Group of Seven Goes Monochromatic!

Hello Stamplings!

The Group of Seven Cardmakers are showcasing the monochromatic design element this month. You use just one color on your design and by using different shades of that one color you can make some very striking cards.

Onefer

I chose red as my color choice. Wait. What? Just seeing if you were paying attention. With this heat, it's easy to nod off in class. This card is pretty self-exploratory. The flowers from SSS are called, "Bouquet of Thanks."

The only thing you can't see clearly above is that the chevron background is actually an emboss-resist paper. This shows the shine better:

And now you can see the lads' brilliant winking, too!

Twofer

This is a one-layer design, which stencils make easy. This NBUS stencil from A Colorful Life Designs is called, "Elegant Snowflake." Just to be different, I decided to color it as a stylized poinsettia. 

I have to say, don't do what I did. I wish I had taken a photo of the millions of pieces of masking tape I had to use to cover the various bits as I changed colors of ink. And then, when it was all done, I was disappointed to see the blending wasn't even even, but I wasn't about to try and fix it! 😰

We would love to have you show us your monochromatic designs if you have a play! There is a link provided over on the Group of Seven Cardmakers blog. 

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Enjoy your weekend! 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!
Challenges:

Just Us Girls: A/G Stencils.

Colorful Options: Aqua

Peace on Earth: A/G Christmas.

Rudolph Days: A/G Christmas.

Week Four: Anything Goes! 😀

Hello Stamplings!

How do you feel today? A nice lady standing next to me in line at the store asked me that question, smiling and looking me straight in the eye. A stranger, but somehow her words, a change from the usual, "How are you?," made me feel like we knew each other and she actually cared about the answer. 

It reminded me of how it is with bloggie friends. It's pretty phenomenal really how we all come to care about each other even though we are technically strangers. It's a joy if we are lucky enough to meet in person, but even if we don't, that fondness remains. Thank you for that!

Onefer

When I saw the challenge post at Seize the Birthday, I wanted to play along. While you can always enter any current birthday card you make, the optional brief this time is double-stenciling. You place two stencils on top of each other and ... well, it's best if you click over and read the post at STB for directions and to check out the beautiful designer examples!

The flower stencil is from Ink on 3 and the chicken wire stencil is from The Crafters Workshop. I have a few friends who love purple, so that's the color I chose, using DI milled lavender and dusty concord. The sediment is from Happy Little Stampers, stamped with CP royal treatment. It doesn't show up much in the photo, but I bordered the card base with royal treatment by walking the rim of the card around on top of the ink pad. 

I decided against using bling or schplatters because: 

a) I didn't want to detract from the cool double-stenciled effect, and 

b) my two little helpers are busy schplashing each other in their jar-lid swimming pool because it's not easy wearing a fur coat in the summer! 

Twofer

This one is a QACAS design I put together with a piece of printed vellum from the last century and a vellum store-bought butterfly from the ol' stasharoo. A vellum-backed sediment from Memory Box and wallah, I Used Old Schtuff!

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I will leave you with someone's genius idea!

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Enjoy your week! 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! I'll be back on Friday with the Group of Seven Cardmarkers.

*Life is too short!

Challenges:

Beautiful Blossoms (A/G)

Seize the Birthday (Double-Stenciling)

Stencil Fun (Birthdays)

Embossing Week

Hello Stamplings!

And here we are again, having whooshed around to the start of a brand-new week! Every day you wake up is a gift, but Mondays somehow hold more promise. Unless you do shift work and then maybe Wednesdays are your Mondays.

Mondays since February have been more fun for me this year as I've managed to keep up with my I.D.E.A.S. posts. (I think I might have pulled my shoulder muscle a little bit there, patting myself on the back.)

This week is "E" for Embossing Powder/Folders.

Onefer

This design uses both powder and folder. I recently had fun crafting with my friends Colleen and Linda and Colleen loaned me a 3D embossing folder and stencil from an Altenew class she had taken. (As far as I know, it was only available as part of the class.) I used Catherine Pooler inks and a very small and narrow blending brush to apply colors through the stencil to the detailed embossed leaves. 

Hammy and Stanley added schplatters and I clear-embossed the PTI sediment after stamping it with green ink. The background cover plate from Pinkfresh was a thoughtful gift! Mwah! It's called "Floral Grid." It's versatile in that you can either die-cut the flowers as I did here, or use it as an embossed design.

Twofer 

This is the other half of the above leaf panel. (The e/f and stencil contain both branches on one sheet.) After the blending and schplattering was done, I decided to cut the panel in half to create a Twofer and show off that beautiful lightly textured chartreuse background paper I found in my stash. The hugs sediment is from Memory Box.

Postscript

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about this Cypress tree that has a mystery flowering vine trailing all around it hundreds of feet in the air. Several of you guessed the vine name. And then yesterday on our walk, from the other side of the block, I was able to zoom in and get a closer look at the flowers.

