Spring Fois Deux (I.D.E.A.S. Calendar A = Anything Goes!)

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are finding a spring in your step as we are now fully into spring! Unless, like some of you, there was snow coming down on the first day of spring! Or you live upside down and you are fully into fall. In that case, I do not wish for you to have a fall in your step!😬

Maybe we should all sit down and check out everyone's favorite week of my I.D.E.A.S. Calendar which is A = Anything Goes!

Onefer

This design was schparked by the blues and greens color challenge at the Color Throwdown. And a lot of challenges have "spring" as their brief, which led me to my NBUS "Lovely Lily of the Valley" die from Lawn Fawn. 

These sweet little flowers are oft times white, but look at this photo I found! Who knew? Or is that AI?

Anywhistle, just to be different (and because I have gobs of it), I used cream card as my card base and to cut the dies. I don't know if it was the paper or the operator or the product, but it was a bit of faff getting clean cuts. But I per-severed and then painted with my Ziggies. Then I took a rest and Hammy and Stanley went about winking all the bits, as one does they doeth.

Then I faffed a bit more, laying the stalks and leaves this way and that, but it all seemed a bit flat, so I decided to go through my e/fs and see if one of them might juizz it up a bit. When I saw my NBUS "Cross-Stitch" e/f from Taylored Expressions, I got the idea of gluing down the flowers and then running the whole panel through my Gemini in the hopes it would look like a counted cross-stitch. It was a risk after painting all those wee lilies, but, phew, it worked.

It wasn't until after I'd embossed it, that I realized I should have stamped on a sediment first.😶No worries, let's cross-stitch that, too, then! I used my wee Lawn Fawn triple frame label set. The sediment is from Verve, older than your grandma, but still good as new!

Challenges

• Cardz 4 Galz: springtime.
  
• Color Throwdown: blue, lime, green.
  
• Just Us Girls: spring mood board with Lilies of the Valley.

Twofer

Keeping spring in mind, this design was schparked by another color challenge, this time Color Hues. I had the little flower outline stamp on my desk. I had removed it from its wooden block some time ago and stuck it in with my silhouette stamps. I also saw that Lin was hosting the current Seize the Birthday challenge and she was looking for "things with wings."

The lads went up NBUS Mountain and starting pitching birds and butterflies and dragonflies off left and right. Well, not one to move if I don't have to, I reached down and picked up the one that landed on my bazooms. Thankfully and perfectly, it was this wee NBUS hummingbird from Memory Box that comes as a multipiece die. 

You know how much I love hummingbirds and how fortunate I am to have them come to my window feeder every day all year long. And Goodness knows how many photos I've shared on here of these delightful birds in their brilliant blue, purple, green, and red feathers. Pulling my artistic license from my sleeve, I used a piece of pp to create an unusual (to me) array of green and yellow feathers for this little gal. 

The rest of the design came together easily, punctuated by hammering, stitching, piercing, scalloping, blinging, and winking. You know, the usual. Oh, and I did have to give her teeny feet.

Challenges

• Beautiful Blossoms: Mood board.
• Color Hues: Lemon and lime.
• Memory Box: Petal power.
  
• Seize the Birthday: Things that fly.
  

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You will find a linky tool below for this week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar prompt of A = Anything Goes. So, no matter what you create, you can link here this week to motivate others out of their creative schlump!

