Pagonias

Still working on garage sale stuff, so here's another scrapbook layout!

This is another layout from China; just taking pictures with pagodas.  Missy somehow mashes that word up with maybe begonia and turns it into "pagonias", which I think is funny and now I say it.  I almost never do layouts with just three or four pictures, so this was something different for me.  I kind of enjoyed having more space to "play" with and having some white space...well it's black here, but you know what I mean.

My color palette is Basic Black, Pool Party, Peach Parfait, Wisteria Wonder, Smoky Slate, and Whisper White.  I like the black background with more pastel colors.

Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, mostly SU!
Stamps:  Rough Type
Ink:  Whisper White, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Basic Black, Pool Party, Peach Parfait, Wisteria Wonder, Smoky Slate, Urban Oasis & Berry Blooms DSP
Accessories:  lettering template, circle punch

Alabama National Fair

Ok, this week is getting busy with preparing for the garage sale on Saturday, so I'm choosing another scrapbook layout to share today!

Whaddya know, this one is actually from our time in Alabama.  Oh, if you're wondering, a friend of ours doesn't share his kids' pictures online so I censored to protect the innocent (and checked with said friend before posting this, to boot).

So let's take a closer look at the title!

It really was called the Alabama *National* Fair, and I have no idea why that instead of state fair.  Maybe they're trying to sound more important.  Anyway, I used a couple different alphabets on here and that fantastic Ferris wheel from Feeling Sentimental.  Side note:  I had to use a Taken with Teal marker to ink up "Fair"; for some reason, my TWT ink pad comes off looking like a much dustier version of teal rather than a nice vibrant color.  I don't know if it's age or what...I really should try to hit it with an ink refill and see how it looks then, but for this project the marker worked fine.

My color palette:  Poppy Parade, Peach Parfait, Taken with Teal, Basic Black, and Whisper White.  When I first get out a set of photos to scrap, I like to pull colors I think will work, but sometimes the colors evolve a little as I go through my scrappin' process.  So here's the palette I initially picked out:

Real Red, Daffodil Delight, Tempting Turquoise, Chocolate Chip, and Whisper White.  Really very similar to what I used, but every single color (except white) got tweaked a little bit before I got to the end.  Sometimes that's just how it works.  Other times, I pick the right mix of colors the first time ; )

Cheers, peeps!  I'm off to organize more schtuff for the garage sale.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Calendar Alphabet & Numbers, Broadsheet Alphabet, Feeling Sentimental
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Poppy Parade, Taken with Teal, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Poppy Parade, Taken with Teal, Basic Black, Whisper White, Peach Parfait DSP, Sweet Pea DSP Stack
Accessories:  Circles Framelits

Happy Nacho Day!

You know what day it is.  Nacho Average Challenges Day!  And this week we've got a great sketch for you:

Yep, fun.  I got out one of my soon-to-be retiring favorite stamps and made this:

Tempting Turquoise is officially the last of my new ink pads to get out of the wrapper.  And for some reason it doesn't seem to photograph really well; I had problems with Bermuda Bay looking really dull too, but IRL this card is bright and cheery and fun.  I've got a friend who just got engaged, and another one who just told me she's having twins, so I need to make another one of these so I can send one to both ladies :)  Multi-purpose congratulations card.

Check out the Nacho blog and you'll see one of my design teammates had the same idea I did...she even used the same pack of patterned paper and Tempting Turquoise for her main stamp.  But our cards still look different :)  Your turn next!  You don't have to use Starburst Sayings, though.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Starburst Sayings, Something to Say
Ink:  Tempting Turquoise, Melon Mambo
Paper:  Tempting Turquoise, Melon Mambo, Pumpkin Pie, Whisper White, Sweet Taffy DSP
Accessories:  Starburst Framelits, hexagon punch, Chevron EF, Dimensionals

Guilin Merge!

Scrappy Monday!  Today's scrapbook layout is dedicated to my good friends Missy and Bennet, and the inception of a very long-running joke.

See the original pics here.  This was from our trip to China in 2010; we ate dinner at a McDonald's and my hubs accidentally grabbed Bennet's drink and soon thereafter came down with his cold.  So Bennet immediately christened it "The Merge" and it's been a joke ever since.  How about a closeup of those golden arches:

Why yes, that *is* skull and crossbones paper!  I found it in my stash and thought it was too funny to resist, especially since it was in exactly the color I needed.  Anyway, to do the golden arches for my title, I found a .jpg of them online (thank you Google), printed them out, and then adhered it to my Summer Sun cardstock with removable adhesive.  Then I just snipped them out, peeled off the printer paper and voila!  Golden arches.

