Friday Flashback: Merry

Welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  Since yesterday was Thanksgiving, I'm now ready to do more Christmas cards, so expect some Christmas-riffic Flashback posts for the next month.  Today's featured retired stamp set is Merry.  Let's get started!

This was our 2006 Christmas card; if I remember right, the word was stamped with Real Red craft ink and embossed with Iridescent Ice for some sparkle.

When we lived in North Carolina, I worked at the central office for the local school district, and the man who ran my department loved to wear Christmas ties all through December--he had enough different ones to just about do a different Christmas tie every week day from December first through till Christmas Eve.  So I made this one for him!  (You can tell it's a tie, right?  Right?!)

This was for a sketch challenge...the background is Wild Hearts, which always makes me think of going fabric shopping with my mom when I was a kid.

I did a one-sheet wonder with Simply Circles in red and green and made a slew of different Christmas cards.

I kinda miss Gable Green and Green Galore.  Well, Gumball Green is pretty fantastic, but it's not the same.

Another sketch challenge, and I like purple for Christmas cards.  Ready for the new projects?  I made two scrapbook layouts to complete this week of scrappiness!

The top left picture is not sideways; hubs is laying on the ground while my dad's dog Ginger "attacks" him.

The pictures are from Christmas Eve 2003, just a few months after I married my sweet hubs.  Yay for scrapping 10-year-old pictures!  (I told you I was behind on my scrapping.)

Thanks for stopping by today!  And if you're out taking advantage of Black Friday sales, be careful out there.  People be crazy!

Supplies, scrapbook pages only:
Stamps:  Merry
Ink:  Certainly Celery, Real Red, Night of Navy
Paper:  Certainly Celery, Real Red, Night of Navy, Very Vanilla, Dashing DSP
Accessories:  None

A Grateful Heart

Happy Thanksgiving!  Today seemed like the appropriate day to post some scrapbook pages from a past Thanksgiving, but first up I have to show you this:

I got this in the mail from one of my sweet SU customers and he was so cute, I knew I had to recreate him for a scrapbook layout.  So here's how my version turned out:

The photos are from Thanksgiving in 2009, when we lived in Okinawa and it was warm enough to wear short sleeves almost anytime of the year :)  I so wish I'd bought another pack or two of that Orchard Harvest DSP, because I don't have a whole lot of it left and I LOVE it.  This year's fall DSP just didn't grab me as much as this one did.

Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful holiday.  I'm off to make something dessert-y :)

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Day of Gratitude, Pursuit of Happiness
Ink:  River Rock, Early Espresso, Lucky Limeade, Raspberry Ripple, More Mustard, Cajun Craze
Paper:  Early Espresso, Raspberry Ripple, Cajun Craze, River Rock, Very Vanilla, Orchard Harvest DSP
Accessories:  Top Note Die, Labels Collection Framelits, circle & oval punches

Dolomite Mountain Hike

Are you ready for another scrapbook layout?  This one's a bit different because I got the hubs to do the journaling on it!

See hubs' blog post about these pictures here (yep, I made him write a blog post too!).  The pictures were taken in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy, where the lakes are bright turquoise due to the copper content in the water.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Land That I Love (stars), Rough Type Alphabet (small letters), non-SU alphabet
Ink:  Coastal Cabana, Midnight Muse, Smoky Slate
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Midnight Muse, Whisper White, Winter Frost DSP
Accessories:  Modern Label punch, old SU die cut from before they had Framelits

Nacho Cabana Snowflakes

Happy Tuesday!  It's time once again for an awesome sketch from Nacho Average Challenges : )

Lots and lots of room for interpretation on this one, so here's what I've got!

The card front is Shimmery White cardstock, my camera just barely caught a little bit of the shimmer but it makes it look cool in person.  I actually got the idea for this color combo from a cross stitch pattern I saw a couple months ago, what do you think?  It's Coastal Cabana for the snowflakes, and then I used Pink Pirouette and Raspberry Ripple for pinks.

So, this is my only non-scrappy post this week, though I suppose I might have counted the layout I posted yesterday with the giant stripe going across the middle.  Anyway, go check out the other Nachos' creations on the Nacho Average Challenges blog, and then jump on in and join us with this fun sketch!  Can't wait to see what you come up with : )

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Festive Flurry, More Merry Messages
Ink:  Coastal Cabana, Pink Pirouette, Raspberry Ripple
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Shimmery White
Accessories:  None

Swimming at the Lake

I think it's going to be a scrappy week here on the blog.  In fact, I'm sure of it, because a.) I have a couple of posts already scheduled and b.) I'm behind on sharing my scrapbook pages so now is a good time for that : )

Behold my latest!

