May Week Four and Group of Seven (Bokeh)

Hello Stamplings!

Happy Tuesday! Yesterday we honored our service men and women with Memorial Day and on the 28th of every month we post our Group of Seven Cardmakers, so I decided to wait and post today.

This month the Go7 played with an older technique called "Bokeh," (pronounced "bouquet") which is a photographic technique adapted for card-making. Basically you make a background and then add a layer of circles by sponging or blending through a stencil.

My Results

Linking to Rudolph Days

I made my backgrounds by smooching watercolor paper with either watercolor pens which were scribbled and spritzed, or Brushos/Lindy's powders spritzed with water. To make the Bokeh bubbles, I used a stencil, a Color Box white ink pad, and one of my blending brushes. For the Christmas card, I made it more Christmassy by also stenciling stars and letting the boys add a bit of schplatter.

It's a fun and easy technique to zhuzh up your backgrounds, but you might find your results vary. For instance, over time my circles on card two sort of evaporated. I'm not sure if it was because of the bumpy paper on that one or the lighter background.

You can find a video link and more information on the main Group of Seven blog. You will also be treated to the sensational examples of the technique by the Group and a link for you to add your own result if you play along with us! Mwah!

And if you are playing along with my I.D.E.A.S. schedule (see side bar), this is week four of May, so the brief is "Anything Goes!" My Bokeh cards work for that and so will anything you make!

p.s.

You haven't seen Miss Nellie for a while, so she is joining in the fun today! One day last week I came out of the bathroom and I couldn't find her in any of her usual perching places. Perplexed, I took a step towards the front room and saw this! Should she be in the movies, or what?!

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BTW, about my devil's-food-cake-naming story in the last post? Some of you didn't notice that I confessed at the end of the post that it was all made up in my head. It's simply not true and I hope you didn't tell too many people. That's how rumors get started.

You gotta love me!😇

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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! 

*life is too short

May Week Three: Embossing

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well at whatever you are doing well. I checked and today is "National May Ray Day." Huh? Are there that many people named, "Ray?" No, it's quite poetic actually. It means, "to celebrate the bright sunshine and warmer weather with just a slight breeze to cool your skin."

It's also National Devil's Food Cake Day, so have a slice of that while the breeze is cooling you off! And it's the third Monday of May at the Playhouse, so today we are celebrating embossing. In this case, folders.

Onefer

A month ago you may remember that I played with this 3D embossing folder from Altenew, called "Daisy Bed." This time I did a simple ink swipe on the debossed side before running it through my Gemini. It was too pretty to cover, so I simply added a circle sediment from Memory Box.

Twofer

Recently my friend Julia posted a very amusing piglet card and I mentioned how much I love pigs (having grown up in Iowa) and how much I especially loved the snarky sediments that came with the pig stamp set she used. ("Piggies Crushed It" from Whimsy Stamps.) After wards, she kindly stamped off oodles of piggies and sediments and mailed them to me. Thank you, Julia!

Hammy and Stanley will be disappointed that you can't see the schparkle. Hammy winked the balloon and gave the pig job to Stan. There were lots of tears at first because the winker Stanley used had gone a bit silver-looking. Not his fault, of course, and I reassured him that it was okay because it made the little pig look dirty. I mean, what kind of pig are you, if you don't wear a bit of dirt?!

Threefer

From the silly to the sublime, I next inked up a NBUS 3D folder from Open Studio called "Gracious Leaves" using Brilliance Elegant Gold. The ribbon is from SU and the sediment is from Memory Box.

I'm not sure it's meant to be a Christmas e/f, but the little berries made me think it was. The color and sheen are very pretty in real life, but if I'm Frank, when it was finished I thought to myself that it would have been easier to just spray the card with gold mist.

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Speaking of Devil's Food cake, I was curious how this cake recipe got its name. To figure that out, I had to go back to the very origin of store-bought cake mix. It turns out that in 1933, John Duff of P. Duff and Sons, a Pittsburgh PA molasses company, patented the first cake mix after blending dehydrated molasses with dehydrated flour, sugar, eggs, and other ingredients. The mix required only water and baking to yield gingerbread. 

Duff later realized that home cooks preferred to add their own eggs. After that, they expanded their mixes to include flavors like fruit cake, spice cake, and devil's food. 

