many closed in 2015 and 2017. The process was very bittersweet and left me feeling melon collie. As I visited each blog, I recognized the faces, took a trip down memory lane, and was left wondering how they are now.

Bear with me as I come up with a new routine of checking out my Reading List each day to try and keep up with you. I have added Follow It to my side bar as another way for you to follow me. I will also start an email list for friends who don't blog so I can let you know when I publish a new post. I have a few names already, but let me know (if you see this!) via email if you want to be on that list. [darnell dot knauss at gmail dot com.] Thank you! Mwah!

Aaah Bless!

Warning: I know some of you don't like squirrels, so look away!

Our temperature was 104 degrees a coupla days ago. I was happy we had the bird bath filled for our feathered friends ~ and once in a while for our friends who wear fur coats! 

Immediately after lapping up his fill, this guy collapsed into his chillax pose! We had a stare-down contest through the window of the Playhouse until he got bored with me and moved on.                                                      

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

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse, being a follower, and leaving me some love! Remember that August 25 is Kiss-and-Make-Up-Day. I couldn't find it anywhere on the Interwebs, but doesn't it follow that August 24th must be Pick-a-Fight Day?🥊

*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!)

A Range and A Ramble

Hello Stamplings!

I hope this finds you well or on your way there! 

We saw the grandtwins yesterday and heard all about their college tours, so that was fun! In between doing summery things and a newly discovered project, I made a coupla four cards for challenges. During the summer, the participation in challenges is naturally lower because people are off stuck in airports on vacation, so I like to make a point of playing when I can. Grab a drinkiepoo. ☕🍹

Onefer and Twofer

You can prolly tell that these two cards were created from one large poinsettia stamped image from Waltzingmouse. I white heat-embossed it which created an emboss-resist, so I could paint it with watercolor brushes and stay within the pretty lines. After wards, I cut the image in half to make two cards. Hammy had a blast creating matching red and gold schplatters on each. 

Challenges

• CAS Mix Up: My friend Brenda is the Guest Designer this month and my friend Nancy is the hostess. The prompt is Emboss Resist. Besides embossing, my designs included stamping, die-cutting, watercoloring, and splattering.
• SSS Monday: Spritz and Splatter.
• SSS Wednesday: Emboss It.

Threefer

This W-O-W design is pretty self-exploratory, although I don't know why one pine cone looks yellowish. The background evergreen embossing folder is from Sizzix. The die cut branches and pine cones were in my bits box so I'm not sure who makes them. The sediment is from Winnie & Walter. 

Challenges

• CAS Christmas: The prompt is Pine, hosted by Trina
• Addicted to Stamps and More: Die Cuts and/or Stencils.

Fourfer

This QACAS design features an old NBUS butterfly from Butterfly Trio by Penny Black. You can't tell, but the card base is glossy. I wanted to see if it would work if I colored the butterfly directly with markers and stamped it. I liked how ethereal it turned out. I added the sediment from Concord & 9th and a thin black frame.

Challenges

• Just Us Girls: Butterflies.
• Less Is More: Butterflies.
• Krafty Chicks: Stamp Act.
• NBUS: Never-Before-Used-Schtuff.
  

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My New Project

Remember back in the spring of 2021 when the word went out that Feedburner was closing and they would no longer be handling blog subscriptions? A lot of us added Bloglovin' or Follow It or other third-parties to our side bars to replace Feedburner. But in reality, I continued to receive notices when people published their posts. Life went on pretty much as usual.

That all changed on August 1, 2022, when I opened my laptop and crickets jumped out. Instead of waking up to a daily average of between 50-100 emails, there were less than a dozen! Where did everybody go? I was shocked and I am continuing to be shocked every day since then. It's like most of the neighborhood moved out in the middle of the night and left me.

If you're using WordPress, or a mail service like Bloglovin', I still get your publication notices. If you're not, I can still find you again ~ that sounded stalky, lol! I just need to go back to my Reading List, but the problem is, my Reading List is not up-to-date. (Your Reading List contains those blogs you have followed using the blue Followers button. You can find your Reading List in the left-hand column of your Dashboard.) 

Because I was very good about following blogs and making friends over the last ten plus years, my Reading List contains 2,262 blogs!! I had no idea! Of course, a bunch of those blogs are prolly inactive now, so the list needs to be cleaned out. I really miss not getting your posts, so this is going to be a priority for me now. It will no doubt take me quite a while. BTW, I need to clean my list up regardless, but if there is something else going on, please let me know. 

I'll be back and until then, enjoy your days! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

*Life is too short!

Flowers and Friends

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome and Happy August! Of all the names of months which people give to their children, August is one of my favorites. Doesn't it sound distinguished? A boy would hate it, but you just know he is going to grow up professor smart, smoking a pipe, and wearing a sportcoat with leather elbows. Of course, rightly so, nobody is smoking a pipe anymore (nor blazers like that), but I always liked the look. Okay, Boomer.

(The Mister was trying to be hip and used that expression yesterday, but it came out, "Okay, Beemer." I mean, honestly, how perfect that a Boomer messed that up? We're both still giggling about it.)

Onefer Trois

For today's presentation, I am back in my NBUS flower box. Are you ashamed that you have stamps from years ago that have never been inked? Don't be! NBUS is the support group for all of us. We don't judge here.

Thank goodness, because the set I used for my cards today is from 2016, small cough. It's from the Butterfly Kisses set by Mama Elephant:

I stamped and die-cut three images which I watercolored with my Ziggies in different color families and then Hammy winked them to high heaven. I went uber clean and simple for the peachy tones and then rummaged in my backgrounds box for the other two designs: inky schplatters and borders of Washi for the blue, and a blended debossed e/f for the orange.

Twofer

The flowers on this card are from "Oh Happy Day" by Taylored Expressions. The sediment set was borrowed from a friend in Oregon and because I don't have it, I think I either gave that cute frame die away or it was a long-ago gift from another friend.

With this card I am joining fellow bloggers in a tribute to Lindsey Martin-Penny who passed away recently after a long battle with ovarian cancer. Her blog was Bashful Blogging and we became friends in 2014. Lindsey served on the design teams of several of my favorite challenges and she left the best comments and emails! She was a hoot with a wonderful sense of humor and she will be terribly missed. 

Color Hues and Seize the Birthday are joining together for this tribute. They would like you to share your Lindsey-inspired designs using her favorite blue and purple colors. Thank you to both teams.

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I have to share this gorgeous young Cooper's Hawk who landed in the garden last week. I was so happy that he stayed there for a few minutes while I grabbed my phone!

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

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse, being a follower, and leaving me some love! Remember that Thursday is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day! 🍪🍪🍪

*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!)