I wish I'd done the "swimming at the" part a little more to the right, but I decided after I'd already stamped that part that I wanted another paw print on there so what can you do.  Maybe I'll stamp another paw print on the other side of that bit...If you look closely, you'll see that the Bordering Blue strip (I miss that color) is stamped with the fine splatter from Gorgeous Grunge, which I got when it was on sale last month and this is its maiden voyage.  Whee!

In other news, I've created a new tool for myself and I must toot my own horn here because it's GENIUS.  I made myself a color swatch book!

When I scrap, I like to try out a few colors with the photos and decide on a color combo before I drag out the 12x12 cardstock and patterned paper.  I have two file cabinets with my 8.5x11 cardstock, but the one with the retired colors is a bit wonky--it's hard to open the drawers on it because I think it got banged up in our last move.  So it's a pain to pick out retired colors, ya know?  Then I had the genius idea to get some divided page protectors and put swatches of cardstock in them.  I cut the pieces to 3 7/8" by 5 1/2" so they'd slide in and out easily, and labeled them all with a black marker on the bottom.  The only one where the label doesn't show up is Basic Black, and I'm pretty sure I could peg it as black without a label : )

I divided them up by color (reds/pinks, oranges, yellows, etc.) and then alphabetized them within the colors because I figured that was easier than trying to decide a light-to-dark order, especially since we have a zillion reds.  So now I can take out whichever swatches I think will work for a layout, and when I'm done I know exactly which color goes where to put them back.  I'm hoping this will help me use more of my retired cardstock colors, though it seems like I've been using a ton of Brilliant Blue lately.  Why do I fall in love with colors right when they retire or long after they're gone and I can't buy any more cardstock?!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Gorgeous Grunge, Rough Type Alphabet, Big Deal Alphabet, Dream Come True (heart), non-SU paw print
Ink:  Bordering Blue, Buckaroo Blue, Riding Hood Red, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Baked Brown Sugar, Bordering Blue, Buckaroo Blue, Very Vanilla
Accessories:  None but my SAMJ to do the title

Friday Flashback: Weathered

Welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  Today's stamp set of choice is Weathered, a great background stamp.  I was kinda surprised how big the SCS gallery for it is, usually background stamps aren't the ones that people choose to upload cards under.  Anywha, let's flash back!

 Ah yes, before I learned to tie pretty knots :)  I'm not a huge fan of this card but I do like the color combo (Elegant Eggplant, So Saffron, and Wild Wasabi).  The main image and sentiment are from A Beautiful Thing.

Here's an older card I do still quite like and it might possibly still be in my card stash somewhere.  The beautiful butterfly is from Wonderful Wings, and the sentiment is from Fancy Flexible Phrases.

How do you like how Weathered looks when stamped with white craft ink on dark cardstock?  I like the crackle effect.  The main image is from the wonderful lighthouse set Coast to Coast.

Here's one that features Touch of Nature (I know lots of people were gaga over that set, and I liked it okay but it was never one of my favorites) and Amazing to Zany.

Stippled Stencils and Sincere Salutations for this one, and you can't tell from the scan but the sentiment was embossed in gold.

Another Touch of Nature card with a sentiment from Short & Sweet.

And apparently I really liked using Touch of Nature with Weathered, 'cause here's a third bird.  Sentiment on this one is from All-Year Cheer III, and the harlequin is Print Pattern.

Ready for today's brand-new card?

I admit, I had to do another fall card before Thanksgiving...I figure that starting next week I'll be doing Christmas stamp sets for the Friday Flashback but I refuse to start that before Turkey Day :)

The color combo on this one is courtesy of the challenge over at Create with Connie and Mary, lovely fall colors:

And the sketch is from Freshly Made Sketches:

I kind of wish I'd used some kind of pattern for the Tangerine Tango strips on my card, but maybe that would have been too busy with the Weathered pattern on both the card base and the main image strip.  Regardless, I'm not going to redo it now :)

Thanks for stopping by today and have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Weathered, Lovely Leaves, Vintage Verses
Ink:  Sahara Sand, Always Artichoke, Tangerine Tango, Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Sahara Sand, Tangerine Tango, Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla
Accessories:  None

Let It Snow

Remember the new card I made for last week's Friday Flashback?  And how I said I was going to make it over with current stamps because I loved the color combo and sketch so much?  Today is that day.