In the 1930s, Americans were mostly church-going folk, so naming a cake "devil's food," might be a huge turn-off from a marketing standpoint. To quell that concern, this explanation was printed on the back of the box:

Customers have asked how this cake mix was given such an unusual name. One of our recipe tasters named Elizabeth Novick baked this unnamed cake mix for her family. As they were finishing, Betty, the youngest daughter, age 7, picked up her plate and began to lick the crumbs. "Betty!" cried Elizabeth, shooting the youngster a stern look. "But, Mom," said Betty, "this food would make even the devil sit up and say, 'Amen!'"

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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! BTW, I made up that part about naming the cake, but you prolly figured that out for yourself.😆

*Life is too short!

Challenges

Onefer: Can You Handle the Pressure (A/G w/ option of flowers)

Twofer: Double D (polka dots); SSS Wednesday (patterned paper)

Threefer: Allsorts (A/G ~ Happy 15th Birthday!)

Awash in Washi Die-Cuts!

Hello Stamplings!

Happy Monday! I hope you enjoyed the weekend! We had a wonderful lunch yesterday with both grandtwins home! We couldn't stop smiling!

The Mister and I also had a wonderful last-minute getaway to the coast during the week, so time in the Playhouse has been limited. Not to worry, it gave me the perfect opportunity to finally put to use all the pretty Washi tape die-cuts my friend Bev generously gave me last fall.😙 And they were perfect for this second week of May for my I.D.E.A.S. schedule (D=die cuts. See side bar). 

Enjoy whooshing through the photos! I'm off to pick up Hammy and Stanley from the neighbor kids ... if they'll let me!

R & R

We enjoyed the pounding waves, empty beach, and perfect weather ~ crisp and cool in the morning and warm in the afternoon.

A beach guard bird?! This solitary pelican was enjoying the sun out of the wind. (Don't worry that it was injured. It wasn't happy that we interrupted its nap, but it flew away just fine.)

The sunsets were magical!

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

Lucky you, if you are seeing a rare display of Northern Lights from the solar storm! 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 leave some love! 

*Life is too short!

Cinco de Say What?

Hello Stamplings!

May? As in May? I can't with this whooshing of time lately. I'm sorry to mention it, but ... okay, I won't mention it. I'll just point 👉  🎅. 

Never mind that man! Spring is barely getting a foothold in this half of the world, so today let's talk about flowers!

Onefer

I found this beautiful stamp (with stencils) at the store near Portland. It's from Pink Fresh, called, "Magnolia Pattern." It's an interesting stencil design because the stencils are cut so that only some of the flowers and leaves are open to be blended with color. It's easier to show you than to explain; here is the image that comes with the stamp:

Cool, huh?! But I was in the mood to paint, so I heat-embossed the image in white onto watercolor paper and then colored the entire image with my Ziggies. It was a bit of a challenge figuring out what was a flower/leaf and what was an empty spot, so I think next time I will heat-emboss it in a color I can see. 

After painting, I felt like it needed something more, so I did an all-over blending of the panel with CP Shea Butter. And after that, I took a large clean blending brush and buffed the panel to clean off the white embossed lines. This card is even prettier in real life, thanks to the winkling by my furry helpers!

Twofer

From bold to pastels, this card is a QACAS design. This SU stamp is not NBUS ... just neglected. For some reason, it resurfaced on the quagmire of my (oft-deflated) brain balloon. I colored the stamp with markers, spritzed, and stamped the image, cutely. The sediment is from Penny Black. Just to be differ'nt, I added a two-toned border with the same lilac and lime markers, which Blogger might show on your screen as lavender and lemon? Or olive and grape? Or melon and iris? Sigh.

I.D.E.A.S.

Here's my new calendar graphic for May, which is clickable on the side bar. 

I hope you enjoyed my I = Inky features today and I'd love to see your designs if you want to play along! As a reminder, this is not a challenge. It's just a little schedule I put together to keep the mojo juices flowing and you're welcome to use it, too. It's been 14 weeks and so far I'm still juiced and the Pinterest Board is coming along nicely.

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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! 

Happy Mother's Day next Sunday to all who celebrate and lots of love and hugs to those of you for whom this is a sad day. The "mother" part is sad for me, but the "being a mother" part is very happy! Mwah!

*Life is too short!

Challenges:

Onefer: The Flower Challenge (Colour your flower); Seize the Birthday (off the edge); Double D (pretty florals).

Twofer: Color Hues (lilac and lime); Krafty Chicks (stamps).