Mirrored Ovals

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you all enjoyed last week and you're ready to bust this new week wide open! Things slow down a little online this time of the year as we spend more time outdoors when the weather is fine. As much as we love paper flowers, there is nothing like the real thing!

If you do have time to garden and craft, this is the first full week of July, which means the motivation I.D.E.A.S. Calendar is I = Ink/Color Mediums.

Onefer

I was also busy last week with my birthday and America's birthday, so I turned to Freshly Made Sketches for inspiration and this is my take on the sketch. The "Lush Greenery" is from Pinkfresh. It comes with two halves, but I only used one-half and stamped it as a mirror image. 

I used my Ziggies to color the greenery and the lads very carefully winked the wee leaves. I used Poppystamps NBUS pointed oval die for the sediment and their pointed rectangle die to add a frame. I used the "aloha" die from Your Next Stamp because it's perfect for a birthday card for my friend who spends half the year in Hawaii! Poor dear.😂🌴🥥

Other Challenges

CAS on Friday: Botanical.

Tic Tac Toe: Diagonal, top left to bottom right: foliage/free/any sediment.

Twofer

I liked how my first card turned out so much that I used the sketch and dies again to make a Christmas design. Like with the first card, I mirror-stamped the Magenta poinsettia trio stamp back-to-back. Then we painted, winked, and framed them using a sediment from Simon Says Stamp.

Challenges

Holly & Ivy: Anything Christmas Goes.

Jingle Belles: Poinsettia Perfection.

Merry Little Christmas: Anything Christmas Goes.

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I.D.E.A.S. Calendar:  I = Ink/Color Mediums

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creation using some form of coloring, inking, painting, etc. which might help lift someone out of their creative schlump!

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

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Enjoy your week! No seriously, enjoy! LITS!

Here's an example from my little friend on enjoying life, taken from the Playhouse window. As always, thank you for visiting and commenting!

*Life is too short!

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Half-Year Stenciling

Hello Stamplings!

O jp[e tjos fomds upi we;;! Oops. In other words, I hope you are doing well! So many of you around the world have been dealing with terrible long heat spells and/or days to weeks of rain and I hope you find relief soon.  

Today we wrap up June with an illusive fifth Monday. That means we get to play with S = Stencils on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. I forget about using them, but when I do have a play, then I want to play with ALL of them!

Onefer

Nothing original here as far as design, but I'm delighted with this NBUS balloon stencil from Waffle Flowers which I got on sale not too long ago. I chose three CP ink pads next to each other in the drawer and I love how summer-y and ice-cream-y they turned out. 

Hammy and Stanley added schplatters by clapping water all over the panel from their perch on the window sill. I added a black card base and sediment banner heat-embossed in white because I thought the black made the colors bop. (🎶Bop with me baby allll night long ...🎶) I say "bop," because, like, you know, you don't want to use the word pop around balloons. Duh.

Challenges

Addicted to Stamps and More: Die cuts or stencils.

Just Us Girls: Stencil week.

Seize the Birthday: Add a silhouette or anything goes.

Twofer

This week marks the half-way point in the year, so it's not too early to get serious about Christmas cards, even if it is summer. I mail my cards in November, so that gives me four months to make a coupla hunnert cards. Great, now I'm sitting here in a full-on flop sweat! Why'd I have to bring it up?!

This heart tree stencil is NBUS from 2021. It's called "Heart of Christmas." I blended ink through the stencil and then the lads used their winkers, but that schplotched the blended ink around, so then I went over the hearts with colored pencils to reblend. Happily, that did not remove the schparkle, but you'll have to take my word for it.😊

I'm playing in the June Rudolph Days Challenge where the brief is Anything Christmas Goes.

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I.D.E.A.S. Calendar:  S = Stencils

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your stencil creations this week which might help lift someone out of their creative schlump!

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

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To my American friends, Happy 4th of July! May our hard-fought democracy and our precious constitution stand for another 249 years! 🎆🌭🍦

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

 

*Life is too short!