It might look gray, but really it's Wisteria Wonder.  I put the card together and took the picture and uploaded it on the computer when I thought, hey, this is missing something.  So I added a rhinestone:

Ahh, now it's done : )  Ok, so the rhinestone doesn't look fabulous in the photo, but it does look a lot better IRL.  I think this card fits in nicely with the current SUO Challenge to make a project with snow.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Best of Snow
Ink:  Wisteria Wonder, Coastal Cabana
Paper:  Bermuda Bay, Wisteria Wonder, Coastal Cabana, Whisper White, Winter Frost DSP
Accessories:  Bracket Label punch, Festive Flurry Framelits (say that three times fast), Dimensionals, Basic Rhinestones

One Year Old!

So, today is the day that I finally post the last layout from the baby books I made earlier this year.  The babies I made them for are now three and a half months old and I finished these up about five months ago.  So here's the first birthday layout:

LOTS of bright colors!  I think this was one of the last layouts I actually made so at this point I just wanted to get the books finished, so it's not as involved as it might otherwise have been.  Still, sometimes simple is better and I think it turned out okay.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Birthday Bliss
Ink:  Tangerine Tango
Paper:  Tangerine Tango, Coastal Cabana, Midnight Muse, Whisper White, Summer Smooches DSP
Accessories:  old Sizzix alphabet, square & scallop square punches

Harvest of Thanks for the Nachos

Are you ready for a new color challenge from the Nachos?

I admit, these all-neutral challenges are really tough for me 'cause I love COLOR.  But here's what I did:

I got Harvest of Thanks last month when SU! had that special where you got extra hostess benefits, it was fun to pick out lots of free stuff : )  Anyway, the background piece is Crumb Cake cardstock embossed with the Woodgrain embossing folder, and then lightly sponged with some Soft Suede to give it a bit of depth.  Here's the inside:

I stamped Mr. Turkey there in Crumb Cake after stamping off once to make it lighter, then added the sentiment right over the top.  Go check out the Nacho Average Challenges blog to see what the rest of the DT came up with, and then show us what you've got!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Harvest of Thanks, Teeny Tiny Wishes
Ink:  Crumb Cake, Soft Suede, Basic Black
Paper:  Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Black
Accessories:  Deco Label Framelits, Woodgrain EF, Dimensionals

Thinking of You...Twice

All the Christmas decorations might be up in the malls, and Christmas music playing on the radio, but I'm still in fall mode, dangit, so I'm going to keep on with my leafy creations at least until Thanksgiving.  : p  So today I have not one, but two leaf cards.

For this one, I used the sketch from Create with Connie and Mary:

I started with the maple leaf but it didn't fit, so then I switched to the oak leaf and the lower left corner seemed too bare so I added the acorn and now it feels a little too heavy in that corner so I just can't win.  I think I just need that acorn stamp to be like 30% smaller.

Anyway, since I already had a perfectly good maple leaf stamped and die cut, I made a second card:

This one uses the latest challenge from CAS(E) This Sketch:

And it took me about two minutes to put this card together.  If you don't recognize the sentiment, it's from the Everyday Occasions card kit, which I bought because I looooove the stamps and I haven't put together any of the kit cards yet (to be fair, I've had it less than a week and I continue to be scrapbook-obsessed).

Anyway, the color combo for both cards is courtesy of the color challenge at Pals Paper Arts:

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Wonderfall, Occasions
Ink:  Crushed Curry, Rich Razzleberry, Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Sycamore Street DSP (retired), Eastern Elegance DSP
Accessories:  Autumn Accents Bigz Die which I still wish was Framelits but what can you do, corner rounder punch, Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: Serene Snowflakes

Happy Friday and welcome to the Friday Flashback!  Today's stamp set of choice is Serene Snowflakes, and I'm a total sucker for snowflake stamps.  Let's get started!

This was our 2009 Christmas card.  The main image is Patterned Pines (I actually got two of that set, one to keep the three trees as one stamp and the other one to cut them apart); the green snowflake background is from today's stamp set.  The main image is on Shimmery White paper to make it a little more special...I was going for a flat easy-to-mail card (plus easy to make multiples).

And here again the snowflakes are in the background...the main image is *cough cough* contraband but I needed a polar bear image to make a Hanukkah card for my friend Sarah :)

And there's a couple of baby book layouts.  For the first one, I just took the color combo from the patterned paper (which is when I fell in love with Bordering Blue, so of course they retired it immediately thereafter) and the second one I did more purple because that book was for my friend Melissa's daughter, and Melissa loves purple so her book was purpled up pretty good.