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your design! Thank you so much to everyone who remembered to link last week! Mwah!

~~~

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!

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Happy St. Patrick's Day! (I.D.E.A.S. Calendar E = Embossing)

Hello Stamplings! ☘☘☘

I hope you're doing well as we celebrate the day Erin goes braghless! Wait. What? It's "Éire go brách" and it means "Ireland forever." The Mister is 50% Irish thanks to his sainted mother, so that makes me Irish by association, at least for one day a year. Plus leftovers.

This is week three on my I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, so it's E = Embossing (any which way).

Onefer

The embossing folder featured in this design is an ancient brick wall e/f by Tim Holtz, using the debossed side. It's been in my BOB for a long time because I originally used a very red (you might say a brick red) ink swiped over the whole thing. How to tone it down? I ended up swiping over it with my Dew Drop Brilliance "Platinum Planet" and I was really pickled at the pretty color and sheen that resulted.

I noticed that Just Us Girls (Word Week) wanted "Green" and so did Simon Says Stamp Wednesday, so I pondered through my various leafy choices. I didn't have any sham rocks, so I chose a NBUS die called, "Garden Tub Filler," by The Greetery, cut from a lovely very gated green pp. For the tub, I used The Greetery's "Pretty Pot" die and I managed to find a teeny-weeny Happy Birthday stamp for the sediment. (A good time to once again thank Iliana for the invention of the MISTI!)

After I finished my card with a marker line border, I saw that the Colorful Options challenge for March had a cute mood board called, "It's Not Easy Being Green," with Kermit and friends. The next thing I know, Hammy, who had been on my shoulder looking at the monitor, started jumping up and down and clapping! Any fool knows you can't do that without falling, so he rolled down my arm and into the bag of M&Ms on my lap. I have no idea how they got there, but, of course, they went flying and I had to grab Nellie because she'll eat anything. Phew! Never a dull moment!

Where was I? Oh, yes, I was sharing that Hammy got excited because he has been playing with my little collection of old froggie buttons for years, waiting for this moment to use them on a card! Stanley joined in and together we decided that the climbing frog buttons worked the best for this design. (But first I had to add little eyeballs to the poor little blind boogers with my white gel pen and fine black marker.) The end.

Twofer

This QACAS double-embossed delight was made to welcome the first day of spring on Thursday. A multi-leaf unmarked 1D e/f is layer one. It got squished a little by layer two, which is Simon Says 3D "Leaf Bundle." Coming in at layer three is a sprig of Pink Fresh Washi tape leafy greens and the cherry on top is a sediment tab from Memory Box.

You gotta love a 3-minute egg card! And a design that lets you use any two embossing folders and any type of topper! C'mon!👏👌

Stop the Schlump

You will find a linky tool below for this week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar prompt. If you use any kind of embossing on your card, please link it below.

Thank you to everyone who linked last week to inspire others. I love visiting you, seeing what you create, and pinning your design! Mwah!

~~~

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! 

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Gold Enough For You? I.D.E.A.S. (D = Die)

Hello, Stamplings!

I hope you are well, wherever you are! We've whooshed around the week again really, really fast! This is week two of March, which means the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is D = Dies. We all have them, love them, and use them! 

Onefer

(The Association of Obstetrics and Retinal Health advises sunglasses. Sorry, that's Optometrists.)

As often happens with my designs, this one is simples and self-exploratory. But I thought I would share what schparked the steps involved in building my design for anyone who needs a boost out of their creative ennui. Sometimes we just don't know where to start. You know, like when cleaning closets.😶

I originally picked out a different NBUS die that I wanted to use for this week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, but when I saw The Flower Challenge, I sent the lads pawing through my NBUS flower dies instead and they surfaced with this perfect springtime "Layered Tulip Die" from Waffle Flower.

The brief at TFC is to "add circles."💡💡(That's me, thinking.) After two lightbulbs, I look at the hamsters with a raised eyebrow. It was Stanley who remembered that I have a stash of vellum paper with gold and silver circles. That schparked the idea of die-cutting the tulip from gold. And since I used a snippet of gold paper, I can pop over to the Snippets Playground! They recently celebrated their 500th challenge! Well done!

When I laid out the tulip pieces over the vellum with the gold circles, we all went into gold overload. Then I tried it on the silver circles and we loved how well they played with each other.

Next, I needed a sediment and I checked out my challenges list again. Just Us Girls also has die-cuts for their brief this week, with the additional requirement that it be a birthday card. Next, I went to Seize the Birthday to check out their latest challenge. They want designs with no stamping. To play in both challenges, I chose my old classic "celebrate" die. And wallah, done! 

You can take your sunglasses off now!😎

Twofer

This little number was QACAS and needs no walk-through. Well, I take that QACAS back. It's QAS, but not 'clean' by Clean and Simple standards because there is no white or clear space. So, hmmm, let's call it QABAS then, with a B for Busy! 

The NBUS items are both the "Snowflake Background" from Poppystamps and the sediment from SSS's set called, "Holiday Greetings Mix I." The background is a textured piece of green paper. I added more texture to it with a snowy e/f from Taylored Expressions called, "Snowfall."

Playing in:

• ABC Christmas: D is for die cuts.
  
• Addicted to Stamps and More: Christmas.
  