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Click here to enter

Summer Colors and PP Blues

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome to a brand-new Monday and the start of summer in this half of the globule! Are you going on summer vacation? Or like us, do you leave this time for families with school-age kids and take your vacation after kids go back to school? That's one of the joys of being empty-nesters/retireds, although I'm not a fan of the word retired. It's so sleepy. You're re-tired?🥱 I think the word should be "rested."

"Are you still working?" "No, I'm rested now." 

This is the fourth Monday in June, so it is A = Anything Goes week on the I.D.E.A.S. Calendar. I struggle with this week, stupidly enough. Apparently, I'm at that age where I need direction because, you know, squirrels everywhere.

Onefer +

What happened was, my friend Karen used a colored paper a few weeks ago that I loved. She shared that it was from Concord & 9th and I lucked into their annual inventory sale ... and you know the rest of the story. Kaching, kaching.

I think it's been six years since I bought an ink pad, having invested in the delicious Catherine Pooler pads and reinkers, but I decided to buy C9th's latest bundle of paper and matching ink. When the order arrived, Hammy reminded me that we had a NBUS stamp and washi tape set called, "Rainbow Daisies" from Pinkfresh on Mt. NBUS and it worked beautifully with the C9th colors!

Next, I found a NBUS sediment from "Essential Sentiments" by Ink to Paper for inside the wreath and I stamped it in the matching ink onto hammered card x six. The bling added the perfect balance and punch-uation. It's an old, but classic and timeless design.

And, bonus, I still have all the rainbow daisy flower die-cuts from the washi-tape, so the lads and I are going back into batch-production this afternoon to build up the card stash even more!👏

Twofer

My friend, one-l-Michele🥰, has her first sketch up at Freshly Made Sketches as a member of the Design Team and I wanted to make a card to support her and her great sketch! The timing works out that I'm always squeezing in under the fence with my Monday posts, but better late than never.

For this card, I celebrate stamping. I stamped and clear-heat-embossed my NBUS "Eclectic Blooms" stamp from Concord & 9th. Following the colors from the Color Throwdown Challenge, I painted the blooms and washed the sky with my Ziggies and the lads added the schparkle and the schplatter. To finish, I added a stitched frame from Reverse Confetti, and some blingadingding.

I'm also linking to the Krafty Chicks Challenge where the brief is clean and simple (CAS).

PP Blues

As a distraction from the scary world, I thought I would share this photo of me holding a piece of paper over a magazine article to show how thin the paper is. As a cardmaker, you are thinking it's a thin piece of vellum or if you're old like me, you will be reminded of the "onion skin" paper used for carbon copies back when I started secretarial school in the 1900s. 

But, no. Sadly that paper is toilet paper. Yup. If you're a longtime reader, you know I've complained about this before. No one listens. I would think by now there must be some women in charge of the toilet paper products ordered for use in public washrooms in stores and on planes, ferries, trains, etc. 

Pinterest

I'm all for being economical and ecological, but are they really? When a woman has to unroll 58 yards of the stuff in order to get enough to cover her tiny hand after a tinkle, how is that either economical or ecological? Rant over.

And, by the way, we don't sit on the seat, so it's not that easy to be bent over with our heads even with our knees and our butts in the breeze, as we twist to the side in order to unroll long narrow ribbons of the stuff! Sorry. Now I'm done.

Except to say that it's also unhealthy! It's not just that we don't want to get our hand in our business. It's that our doctors have told us that we have to be dry our precious bits thoroughly in order to prevent urinary tract infections. 