I made this one for a challenge last year, it was one of the earlier posts on this blog.  I don't like those white-on-white challenges though, I love COLOR so this was definitely a one-off for me!

And that's it for the Flashback, here's today's brand new card:

I am kinda totally in love with this color combination:  Bermuda Bay, Coastal Cabana, and Wisteria Wonder.  I saw a gift bag with a snowman on it and the bag was done in these colors and I couldn't wait to try it out myself.  I think I might make a few of these with Festive Flurry to send out to my SU ladies...the sentiment is also retired, but it's from Snowflakes.  I stamped the smaller snowflakes in Whisper White on the Cabana layer but they're not showing up too great on the pic.  Oh well.

Anyway, this awesome sketch is brought to you by Create with Connie and Mary:

Thanks for stopping by today, have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Serene Snowflakes, Snowflakes (really, it's two different stamp sets)
Ink:  Bermuda Bay, Coastal Cabana, Whisper White
Paper:  Bermuda Bay, Coastal Cabana, Wisteria Wonder, Whisper White, Winter Frost DSP
Accessories:  Circles & Apothecary Accents Framelits, Subtles Candy Dots, Dimensionals

Pompeii

I told you it's been all scrappy in my craft room for a while now (I'm up to 76 pages!), and I'm sharing another layout today.  I actually finished this in October.

I know I made the page title all mysterious, but the pictures are from our first trip to Italy--I blogged about these photos over on Snapdragon here and here if you want to see them up close and personal.  I had enough pictures to do a whole 'nother layout, but I thought maybe I should try to scrap some more other events and then I can always go back and do a second Pompeii layout later.  I think when I was working on this one is when I realized just how MANY layouts I do with nine photos, it seems to be my magic number.  Or maybe it's just that nine is just about the max number of photos I can squeeze in with minimal cropping and still have room for a title and journaling.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Letterpress Alphabet
Ink:  Garden Green, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  So Saffron, Garden Green, Whisper White, This & That Epic Day DSP
Accessories:  None

Wonderfall Thanks

I've been doing mostly scrapbook pages of late, but I do have quite a few cards I haven't posted yet and I figured I'd better hurry up and get to some of the autumn ones before Thanksgiving gets here.

Once again, this was a combo SCS sketch and color challenge card.  Thanks for stopping by, have a great day!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Wonderfall, Seasonal Sayings
Ink:  Cajun Craze
Paper:  Cajun Craze, Soft Sky, Night of Navy, Very Vanilla, Sweater Weather DSP
Accessories:  Autumn Accents Bigz Die, retired Regals buttons, linen thread, Woodgrain EF, Dimensionals

Nachos: Winter Trees

Happy Tuesday!  Are you ready for a great sketch challenge from the Nachos?

Super simple and easy to work with!  Here's what I did:

What's funny is that two other Nachos used that exact same stamp this week!  I hadn't used Lovely As a Tree in such a long time, too.  I just had to laugh when I saw how often these trees showed up this week.

For the background, I scribbled Pool Party and Pistachio Pudding markers on a large acrylic block, misted with water, and then stamped it on Very Vanilla cardstock.  I had to do it two or three times before I got one I really liked, I like how this one looks like crayon scribbles.  I let it dry completely before I stamped the trees and sentiment with Island Indigo.

So go see what the other Nachos have done with this sketch, then get to your own stampy station and show us what you've got : )  Have fun!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Lovely As a Tree (a.k.a. The Set That Will Never Retire), Express Yourself
Ink:  Pool Party & Pistachio Pudding markers, Island Indigo ink pad
Paper:  Island Indigo, Very Vanilla, Venetian Romance DSP
Accessories:  Subtles Candy Dots

Promotion Congrats

Today is Veterans Day, so I thought I'd share a patriotic card.

I made this a while back for a friend who got a promotion in the Air Force (the inside says "Congratulations on your promotion"; it's a retired stamp from Service & Sacrifice).  Again, it's an SCS sketch/color combo card, I'm getting very close to catching up on all of those : )

I made the card and then it sat for about two days before I decided to add the Real Red Candy Dot because it just looked a little naked without it and the card needed some more Real Red.  Don't believe me?  Here's the before shot:

One little dot, but I think it was just what this card needed.

Thanks for stopping by today!  And if you know any veterans, thank them for their service.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Words of Courage, Service & Sacrifice (inside)
Ink:  Night of Navy, Sahara Sand (sponged on the star squares)
Paper:  Night of Navy, Sahara Sand, Whisper White, retired Real Red DSP
Accessories:  1 1/4" square punch (retired), Dimensionals, Brights Candy Dots