I had fun playing around with all the space on this layout; it's not often that I use just four pictures on a layout.  I'm not 100% sure I like my circle accents, the layout needed something but some of those look like fried eggs ;p  But it's done now and I do adore the skull paper :D

There's my color palette:  Riding Hood Red, Summer Sun, Night of Navy, and Whisper White.  Pretty simple Superman-esque colors, but you can't go wrong with a primary color triad.

I'm supposed to Skype with Missy this morning, so I'll make sure that she sees this.  I know she'll get a kick out of it.  HI MISSY!!!

Supplies, mostly SU!
Stamps:  None
Ink:  Night of Navy marker
Paper:  Riding Hood Red, Summer Sun, Night of Navy, Whisper White, Rockabilly & Good Morning Sunshine DSP
Accessories:  Circle punches, lettering template

Friday Flashback: Bold Basics

Mornin', peeps, and welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  This week the randomly chosen retired stamp set is Bold Basics, which is one of those sets I got the first year I started stamping but still somehow didn't use a whole lot.  So let's go!

Also features Simply Spring, Bunch o' Bugs, Whimsical Alphabet

You saw this layout pretty recently when we did the Whimsical Alphabet Friday Flashback.  The flowers on the right page are from Bold Basics.

Also features Tiny Talk

Who doesn't love a red, white, and blue Valentine?  How do you like the split mat on the main image?

Well, that was it for the Flashback part, so here is today's all-new creation:

As soon as I saw this week's Color Throwdown I knew I wanted to use it with these flowers from Bold Basics.  I really wanted to use the bright and fun (and retired) Summer Sun, and I was looking through my old ribbon for some black grosgrain when I found the yellow and I thought PERFECT!  The greeting is from A Greeting for All Reasons, which just seemed to match the tone of the Bold Basics blossoms.

So here's the challenge swatch from the Color Throwdown:

Fun and cute.  I kinda wish I had used a pattern on the bottom of my card that had more black in it, but I liked the houndstooth so whatever.  Anyway, that's it for me this week, so I'd better get my last run in and then maybe I can treat myself to the movies this afternoon :)  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Bold Basics, A Greeting for All Reasons
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Summer Sun
Paper:  Whisper White, Night & Day DSP
Accessories:  Maize grosgrain, corner rounder punch

Kind Peacock

Salutations and greetings, friends!  How's your day going so far?  It's a lovely day where I am and I've finished my run for today so it can only get better from here ;)  I don't think running will ever be fun.

When I was a kid, we'd visit my great-grandmother and she'd take us out to a park and my brother and I would chase peacocks, that was fun :)  Perfect Peacock is not retiring, but Too Kind (sentiment) and Mosaic Madness (the design across the bottom) both are.

I made my avian creation with some help from Colour Me...!

I added just a smidgen of Mossy Meadow for the leaves, but other than that I stuck with the challenge colors.  I also used the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches:

Slightly modified to make the two strips on the sketch stamped elements instead.  And that is all for me today, have a wonderful Thursday :)  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Perfect Peacock, Too Kind, Mosaic Madness
Ink:  Night of Navy, Lost Lagoon, Melon Mambo, Crushed Curry, Mossy Meadow
Paper:  Crushed Curry, Night of Navy, Whisper White
Accessories:  None

Tea, Thanks

Happy hump day, peeps.  Hope you're having a good week.  If not, maybe a butterfly tea party will cheer you up?

So the Stampin' Up! retirement list dropped yesterday, and while Swallowtail is safe for another year, Tea Party is going bubye, so I thought I'd use it on a card today (the tag and the swag at the bottom are both from Tea Party).  This year I have 24 stamp sets that are on the retiring list, and I'm sad about a few of them (By the Seashore!  Stippled Blossoms!  Four You!) but mostly I'm a little scared they're retiring all my favorite Framelits.  So I hope they've got some good shapes up their sleeves for the new catalog!

Anyway, back to today's card.  I used the color combination from Cupcake Inspirations:

I don't think I edited the color on my photo quite right, my card looks better IRL because the Pistachio Pudding card base doesn't look quite so washed out.  I think you get the idea, though.  I also used the sketch from Fab Friday:

Obviously I changed the shapes on a few of the elements, but I think it's still pretty clear that I followed the sketch.  I even used a button and twine :)  The button is an older retired style, but hey, half this card is going to be retired as of June 2.

And finally, I'm going to enter this in the current challenge at The Paper Players:

To make my background for the butterfly, I heavily spritzed some watercolor paper with water, then dropped ink refills on it and swirled it around...I found out the hard way you have to swirl the ink immediately, because if you don't it settles into the paper a bit and it looks like the watercolor paper has some weird multicolored measles or something.  Not the look I was going for.  So after the second try (got it right that time), I set it aside to dry while I worked on a scrapbook layout, and then stamped the butterfly and put the card together a little bit later.

