Anything Goes!

Hello Stamplings!

Happy Monday! I hope this find you well! As you read this, I will be having fun in Las Vegas ~ or as some people call it, Lost Wages! I'm meeting a friend from my early work days in the 70s for some getaway girl time!🎰🍹

Before I left Nellie in charge of The Mister, the lads and I were inspired by a few challenges to create these designs.

Onefer

This week is A = Anything Goes on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, so there are no curt tails when it comes to designing! Just for fun, I went all out and stamped, inked, die cut, and stenciled! I also CASED my friend Linda, with an emphasis on "copy!" Thank you, Lin!

The blossoms are NBUS from Pinkfresh called "Delicate Floral Print," blended with lilac and aqua CP inks using the stencils. The embossing folder is v.o., but still NBUS, from the Paper Studio. The sediment is from PTI. The nice thing about this simple layout is you get two cards out of the deal! I used a shiny platinum piece of Washi Tape from Altenew to separate the panels and Hammy and Stanley winked the flowers.

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Make your mark.

Color Hues: Lilac and aqua.

Just Us Girls: Stencil week.

SSS Wednesday: Make it girly.

Twofer

This design is in the running for QACAS-iest design of 2025! I love it and what a great way to use pretty pp! If you like CAS (clean and simple) designs and you aren't familiar with Freshly Made Sketches, you should check them out. (They very kindly have a tab listing all their prior sketches!) 

At first, the textured aqua panel on the left had no design. I set it aside, but I kept looking back at it and my right leg started twitching. It stopped as soon as I lightly stenciled a leafy pattern. When you know, you know. 

Challenges

Alphabet Challenge: L is for leaves.

Freshly Made Sketches: A sketch by Jen T.

Seize the Birthday: Use a stencil.

Threefer

I like to play in the Rudolph Days Challenge when I can. It only runs at the end of each month from the 25th to the last day of the month. It's always Anything Goes as long as it is a Christmas design.

For this card I stamped the Pink Fresh wreath on mixed media paper with Versamark and heat-embossed it with gold. I then painted the poinsettia with my Ohuhu markers and sent it down the line to the winkers. (Pink Fresh has beautiful Washi Tape you can use for the wreath, but I was in the mood for painting.) 

I added a wee sediment and popped the wreath onto a black panel embossed with a NBUS e/f from SU called "Petals-a-Plenty." It's really a generic flower, but I thought they looked like little poinsettias. To add a little extra schparkle, I heat-embossed the rim all around in gold.

Other challenges

52 Christmas Card Throwdown: Embossing.

Christmas Kickstart: Positively poinsettias.

Jingle Belles: Color challenge. I used red, green, white, and black.

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I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: A = Anything Goes

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations with no restrictions! Your card may help motivate others out of their creative schlumps or give someone a step-off for their own design! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! Mwah! 

Enjoy your week! I may miss next week or be late depending on, you know, how much sleep I need to catch up on or if I'm off buying an island somewhere with the millions I'm just sure I'm going to win on the penny slots!

*Life is too short!

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More Spring Tulips!

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend/holiday as we whoosh around to another Monday! We enjoyed having family and friends with lots of delicious food and laughter. Nellie was in dog heaven, hoovering up any bits that were crumbed to the floor!

Today I have a quick share, using this week's I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. This is the third Monday of April (and Happy Birthday to my big sister Diana!🎂) and the prompt is E= Emblossing. 

I used this "Layered Tulip" die from Waffle Flower a few weeks ago and at that time I cut a couple of extra flowers. They were intended for Easter cards, which didn't happen in time, so I used embossing folders and made two spring birthday card designs instead, painting the flowers with my Ziggies.

Onefer

This one features an embossing folder that is new to me, sent to me by a friend as a card protector with her card, so I don't know who makes it. I lightly blended CP inks over it in pastel spring colors before popping on the painted tulip and the sediment. The fishtail banner is from PTI. 

It's hard to see, but the lads winked the entire tulip. Poor critters, they pull such long faces when they see the photos, confused because on the camera screen (and in real life), the schparkle from the winking is blinding, but it goes missing when the photos get to the gallery. Er?😶I reassure them that the same thing happens to all of us. Then I put on their "Hammy the Hamster" (Bubbles/The Monster) DVD and they're good again.

Challenges

Just Us Girls: Moodboard. I was inspired by the colors.

Seize the Birthday: Layer it.

The Flower Challenge: Spring flowers. 

Twofer

This very QACAS design using the second painted tulip features Craft Concepts "Stately" e/f. I used hammered card, three gold balls, and a partridge sediment strip from Memory Box. Ba-boom!

 

Challenges

Krafty Chicks: CAS.
Little Red Wagon: Birthday

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: E = Emblossing

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using embossing, whether wet or dry. Your card may help motivate and lift others out of their creative schlump or give someone a step-off for their own design! 

I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! Mwah! 

In honor of Earth Day tomorrow, I'm leaving you with a bouquet of irises from the front yard of our neighbor George. 

Enjoy your week! I'm off to make a ham samitch!  

*Life is too short!

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Click here to enter

Happy Easter, Bunnies!

Hello Stamplings,

I hope you're having a good day and maybe even a wonderful vacation if the kids or grandkids are off on spring break from school!

