Alcohol Inks on Gelli Plates

Hello Stamplings!

How are you? I feel like I've been gone a month! Oh, wait, I pretty much have been gone a month! It's nice to be back! Today's post is all about this month's Group of Seven Cardmakers crafty Zoom session and the results, so I'll give you some highlights of what I've been up to in my next post. 

Christine led the technique this month which involved swishing, swirling, and puffing alcohol inks on Gelli plates shaped like circles, triangles, squares, and rectangles. You can find the detailed instructions and our results on the Group blog.

I purchased a set of three small Gelli plates (a circle, a triangle, and a rectangle) from Amazon. Here are two of my results using the triangle shape:

I always thought Gelli plates were only used by very detailed mixed media style card artists, but as you can see, the technique also works for more clean and simple designs. It really is an easy (and, hence addictive) technique that adds major interest to a design. For the above cards I used the Creative Chaos set from Visible Image.

Here are a couple of the birthday cards I made using the circle Gelli plate:

Hammy was in schplatter heaven!

The 'You Are Loved' card in the first row above was made using glossy paper and the other three above were made using regular cardstock. Finally, for the card below, I used Yupo paper and blue AI and the result cried out for a nautical theme!

Behind the Yupo paper is a piece of pp. The whale and sediment are from a very old PTI set which hasn't seen ink in (cough) years. It has survived many Playhouse purges because it is so darn cute and it was fun to use it again.

And, yes, as you might have guessed, off-camera Hammy and I enjoyed tiny alcoholic drinks and jelly sandwiches while we played. Slurp! I've already sent off some of the cards I made, but you can see that I LOVED this technique and now my birthday card stash is plump again!

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I hope you will check out this fun technique over on the Group of Seven Cardmakers blog! And if you do try it, we would love to have you share your results using the linky tool there! 

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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! Oh, and that tree from my last post is a Redbud tree. Thank you to all of you who let me know!

*Life is too short!

Happy Easter!

Hello Stamplings!

Best wishes to you and yours for a Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Everything! I hope that Mother Nature gives all of us a beautiful day!

I have a few nosegays of croquets for you today. I'm not sure if croquet is the plural of crocus, but I like the sounds of it.

This sweet crocus die is a BotaniCut from The Greetery which you saw recently here. Sometimes fiddly dies are therapeutic and sometimes they get on your last nerve, but I found this die to be a pleasure to fiddle. Mostly because The Greetery very kindly puts a diagram in color on the back of the die so you don't lose the will to live after only doing two flowers. In fact, it was so much fun, I ended up batch-making 25 flowers.

The rest of the design was simples. I used a scalloped and stitched panel from Mama Elephant, an oval scalloped and stitched mat from Cottage Cutz, and a sediment sticker. Hammy was a huge help. His little tiny claws were perfect for removing the dainty sediment sticker from the backing sheet. At first. And then I turned around and there he was with Happy Easter stickers all up in his fur! Bless.

Challenges

• Beautiful Blossoms.
  
• Snippets Playground: I used lots of snippets to make my croci for my Easter cards in pinks, yellows, and greens. Snippets of white or cream were used for the oval scallop mats.
  
• Triple B: April birds, butterflies & blooms. 

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I'll leave you with a couple of photos from our walks this week:

What do you make of the flowers popping straight out from the tree trunk? Perhaps the tree is dying? There are a few flower buds up higher in the branches, but not many. It is beautiful, but odd.

And speaking of odd, how about an odd, but adorable, bunny rabbit fire plug?

People are so clever!

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Thank you all for your good wishes regarding The Mister's back. I'm happy to report it was not as bad as he first thought. After several days of taking it easy and wearing his core brace, he is almost good as new!

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! And so you don't worry, it turns out we have quite a bit of company visiting and appointments coming up, so I may be scarce the rest of the month. 

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!)

Guest Designing With the Snarky Sisters!

Hello Stamplings!

Happy April Fool's Day! This is one of my favorite holidays because I catch The Mister up every single year with some silly lie. 

Sadly, this year my streak is over because yesterday he put his back out really badly. No kidding. Poor guy. I keep telling him a person with a bad back shouldn't put his underpants on by hopping around on one leg at a time. Sooner or later, you know, that foot is going to miss the hole. Pray for me him. Thank you.

My card today is meant to inspire you to play in a very fun challenge in Blogland called Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers! I was fortunate to win recently and I now have the honor of being their Guest Designer! No, it's true. It's not April Foolery. 

The challenge brief is a very timely, "B is for Bunny!" I knew immediately which bunny in my cupboard would be featured!

I laid out my stamps on scratch paper to see whether the drink would fit with the bunny and, goodness, that's a sentence you don't see every day. Even before I had my wodka, I took way too long to figure out whether I should mask the leg of the bunny or the stem of the glass. ❓ Hammy, as always, to the rescue. I'm so lucky he never ages, because my own brain cells are dying off like calculators and checkbooks.

But I digest. On the card front I used a NBUS line stencil from Honey Bee Stamps to lightly blend gray lines. You know that inebriated bunny is going to need something to lean against. A wall "ground," if you will. 

Then I stamped the bunny and then the birthday present martini. Or was it the other way around? Masking is fun. And it gave me a one-layer card, so that's a bonus for mailing!

Then I colored the images, added the appropopo sediment from MFT, and Hammy went to town with his winker. Oh, and then I used a lime green marker and a T-square ruler to add a border around the card front so your eyes don't fall off the edge. That would not be good.

That badge is a hoot and a half! I hope you will check out this fun challenge and play along! Snark is not required (but always appreciated), so no worries if you don't feel like making your bunny snarky ~  all bunny designs are welcome!

Other Challenges

• Retro Rubber: Happy Birthday! My bunny stamp is over 20 years old, one of the first stamps I purchased. It's from an OOB company called Mostly Animals. The martini and sediment are over a year old, also, but I'm not sure how old they are.
  
• Seize the Birthday: Anything Goes option.
  
• SSS Wednesday: Anything Goes.

Twofer

In honor of World One-Layer Card Week (WOLCW), I also have a QACAS OLC Christmas card to share:

April Fool's! It's not really World One-Layer Card Week. (But tomorrow really is National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day!) The tree is an old unmarked red rubber stamp that you've seen before. This time I dressed it in silver tinsel and silver ornaments. I added a simple silver sediment and Hammy went to town with his silver schplatter. 

I did a great job making the sky a kind of cloudy milky-way galaxy effect, didn't I? April Fool's! It's a black card and I just forgot to wipe off the excess embossing buddy powder!👵Once again I used a marker to make a faux border, this time in silver. I used to do that trick years ago and I have rediscovered how much it adds to a design, especially a one-layer design.

Challenges

• Addicted to Stamps and More: Christmas.
  
• Christmas Craft Creations: One-layer card.
  
• Jingle Belles: Tinsel Tree Inspired.

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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! 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!)