Flowing Vine Collage

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you're doing well and you are fully back in the schwing of creativity with your new goodies from Santa! 

We had a lovely weekend belatedly celebrating our 54th weeding anniversary. Haha, was that a parapraxis? 

"A successful marriage is a matter of keeping the weeds out of the marital garden!" Darnell

Please let me know if you see that profundity needlepointed in a shop someday, so I can get authorship rights!©

Onefer and cousins:

The NBUS feature for this week's "Anything Goes" IDEAS is the "Flowing Vine Collage" by Simon Says Stamp. I used linen for the front panel and more of that delicious ribbed paper is peeking through. 

It seems like only yesterday, but this die is from 2016. That's okay ~ no shame. The important thing is that I used it and I had fun making cards with it, which my stash sorely needs:

The NBUS sediment used on the card on the right is from Penny Black's, "T for Transparent." I'm playing in Addicted to CAS.

And, lastly, I turned one of the die-cut vines into a stencil and made this one-layer panel:

After blending ink through the stencil, I made this one a Christmas card by next embossing the panel with the SSS, "Pine Bouquet" e/f. I popped up a NBUS die-cut sediment from Poppystamps called, "Lavish Merry Christmas." Helpful Hammy found me an antique piece of metallic aqua-green for the sediment backing that perfectly matched the CP Daydream ink I had used for blending!

I'm playing in Just Us Girls stencil challenge and Rudolph Days January challenge.

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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! 

Besides making cards, my goodies from Santa included some new jig-saw puzzles. I love them, but I haven't done one since I started blogging.

To my good fortune, it turns out Hammy and Stanley love finding color-coordinated pieces! Our first play was a 1,000-piece puzzle with a picture of 101 pooping puppies, which we (and Nellie) found exceedingly amusing!

*Life is too short!

Happy New Year 2025!

Hello Stamplings!

Happy New Year! I'm still alive and kicking! In fact, I'm well-rested and a fatted calf, just like one should be after a wonderful holiday! We had a terrific Christmas and then a long vacation in Hawaii. Lots of photos below, if you're interested ...or not!🥱

It took me a while to get settled and think about making a card and blogging again. The longer I am away, the harder it is to get back into a routine. Or I'm just old now. I ended up deciding that this year my primary goal will be to use NBUS on every card and enter them in my NBUS Challenge. It's where I challenge you ~ and myself ~ to use all the schtuff we accumulate ... or "stockpile" as my friend JP calls it, which is a perfect visual!

Onefer

My card came about with the help of several other challenges. The "corduroy" lime card base is made from paper I've had since the last century and I'm happy to see it shine in this clean and simple card sketch. The die is NBUS from Alexandra Renke called, "Hazelnut Branch Set." The gold sediment strip is from Memory Box.

Freshly Made Sketches, Color Hues, and NBUS.

And The Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers, Seize the Birthday, and Cut It Up.

Holiday Photos

We started out in Maui taking the Road to Hana and spending time with Dan, Rachel, Adam, and Henry. It was a blessing to spend those days together before the lads went back to college. We were off the grid and without television! Bliss!

       

From there, The Mister and I flew over to Kauai to spend a few days with our long-time friends Susan and Jeff in their beautiful condo. They were terrific hosts as we toured all the beautiful sites of this scenic island. And we saw whales!

Well done for making it through! Aren't you relieved that I cut out half of the collages I made from hundreds of photos?! 

In Other News . . .

We came home to a stack of Christmas card mail, which extended the holiday. Thank you all for your beautiful cards! 

Sadly, I got the unhappy news of the deaths of two of my bloggie friends. Many of you might remember the talented Cornelia Wenokor (Fun Stamping). Together we produced a short blog series called, "The Back Stories." Cornelia would make one of her fun cards and then I would create a story to fit it. My other friend Mamie did not have a blog. Both will be greatly missed. 

We also came home to news of the horrific fires in southern California. It was heart-wrenching and scary to watch on television. Thank you for any way you are contributing to the aid relief.

Finally, for those of you who are wondering how Hammy and Stanley are, they are doing great! They are on the way home from traveling to Hammy's relatives as he does every year at Christmas time. Hammy reports that Stanley has been a real trooper!

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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. I'm sending extra squishy warm hugs to those of you dealing with the Arctic Blast!🥶

If you followed my I.D.E.A.S. schedule last year, I wanted to let you know I'm going to use it again this year whenever I can. I found it to be a huge help with keeping me creating on the regular, so the weeks didn't slip through my hands.

*Life is too short!