Holiday Drinkie Poo

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I hope you are all safe and sound and not impacted by the hurricanes and their aftermath. 🙏

I've got a QACAS card for you. I'm working on preparing birthday cards for family and friends through to the end of the year (so I can concentrate solely on making Christmas cards), but then I got detracted by some challenges and made this:

This cute martini and recipe are from Your Next Stamp's "Mini Holiday Martini" set. I heat-embossed the image in white, Ziggied in red, and then Hammy added gloss to the drink and Santa hat. You'll have to trust me on that. To finish I smudged a white border all around.

Challenges

• Alphabet: M is for magic.
• Peace on Earth: Red/white photo inspiration board.
• Krafty Chicks: All occasions.
  
• Rudolph Days: A/G Christmas.

Cranberry Margarita (from Gimme Some Oven)

• 
  1 1/2 cups cranberry juice
• 3/4 cup fresh lime juice
• 3/4 cup tequila
• 1/2 cup orange-flavored liqueur
• ice cubes

1. Stir all ingredients together until blended.  Serve over ice in either sugar-rimmed or salt-rimmed glasses, garnished with fresh cranberries and lime wedges if desired.

And if you don't have all those things, a good ol' cranberry juice and wodka on the rocks is very refreshing. Good for Thanksgiving, too! Or for no reason!

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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! 

*Life is too short!

More Schparkle!

Hello Stamplings!

Happy first day of fall - or autumn, if that's your love language for the time of year when Mother Nature slips quietly into her dressing room as the moon rises each night and then surprises us each morning with leaves of warm gold, auburn, amber, and maroon ~ and every nuanced shade in between. 🍂💛

Onefer

I've had this sweet NBUS bag die for as long as it takes to grow a human baby. I'm so tickled to have finally used it ... isn't it the cutest? It's called "Flat Paper Bag Die" and it's from Waffle Flower. The flowers are from Memory Box, called "Glorious Gerber Daisies," and I cut them from schparkly gold glitter paper. I used a fuchsia glitter paper to cut a second flower and interchanged the flower centers. I used a fuchsia ink color to stamp the wee sediment on the gift tag from My Creative Time. (I used a piece of pp for the background.) Done.

Then I noticed Hammy was looking at the monitor with his head cocked to the side in that, "are-you-sure-you're-done" stance. At which point I lifted both my shoulders up to my ears in the international symbol for "huh?" 

I can't tell you the exact gesture Hammy returned my way, but he knows who butters his bread, so heaving a long-suffering sigh, he scampered over to the vellum folder. Aha! Of course! Tissue paper for the finish!

Challenges

• The Flower Challenge: Add sparkle.
  
• Simon Says Monday: Sparkle and shine.
  
• Snippets Playground: A/G, using snippets. I used snippets of gold and fuchsia glitter paper, white linen paper, and colored vellum.

Twofers

I went on a 3D shopping spree at Simon Says Stamp a few months ago and today I'm breaking out the "Fall Foliage" embossing folder. It is so fabulously detailed and I wanted it to stand out, so I simply added a die-cut leaf from Impression Obsession and finished with twine or ribbon. I made several using different leaf shapes, papers, and colors. I opted not to use sediments so as not to crowd the visual or change the design and plus, without a sediment, I can use them for many occasions, including Thanksgiving.

Challenges 

• Alphabet: L is for Leaves.
  
• Can You Handle the Pressure?: A/G with a twist of fall.
  
• Four Seasons: A/G Fall. Happy First Anniversary!

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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! 

Some of us have recently had problems with Bloglovin'. I was able to put it back on my side bar as a place for you to subscribe and be notified when I publish a new post. I have also added a Subscribe form for you to use, if you prefer. Thank you!

And thank goodness for this fresh-groomed stress-reliever:

Nellie

*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!)

Gesso and Shine!

Hello Stamplings!

Look it's me again already! I have had a few good days and took advantage of it to play in some favorite challenges. Put on your sunglasses!

Onefer

This card is for CAS Mix Up. This month the challenge is hosted by Hilary and the prompt is to use gesso with a stencil. I'm not gonna lie, I bungled a bunch of paper having a play with gesso. It's not difficult to work with, just sometimes things go awry. Or amiss. Or askew. You gotta love words. Where awas I? Oh, yes, gesso. 