Also ~ slap! Okay, okay.

~~~

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 a schlump! 

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! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse!

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Delicate Flowers

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome to the beginning of a new week! There's lots going on in the world and not all of it good, so thank you for coming to a safe space for a little ray of silliness and card fart.

This is week three of the June I.D.E.A.S. Calendar which means E = embossing, wet or dry. I had a spree doing both on my creations. I started by stamping and then heat-embossing these flowers and leaves in clear e/p and painting them with my Ziggies.

This stamp set was part of the Simon Says Stamp card kit in May 2019. Yes, that's right 2019. I'm among friends. The SSS kits are very popular and many of you may have seen this, if not own it. One of the stamps was stained, but I can't find that I posted it and the other stamps were all NBUS. 

What happened was (as near as I can figure), back in June 2019, there was a small 3.2 earthquake along the Hayward fault near here. There was no damage, but it was enough to cause everything on Mt. NBUS to shift and this set slipped into a deep crevasse. 

And there it remained until last week when Hammy and Stanley were crev-assing around and things shifted again. Never a dull moment here! I decided to use the whole set in one sitting before it disappeared again. The only funny thing that happened was realizing halfway through painting that I didn't have dies for this set. Not sure if SSS ever made them.

So I sent the lads off on another excavation, this time into the box under my desk that contains antique crafting tools ~ in this case, scissors. Remember scissors, or skizzers as we like to call them? That was a lot of fussy-cutting, but the old tool still worked fine. As did the skizzers.

Embossing folder is Sizzix 662765. Sediment strip from Memory Box. The pp is from Craft Consortium.

Alphabet Challenge: Embossing, wet or dry.

The Flower Challenge: Add embossing, wet or dry.

Seize the Birthday: A/G (no toppings).

The embossed oval and foiled sediment were gifts, so maker unknown.

Addicted to Stamps and More: Any occasion.

Allsorts Challenge: What makes you happy (crafting and painting) or A/G.

Embossed panel was a gift, so folder unknown.

SSS Wednesday Challenge: Fur, feathers, and/or flowers.

We Love Stamping: June: Nature or A/G.

Embossing folder by Darice. Sediment (v.o.) might be from PTI.

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That was a fun spree! As you might be able to see in some of the photos, the stinkers had their winkers running overtime! Even though you may not have this set or be able to purchase it, there are many sets out there with similar images, so I hope these designs inspire you.

If so, you will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using your wet and/or dry embossing! Your card, in turn, 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! 

Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* As always, thank you for coming by to visit and leaving a comment!

Hang in there!

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Best. Day. Ever.

Hello Stamplings!

Welcome to the show! I hope you had a good week! I've been alternating between card-making and spring-summer-cleaning, both of which give me joy. I'm weird that way. I've killed a lot of dust bunnies in my day, but I still haven't solved the mystery of how the junk drawer gets messy in only five minutes!

This is week two of the June I.D.E.A.S. Calendar which means D = Dies.

Onefer

I broke out my NBUS Postage Collage Cover die from SSS for this design, using the cute playing card images from CAS-ual Fridays Stamps. The sediment is from another oldie-but-goodie: Taylored Expressions "Pawsome" set. My red ink pad needs reinking, but I can't find the reinker, nor, it turns out, the dark green reinker. Smart little Hammy wondered if I put the bottles with my Christmas schtuff~but no. (I can hear you shouting, check the junk drawer!😂)

Challenges:

Addicted to Stamps and More: Any occasion.

Cut It Up: Anything goes.

NBUS: FYI, there's a celebration this month!

Twofer

One could say this design is from the Playhouse "junk drawer," otherwise known as BOB. BOB contains beloved bits I love too much to discard. And when those bits come together as if by magic, it's a thing to behold.🪄

I wanted to use the base panel pp which was left over from a recent make. The lads and I had a rumble with BOB and every snippet we needed was right there, from the schparkly plum paper to the bold sediment to the pretty leafy branch I cut a coupla years ago from a die owned by my friend Bev.

Challenges:

Freshly Made Sketches

Just Us Girls: Die week ~ layers.

Snippets Playground: Anything goes with snippets and bits.

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This is a napkin my sister Diana sent me. It's so funny in a few ways, but I kracked up at the hairdos! These ladies are not getting their hairdos wet, so they don't need to worry about drowning!🌊

~~~

I.D.E.A.S. Calendar: D = Dies

You will find a linky tool below for you to share your creations using your dies! 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! 

Enjoy your week! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!* As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse! 

*Life is too short!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter