Bridal Bouquet

Howdy, folks!  Hope you're having a wonderful day today.  Hubs and I are about to start getting ready for a big fancy-dancy dinner at Parliament in London :)

But first, here's a card!

This was for a recent SCS color challenge to use Basic Gray, Blushing Bride (ugh) and Pink Pirouette, with the option of adding a green.  To my surprise, I kinda liked the result, and I really don't like Blushing Bride :)  My green of choice is the brand new Pistachio Pudding, whaddya think?

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Ciao, Baby!, Field Flowers
Ink:  Pink Pirouette, Blushing Bride, Basic Gray, Pistachio Pudding
Paper:  Blushing Bride, Basic Gray, Pistachio Pudding, Whisper White, In Color DSP Stack
Accessories:  Petite Curly Label punch, Fancy Fan EF

Boyish Valentine

I'm making progress on the twin boy baby books!!  The picture might not be the best, but you get the idea.

In the past I've been a bit disappointed with several of my February layouts, but this one I'm quite chuffed with (ooh, British slang, ha!).  Periodically when working on baby books (or, more rarely, my personal scrapbooks), I like to go through all my patterned paper and just refresh my memory as to what all I have ('cause it's a lot).  And every once in a while I make a serendipitous discovery!  The heart paper on the sides of the layout is actually from Sweet Shop Specialty DSP, which mostly has a bunch of ice cream and cupcake patterns.  When I found the heart paper I almost shouted EUREKA but then I thought they only do that in movies, so I refrained.

But I digress.  I thought the paper would be perfect for these two books as the mom likes bright colors (hence, the Calypso Coral page base) and the hearts say "Valentine" without it being all pink and girly.  And the Hearts a Flutter stamp with the bitty hearts in a heart shape (does that description even make any sense?!) coordinated with the paper beautifully.  I managed to make two of these layouts in fairly short order and was quite pleased with them at the end.

A word about the alphabet...when I graduated from college, my parents offered to get me a college class ring but as I was already engaged to hubs at the time I didn't figure I would wear one.  So instead I got the old red Sizzix machine with the lever, and this alphabet (upper, lower, and numbers).  So I've had this alphabet for like 10 years and it still gets pretty frequent use.  I like it for scrapbooks (not just baby books) because it's fun and informal and very forgiving with lining the letters up, which makes life easier with my OCD about having things lined up properly.

Thanks for stopping by today, now go forth and stamp happy!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Hearts a Flutter
Ink:  Island Indigo, Lucky Limeade
Paper:  Calypso Coral, Pool Party, Island Indigo, Whisper White, Sweet Shop Specialty DSP (retired)
Accessories:  Hearts a Flutter Framelits, old Sizzix alphabet

Daffodil Madness

Howdy, folks!  It's an overcast and rather dreary day today in my corner of England, so I made a bright and cheery card to counteract the gray skies.

I used the sneak peek set Mosaic Madness along with the new In Colors Coastal Cabana and Strawberry Slush--I must really like that combo as it's the *exact same one* used on my first Mosaic Madness card.  I think this mosaic stamp set is designed to make OCD people like me twitch when the designs aren't lined up properly ;)  Good thing I am close friends with my Stamp-a-ma-jig.  I also had to combine a cool new set with one of my favorite outgoing sets, Curly Cute.  I didn't buy that set for the longest time but once I did, I used it quite a bit and I'll miss it when it's retired!  Not that I can't (or won't) still use it anyway.

Today's card is based on the latest challenge at Freshly Made Sketches:

I think the FMS crew routinely publishes sketches that I just absolutely love :)  My Whisper White panel is all one piece, and I just masked off the bottom bit when stamping the mosaic pieces and then covered the join with ribbon, though that ribbon is a bit sheer to really hide the split.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Mosaic Madness, Curly Cute
Ink:  Coastal Cabana, Strawberry Slush, Daffodil Delight
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Strawberry Slush, Whisper White, Quatrefancy DSP
Accessories:  Daffodil Delight seam binding

Friday Flashback: Cheers to You

Happy Friday and welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  Today's randomly chosen stamp set is Cheers to You, and it's kinda funny that I own this set because in general, I don't drink alcohol.  But they have festivals for everything in Japan, and I just had to get Cheers to You to finish off my scrapbook layout for the Orion Beer Festival:

When I was working on this, I called my friend Amber (this was when we both lived on Okinawa) and asked, "Do you have any beer stamps?" and she was like, "Um, noooo, what do you want that for?!"  It was so wonderful having a local stampy friend because we did trade stamps back and forth from time to time.

So while I got the stamp set specifically for that scrapbook layout, I did use it again!  And for Saint Patrick's Day.  Go green beer!  (Only not for me, 'cause I hate beer.)