(The word gesso is red-underlined throughout the draft of this post, indicating it is misspelled. I right-clicked on gesso to see what was wrong with my spelling, only to find out that Blogger thinks I'm trying to type the word gestapo!)

For this make, I pounced gesso through a Funky Fossil stencil and let it dry. Like mashed potatoes, I over-indulged a bit with the gesso, but I still liked the result. Of all the videos I watched about various ways to use gesso, I chose to spray color over the dry gesso'd panel. I used my NBUS Wendy Vecchi Mica Sprays in cornflower blue, buttercup, and pearl. Well to be honest, since the bottles are small, Hammy did the schpraying. Both panel and hamster are ablaze with schparkle.

I'm not sure why, but some of the spray was not resisted by the gesso. Anyone? Anyway, as if that schparkle wasn't enough, I added the gesso panel to a shiny gold card base which I embossed with SU's Subtle e/f. The die-cut sediment was in my stash, made from a snippet of Brusho'd Yupo paper.

Twofer

I don't know if it was the black card background or what, but I couldn't capture the brightness of all that gold even in the sunlight. This is one of my favorite poinsettia stamps. It is "Festive Poinsettia" from Altenew. I made similar cards last year because it's very QACAS with the simple gold-embossed image and sediment. A stitched gold frame finished it off ... as well as allowing Hammy free reign with a wee paintbrush and pot of watered down gold ink.

Challenges

• CAS Christmas: Hosted by Hideko. Prompt: Sparkle and/or Shine.
  
• HLS Christmas: Anything Goes with the option of Metallic.
  
• Jingle Belles: My Sweet Embossable You! (Heat-embossing.)

Texting While Old

Here's a funny thing I do and I'm wondering if you do it, too: whenever I write a text message to someone on my cell phone, as I'm hitting send I look up to the top to see if I'm sending it to the person I intend.

As.I'm.hitting.send.

Which, of course, is too late if you're sending it to the wrong person! Every time I do it, I think what a moron I am ... yet every time that's what I do!😄

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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!

*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!)

Late Summer Blues

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I hope you're doing well! 

The world is paying tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II. She was beloved and her long reign was historical. During her 70 years as Monarch, she dealt with 15 UK Prime Ministers, 14 US Presidents, and 7 Popes. Whether you're a fan of royalty or not, that's remarkable.

Back here at home, our heat has finally broken. Only 106 today and going down from here. It's been a long two weeks. The migraines continue, but I'm hoping they will subside as the weather cools off.

As such, I haven't felt very creative. Today's onefer was made months ago.

It showcases "faux tearing" and it's something we did during one of our Zoom sessions. It's just as simple as it looks. You tear several strips of scratch paper so the tear lines are not the same and then use them as masks while you blend your inks. The floral image is NBUS from Paper Artsy HP1009. We got our inspiration from Karen Dunbrook and her wonderful blog, Snippets!

Note: Karen stamped her silhouette stamp and then clear heat-embossed it. I thought, heck, I can skip that step, but now I wish I hadn't. Clear heat-embossing really darkens and sharpens the black ink to make the image stand out against the strong background colors. Lesson learned. Slap. Don't do what I done.

Twofer

I had a request for a ganome birthday card so I used challenges to guide my design. I used an old e/f for the background and a Simon Says ganome for the, well, ganome. You can barely see that I inked all around the edge of the card with lime green ink. The birthday gift die from PTI is also old. And to round out the ancientivity of the elements, the conversation bubble die is an oldie, also from PTI. I think. It's escaped its wrapping. 

I usually take the blame for that because of how I remove the packaging to organize my products, but truthfully, sometimes Hammy takes the packaging for stuffing his mattress. He finds the crinkling noises to be soothing. Shudder.

Challenges

• Color Hues: #48 and 2nd Birthday! Joining with Seize the Birthday with colors Navy and Lime Green and a birthday theme. Congratulations on your second birthday!
• Seize the Birthday: Joining with Color Hues to celebrate their second birthday with the colors navy and lime green.
• Snippets Playground: A/G using your snippets. I used snippets for the gnome, present, and sediment bubble.

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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!)