I don't know what's gotten into me. I'm normally an uber-CAS card designer. A tiny image of a frog and a sediment made a card, or maybe a bevy of mature ladies holding up a bar with their elbows, etc. Hence the term QACAS for quick and clean and simple. But this past week, when I have a million other things to do to prep for company, me and the lads decided to try scene building! 

Onefer

This is week two of April, so the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is D = Dyes. Ha ha, see what I did there? Did you dye your Easter eggs yet? Of course not. Eggs are too expensive. 

The wooden fence is a piece of pp and the grass was made using a NBUS stencil from Waffle Flower and then painted. The fence hole is a stitched oval and the sediment is a sticker, propped up. The hanging leaves are from Altenew's "Leaf Canopy," still one of my favorite leaf stamps and dies.

This Paper Smooches bunny has clearly been working a triple shift or else she is over-sampling the liquor cabinet, but we don't judge. And I think you can see that the lads did a bang-up job winking up the place!

I'm playing in the Inkspirational Challenge where the mood board is decorated Easter eggs and in Inspired By ... Bunnies. 

Besides the white snippets used for the leaves, bunny, and grass, I used lots of pp snippets for the eggs, so I am hopping over to the Snippets Playground with this card. There will be a perpetual Easter egg hunt this week and lots of eggnog. 

Wait. What? Isn't eggnog for Christmas? Turns out the original eggnog recipe dated 1482 has just been unearthed and the eggs used in the recipe were removed from their shells by a small blow hole, so the shells could then be beautifully decorated for Easter!  (Source: a very small AI encyclopedia located in the core of my brain.)

Twofer

Ah, what an idealick springtime scene this is, combining old and new. I started by stamping the NBUS hill and tree line stamp from Stacy Yacula's MFT stamp set called, "Scene Builder." The clouds and the stamped grass and flowers are from the same set. After stamping the horizon, I fussy-cut a mask and blended the grass and sky. I think the wee bunnies are from PTI and the sediment is from GKW. 

This stamp set is from 2019 and I couldn't wait to use it. But then it came and I asked myself why I ordered it because, as I said, I've never been much of an all-over scene-builder kind of card designer. Turns out it's really fun and there are more stamps I haven't used, so hopefully it won't be six years before I do another landscape.

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Die Cuts and/or Stencils.

NBUS: A/G using never before used schtuff.

Shopping Our Stash: Hippity Hop.

~~~

Happy Passover and Happy Easter to you all! Enjoy this time with your family if you are fortunate to be together! I'm resharing this fun photo of the grandtwins I ran across yesterday ... which is when it seems like this was taken!

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar:  D = Dies

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using dies. Your card may help motivate and lift others out of their creative schlump or just give someone a design idea of their own! I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

Thank you so much to everyone who shared their designs last week! Mwah! 

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Flowers and Berries

Hello Stamplings!

How was your week? I hope you are doing well! Isn't it nice to be able to work in the garden again or watch new growth coming up as bulbs or buds? Things are so unsettled in the world right now, especially here, which makes me appreciate nature more. On the other hand, I have to acknowledge that nature can be cruel and my heart goes out to all those impacted by the ravaging storms of the past week.

Here at the Playhouse, we hit on two seasons.

Onefer

It is the first Monday of April and if you're using the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar, that means I = Ink (any color medium). I did a faux watercoloring using the "direct to stamp" method of coloring the stamp, spritzing, and then stamping onto watercolor paper. The wildflowers are beloved wooden Hero Arts stamp sets called "Real High Country Wildflowers" and "Fanciful Filaments."

Hammy found an unmarked sediment which said "hello spring" and I unceremoniously cut the two words apart to use just the spring and Stanley added a few schplatters. I used a NBUS unmarked border embossing folder to add extra interest and create some balance.

It felt like it still needed something so I girded my loins (sorry for that imagery) and did that thing I see famous and/or brave card artists do and I added some sketch lines with my fine line Pilot pen. I was hesitate at first, but I like the results and had fun trying it.

Challenges

Allsorts: Spring flowers.

Addicted to Stamps and More: Any occasion.

The Flower Challenge: Use spring colors.

Behind the scenes: My wildflower panel above is an odd size for me. That's because just as I finished it, I decided the pink tulip needed a little juizz, so I took my waterbrush and touched it up. (Pink tulip? you might wonder.)

Then I famously looked up at a squirrel outside my window, looked back down, and, absent of mind, brushed a speck off the panel. Oops.

I tried wetting the schmear and blotting it up, but it was no go. Hence the cropped panel and the reason "hello" had to be removed from "hello spring." It was actually a happy accident because over at NBUS, we are sharing our April Fool's Boo-Boo cards if we have 'em! So it's all good!

Twofer

I made this card because I saw the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches and the image reminded me of my NBUS "Create-in-Quads" stencil from Taylored Expressions, called "Mistletoe." The sediment is NBUS from SSS "Holiday Greetings Mix 1."

There is shading on the berries, as well as winking by the lads, but the bright sunshine washed them out. I'm glad the gold schplatters still came through. 

Yes, the mistletoe is upside down, but this is another example of how fun card-making is when you want to follow a sketch and there are no mistletoe police to take away your artistic license.

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar:  I = Ink

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your inky creations. Your card may help motivate and lift others out of their creative schlump or just give someone a design idea of their own! I love seeing what you create, visiting you, and pinning your designs! 

Thank you so much to everyone who shared designs 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