So I looked up all your guesses and I think TK guessed it correctly when she said it was a "trumpet vine." Below is a photo I found online of a trumpet vine and it looks the same to me: 

Good eye, TK! Thank you all for your audience participation! 👏 

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And now I will leave you with a funny that you can't "unsee!"

There are some things that you never think about. Like what does Mt. Rushmore:

look like from the Canadian side?

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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!

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More (Die Cuts and Stencils)

SSS Wednesday (Bright and Cheerful)

Stencil Fun (Just for Fun - Optional Birthday)

NBUS (Never-before-used-schtuff)

Die-Cuts, Darlink!

Hello Stamplings!

How's things? I hope you're doing well! We've had several days of company, which was lovely, but it kept me off the grid and unable to email or comment. I hope to mustard some energy and ketchup today and tomorrow. Groan! That was a bad one. (Worse, I've prolly used it before!)

I wanted to keep up with my I.D.E.A.S. schedule, however, so before the company arrived I made a coupla QACAS cards to share:

Onefer

I used a hammered front panel for this one. (Some day I will share a video of my two wee hamsters with their little tiny hammers gleefully pounding divots into the paper! As you may have guessed, Hammy really appreciates having the help of a much younger feller with this task!) I scored three lines along the sides and added the panel to a card base.

The color inspiration came from the Color Hues challenge where the talented Karen has chosen blue and yellow. You can see that I got frisky with the sediment from Creative Expressions and added the same blue and yellow Hughs.

The flower is from Tim Holtz's wildflower dies. I think they've been around for a while, but they are NBUS to me. I recently ordered them after seeing a card on FB or Pinterest. (I lost my note.)

It was fun sponging with my CP inks, so I did the same with a number of the other wildflower dies. They will hopefully be made into cards soon and not loiter in my bits box!

I'm also playing in the Cut It Up A/G and NBUS challenges.

Twofer

This card features another die-cut from the wildflowers set. When I had my overhaul the first of the year, I came across a few sheets of this beautiful printed acetate. I think it was from SU a hunnert years ago. 

For the die-cut spider mum, I found a piece of pp that worked perfectly. This gives a better idea of the printed acetate:

To attach the acetate to the card base, I first glued the flower to the acetate and then added glue to the back of the acetate behind the flower. I also added a drop of glue to the acetate where the sediment is. 

I'm linking to the Simply Clean and Simple and the Triple B A/G challenges.

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Short and sweet! Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks for taking the time to join as a follower! 

*Life is too short!

June! Aswoon With Inky Play

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing great as we cross over to the second half of 2024! Already. Whether in your peejays or a ball gown, and whether heading into summer or fall, I hope you are enjoying yourself! 

A new month means I started my crafty schedule rotation anew. This first Monday means inks and I had more fun with smooching.

Onefer

Before smooching, I used my old text die from SU, heat-embossing the stamp with white e/p. Then I scribbled my favorite colors of Ziggies onto a piece of acetate and liberally spritzed the ink with water. Then I laid my watercolor paper in the wet scribbles, giving it a swishy to pick up the ink. I lifted the panel and then reinked/spritzed the acetate and this time I turned the acetate over and dabbed it onto the panel in places where I wanted to add ink.

Did that make sense? First time paper onto inky acetate. Second time inky acetate onto paper.

Once I was happy with the coverage, I used my Memory Box Double-Stitch Cut Out to separate the panel into two. I attached the larger panel to a lavender card base and then popped up the smaller inner panel using foam. The die-cut sediment was in my BOB from a previous smooching session. 

Hammy added bling to finish the design with a "rule of three" lesson for Stanley. It became confusing when Hammy added six bits of bling, but I left them to discuss it further while I went inside for a nap. No fool I.

Twofer

That smooching was fun, so I did it again. The text stamp is a big ol' wooden stamp and you know you can't see Versamark until after you've done your embossing powder. In this case, I want to reassure you that you are not developing double-vision. I clearly rocked the stamp when pressing it.👀I decided it was too pretty to waste, so I covered a chunk of it with a "Layered Poinsettia" from Spellbinders. I love the non-traditional colors on this one.

Threefer

Last fall I played with dropping alcohol ink onto aluminium foil and this butterfly (Vivienne Butterfly by Memory Box) was one of the die-cut results. It has been cocooning in my BOB and finally found a home on this CAS birthday card using my NBUS Filigree Border from SSS. 

I.D.E.A.S.

If you like playing along, here is the calendar for June. Thank you for joining me and for letting me know when you do, so I can 📌 your card!

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I know this is photo heavy, but I just have to show you this crazy tree we see on our morning walk. It's a regular Italian Cypress, but it has some kind of flowering vine growing all the way up and around! It's the craziest thing. I zoomed in, but I don't know what type of flower it is.

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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!

Challenges

Onefer: Addicted to Stamps and More (any occasion); Cut It Up (a/g)

Twofer: Allsorts (lots of layers); Peace on Earth (a/g Christmas)

Threefer: Seize the Birthday! (use metallics); SSS Wednesday (a/g)