This one was a birthday card for a friend of mine, and another combo SCS sketch/color challenge card, but one I think was a bit less successful.  Bleargh.  I like today's brand new card better:

Sorry the pic is a teensy bit blurry, I took two and this was the better of the two.  So I know I just recently used that same awesome floral DSP for a recent Flashback, but it was on top of my scraps and it just worked with these stamps.  Sometimes you just gotta go with your first idea, know what I mean?  The layout is courtesy of Retro Sketches:

Ooh dang, once again I'm a little bit off from the original sketch.  Oh well, too late now.  And that's all she wrote!  Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by for today's Friday Flashback!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Cheers to You (retired)
Ink:  Basic Gray, Tempting Turquoise, Cool Caribbean, Peach Parfait, Pumpkin Pie, Regal Rose, Rose Red
Paper:  Tempting Turquoise, Rose Red, Whisper White, Island Oasis DSP (retired)
Accessories:  Paper daisy (soon to retire), Triple Flower punch (retired), rhinestone, Dimensionals

CreativeCrew: Happy Cupcake

Here's another project I did for May's CreativeCrew challenges, take a look!

It's kind of CAS but still shows off three different patterned papers, and I think that cupcake stamp is totes adorbs :)  And here's the party pic that inspired my card:

Fun colors, right?  For some reason the whole pennant thing hasn't really tripped my trigger, so I don't have the pennant punch or the birthday stamp sets with all the pennants.  Someone tell my husband that I do not in fact own everything SU! has ever made ;)

Have a wonderful day and don't forget to check out all the CreativeCrew beauties here!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Best of Birthdays
Ink:  Pacific Point, Daffodil Delight, Melon Mambo, Tempting Turquoise, Tangerine Tango
Paper:  Whisper White, Summer Smooches DSP (I'll miss this stuff, so many fun bright colors!)
Accessories:  Daffodil Delight seam binding, corner rounder punch

Punchtastic

Have you ever seen a color challenge online and just thought oh my word, those colors do NOT belong together?  Well, I have.  I've said this before, there are certain pairs I don't like--Baja Breeze and Bashful Blue or Marina Mist; Basic Black and Night of Navy (blame my mom for that one); Elegant Eggplant and Concord Crush, Calypso Coral and any of the real pinky-red shades.

So then this Splitcoast color challenge comes along to use Calypso Coral, Primrose Petals, and Whisper White.  And even though I shudder at the thought of Calypso Coral with Primrose Petals, I gave it a shot.

But I didn't stick the butterfly down too firmly because YIKES.  Instead, I did this:

OH MY GOODNESS THAT'S SO MUCH BETTER.  The butterfly pops out so much better against all the coral and hey, Bermuda Bay lookes *awesome* with Calypso Coral.  I thought about adding a sentiment, but the butterfly is on Dimensionals and this time I *did* stick it down good, so I'll just wait till I want to use this card and then put a sentiment on the inside.

Color crisis averted.  I saved the Primrose Petals butterfly and stuck it on my ink pad caddy.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Mixed Bunch, Best of Butterflies (is that butterfly not totally gorgeous?!)
Ink:  Calypso Coral, Primrose Petals, Bermuda Bay
Paper:  Whisper White, Calypso Coral, In Color DSP Stack
Accessories:  Decorative Label, Blossom, and Elegant Butterfly punches, Dimensionals

French Foliage Birthday

Happy Tuesday!  Hope you're having a fabulous day.

For today's card, I turned to the latest Inkspirational challenge:

I really liked the colors, which I read as Rich Razzleberry, Pumpkin Pie, and Daffodil Delight.  And then I just really wanted to see how those colors would look with some French Foliage:

We've got lots of fall birthdays in our family so I'm sure this will get sent off in a few months.  The leaves are all rock 'n' rolled--even the Razzleberry ones are stamped off once, then rolled in more Razzleberry ink to make them darker on the edges.  Then I sponged the image panel a bit on the edges because that seems to be de rigueur for this stamp set (oooh, I threw in some French on this French Foliage card!).  I kinda wished I'd embossed the sentiment in Early Espresso EP to make it stand out a little better, but oh well.  The card is based on an old SCS sketch;  I ended up liking it more than I thought I would.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  French Foliage (get it now, it's retiring!), Perfectly Penned
Ink:  Rich Razzleberry, Daffodil Delight, Pumpkin Pie, Soft Suede, Early Espresso
Paper:  Rich Razzleberry, Daffodil Delight, Soft Suede, Very Vanilla, Brights DSP Stack
Accessories:  Neutrals brads (also retiring!)