• Color Hues: Green and White.

~~~

Thank you to everyone who left wonderful and supportive comments on my last post about creative slumps and how we can help each other through the rudderless times.

I was delighted to see you enter your designs via the linky in order to inspire your bloggie friends! Thank you! 

You will find a linky tool below for this week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar prompt. If you use a die on your card, please link it below. I love seeing what you create!

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! 

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Made with Love and Thoughts on Slumping

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you are doing well! We have swooshed around to another Monday! What's that? Oh, yes, and another month! Welcome to March! Every time I type March, I think of Little Women and I wonder if young girls still read it.

I've only got a Onefer for you today because this is a very long free-the-boobs-and-go-potty-first post. 

This week's I.D.E.A.S. technique is I = Ink, which is any color medium. 

Over a teal card, I added a background panel which was smooched using Lindy Magicals powdered inks. It's very schparkly, I promise. 

The smooched panel was then heat-embossed in white e/p using my old and beloved En Français stamp from SU. Normally, you do your heat embossing first and then apply the ink (in various ways) because the embossed area works as a resist. I was going to add a link to a video, but the googler couldn't find anyone else who did it backwards.🤷‍♀️That can't be right, can it? Did moi come up with a new technique?😊

Anyway, over that, I layered the "Garden Poppy Stitched Frame" from Poppystamps and over that is a NBUS sediment from GKW, which the lads matched and matted for me.

🍿🍷🍪

Can We Talk About Slumps?

Like a lot of you, I started blogging after retirement and I've been blogging now for over a decade. In the natural course of things (read age), my post publications have dwindled over the years, especially since Covid. But slowing down is one thing and being in a downright slump is another.

Whether from stressing about politics, health issues, squirrels, or laziness, I've been feeling creatively slumped for some time now. And this year several friends have shared with me that they are also in a slump for the same reasons or for more serious reasons like the loss of loved ones or care-giving duties. 

Whatever the reason, nothing seems to schpark the old vibrant joy for creating, blogging, visiting, and commenting. Even so, we aren't quite ready to shut down our blogs ~ especially when we look over our shoulders and see all the product we still haven't used!😶

I even wrote a little ditty about it:

Are you, like me, feeling rather blah?

Not really down, but a lot less rah rah?

Do you feel sorta meh, like you're stuck in a fog?

Do cards still engage you, but not so your blog?

Do you still like to visit, but have nothing to say?

Do you wish you still felt like back in the day?

Where is your energy, your get-up-and-go?

Do you want to keep crafting and stop feeling low?

Do you think about quitting, even if rough,

but then look around and see all your stuff?

I'm happy to say I've got clues for your blues,

ideas to help you share stuff that you use!

Let's bring back our joy with friends by our side,

Go out with a smile on the crest of the tide!

 

I've been thinking about ways we could create a sort of friendship circle geared towards those of us who are feeling this way. A place to share what we are going through and, hopefully, be nudged back into all aspects of card-making and blogging while we still have the desire, if not the motivation.

But then I realized that I already have two such places where we can meet or get reacquainted with other women going through the same thing and who need companionship and ideas for inspiration and encouragement. (This is in addition, of course, to the many other wonderful groups and challenges in Blogland and throughout social media where there are talented teams working hard to provide inspiration for us!)

The first way is through my NBUS blog where I challenge you to use the schtuff you bought, but put away without using. I love having you share what you used and what you made with it. (Thank you to all of you who have consistently joined in the NBUS Challenge since June of 2014!)

I'm making using NBUS a priority again myself. My mind automatically wants to design with something it remembers from past use, but now I stop and choose something NBUS that works just as well, if not better.

And for those of you who aren't already using it, the second way is with my I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. It's a schedule I made up last year to force keep me on track and posting every Monday that I'm home. So starting today, I'm going to add a linky tool to the end of my Monday posts where you can share your I.D.E.A.S. creations!
 
The linky will go live on Mondays at 12:05 a.m. PST and close on Sundays at 11:55 p.m. PST. 

You can join me here any week of any month and any day of any week. There is no pressure to join every week and anyone can link. 

I hope the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar will help you get back in the groove this year. For me, using both I.D.E.A.S. and NBUS together, sometimes along with a sketch and/or color challenge, has helped me get off my mental ass and stop making excuses!🤯 

I look forward to visiting you and I'll enjoy seeing you visit each other!

Lastly, I have a few other ideas you might find useful if you're in a schlump. Rather than add them here and to make it easier for you to return to them, you can find them by clicking on the I.D.E.A.S. badge on the side bar. 🠊 🠊 🠊

It can't hurt to try. It's worth a shot. Use it or lose it. Snap out of it. Old friends are the best friends. Okay, okay, I'll stop. Off you go!

Mwah!

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Dropping You a Line ~

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you're doing well! The sun came out here and what a difference that makes to literally everything! I even have a few bulbs and the hardenbergia flowering, so I will send you off with your usual spring bouquet at the end!

Onefer

This week's I.D.E.A.S. is "A = Anything Goes," so that's easy. I started with a sketch challenge and then found a color challenge and then came up with a NBUS stamp set. This is where Hammy and Stanley are a big help, especially having two of them now. I had dozens of options and having them run back and forth so I could try on this and that made the job easier. When we got to the Flourishes stamp of the little boy fishing in silhouette, we all squealed. It was a wonderful AHA moment! 

Sorry my CP Coral Cabana looks so pink in the photo.🤷

Playing in:

Freshly Made Sketches

Color Hues ~ coral and yellow

NBUS ~ never-before-used-schtuff

We Love Stamping ~ CAS

Twofer

I used the The NBUS "Color Spots" stencil from The Greetery. The images are from an ancient SU stamp no longer in the packaging. The lads ran around the edge of the white panel with a black marker to distinguish it. They took their time and did a perfect job ~ although I did turn a little blue from holding my breath!

Sharing a Brilliant Hack

I'm not sure who coined the word "hack" to mean "genius," but the poor thing is getting a workout: You can hack off a dead branch. You can hack into a computer. Grandpa had such a bad cold, he hacked up a lung. A disreputable newspaper reporter used to be called a hack. But I digest.

I am delighted to pass on a crafty hack from my friend Vicki Dutcher (here) who saw it on Facebook. A lot of us have removed our older rubber stamps from their wooden blocks. Then, when we want to stamp them, we sometimes need to use double-sided tape to stick them to the MISTI, which can be a mess. Not anymore! Someone discovered that the little sticky mats used to hold a cell phone in place also work perfectly for holding our nonsticky rubber stamps in place! 

Vicki showed her success and I tried it for the above card and it's brilliant!

I don't want to put a link to Amazon on here because Blogger can be funny about links and hits, so to find the ones I bought (FIVE for $4.99!!), just search on "5PCS car dashboard." Of course, you can choose from several companies that make these types of mats. If you have trouble finding them, let me know and I'll email you the link.

As you can see, the ones I got are small (2.75x5). They have no residue on them. You just slap them on your MISTI cover and then peel them off. They stick so well, you have to tug and they do stretch out like silly putty, but they spring right back into their original shape. 

And there are so many things that these little sticky pads can be used for! For example, if you're like me and you haven't purchased a product to hold your stamp pads in place on your desk while you use them, these work amazing for that, too! 

Thank you again, Vicki, and thank you to the originator of the idea, whoever you are! Much appreciated!

~~~

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! 

Mwah!

*Life is too short

Embossing Day!

Hello Stamplings!

Howze you doing? On this part of the globe, we are in that middle-of-February sick-of-winter time with its freezing boring cold and gloomy dumpy doom. To combat this, we make cheery cards!

It's Embossing Day at Chez I.D.E.A.S. That reminds me of the old-timey, "Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, etc." schedule which described the lives of wives from Victorian times until, well, our time. I'm grateful for all the modern conveniences and inventions which allow me to spend my days using my new-timey hobby schedule to make crafty things!

Onefer

The first NBUS product I am featuring is, "Cheerful Floral" by Memory Box which comes with stamps, dies, 3D embossing folder, and stencil. I didn't notice until this minute that there is also a separate die for the center blossom, so you could make it, what, 4D? I mean, if the embossing folder is 3D? Anyway, next time. I painted the bouquet with my Ziggies, painting all the flowers in different shades of CP pinks, per The Flower Challenge.

The process is pretty self-exploratory, except to say that I used a heavier hand when blending the same color of ink in order to create some shading on the flowers and leaves, rather using than the stencil bits provided. I'm sorry you can't see that the lads liberally winked all the bits. After wards, I added a diluted schplash of squash white. And the background panel was embossed with SU's Subtle e/f.

Playing in:

Addicted to Stamps and More ~ make your mark.

The Flower Challenge ~ feature the colour pink.

Seize the Birthday ~ A/G option.

Twofer

The NBUS product on this card is another 3D e/f from Memory Box. This one is called, "Snowy Forest." I simply used my brayer to apply Versamark to the raised bits and then heat-embossed the panel in silver e/p. 

(I didn't want all that powder on the sky part, but after I tried applying the Versamark directly to the folder [and getting it on the sky part], and after I then tried swiping the Versamark directly to the embossed white card [and getting it on the sky part]), I just decided not to fight it.)

Playing in:

Krafty Chicks ~ Christmas.

Little Red Wagon ~ red alert.

52 Christmas Card Throwdown ~ masculine Christmas.

~~~

Sing it with me!

Uh-huh.

Monday – Wash Day!
Tuesday – Ironing Day!
Wednesday – Market Day!

Thursday – Cleaning Day!

Friday  – Bake Day!

Saturday – Fun Day!

Sunday – Rest Day!

Everybody happy?

Well I should say!

~~~

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! 

*Life is too short!