That's it for me today, peeps.  Hope you have a great day!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Swallowtail, Tea Party
Ink:  Wisteria Wonder, Elegant Eggplant, Wisteria Wonder & Pistachio Pudding ink refills
Paper:  Pistachio Pudding, Whisper White, watercolor paper
Accessories:  Retired tag punch, retired button, white baker's twine

Nachos: Sheltering Tree

Good morning Nacho fans!  It is time once again for a Nacho Average Color Challenge:

These colors seemed very fall to me, but of course I had to try to do something different with them.  So here's my card:

I finally hopped on the Sheltering Tree bandwagon :)  I think I'll have fun with this set.  I'm not wild about how the bicycle turned out--believe it or not, I stamped the main part of it (wheels and such) with Basic Black ink, but apparently that's the one firm foam ink pad I got that isn't inked up well enough.  So I guess I'll just continue using the Memento Tuxedo Black ink pad until my Basic Black ink refill gets here.

Your turn now!  Make your own Nacho color-iffic creation and post it to the Nacho blog.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Sheltering Tree
Ink:  Mossy Meadow, Early Espresso, Cajun Craze, Basic Black
Paper:  Mossy Meadow, Very Vanilla, All Abloom DSP Stack
Accessories:  Regals & Neutrals Candy Dots

Athens Acropolis

Scrappy Monday, peeps!  I've been scrappin' so many pages so fast lately, it's hard to choose what to share next.  Today I've got not one, but two layouts from our Mediterranean cruise, specifically when we got to see Athens!

See the original pictures here and here.  We spent most of our day in Athens at the Acropolis (of course!) and the Acropolis museum.  How 'bout a closeup of my stamped title:

Ya know, it took me a long time to use the Empire Alphabet after I first bought it, but I can't seem to get enough of it lately.  And how about that owl?!  It's from a set called Magical & Mystical that I bought from the amazing JanTInk a few years ago, and this is the first time it's seen ink in my house.  (JanTInk is kinda a little famous in the stamping world, and I own stamps that used to belong to her.  I've also met her IRL, she's really nice in person.)  Anyway, about that owl.  It's actually just part of the stamp:

It took me two tries to get just the owl to stamp *without* getting a ghost image of the moon, but lucky for me I decided to do the owl first rather than waiting until I had the entire title stamped out and then messed it up.    And then the second time I had to draw in a little bit where the tail isn't that well defined on the original stamp, but I thought it ended up looking okay in the end.  So why an owl?  Well, most of the temples on the Acropolis are connected to Athena, the patron goddess of Athens, and the owl is her sacred bird.  Lots of gods had sacred animals or birds, like Hera is associated with peacocks for example.  But anyway, I had to put an owl on there for Athena.

Oh hey, I said two layouts, didn't I?

I couldn't fit all the pictures onto just one layout :)  The three pics on the bottom half of the right page are all from the Acropolis museum; on the left are the best guess we have at what the Parthenon's pediment sculptures looked like before they got blowed up and otherwise damaged, and in the bottom right corner is a pic of me with one of the real caryatids from the Erechtheium; the ones actually out on the Acropolis are replicas and the real ones are safe and protected in the museum.

There's my color combination for the two layouts:  Groovy Guava, River Rock, Brilliant Blue (for the bright blue sky in all the pics), Chocolate Chip, and Very Vanilla.

I didn't realize until I started these pages just how close the soon-to-retire In Color Crisp Cantaloupe is to the long-retired In Color Groovy Guava.  Really, they're like a half a shade off of each other.  They do seem to have a tiny problem of recycling very similar colors.  Now we just need to revisit some of the purples...

Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Empire Alphabet, Magical & Mystical, Mosaic Madness
Ink:  River Rock, Chocolate Chip, Pacific Point
Paper:  Groovy Guava, Chocolate Chip, Pacific Point, Very Vanilla, Brocade Background DSP
Accessories:  Artisan Label punch, Mosaic punch, circle punch

Friday Flashback: Confetti

Man, I was doing really good this week with having posts written and scheduled the day before they were to go up, but I think I'm coming down with something right now :(  So I made my card yesterday but didn't get the post done.  Anyway, welcome to this week's Friday Flashback, which features the background stamp set Confetti!

Also features Baby Tees, Sweet Essentials

There are six stamps in the Confetti stamp set, and I love that little alphabet one for baby cards.  I don't know why I think that baby stuff should have the alphabet on it?  But I do.  Hey, I like the layout on this card, I should use that again.

Also features Fintastic

If you click on that pic to see it bigger, you'll see the little polka dot bubbles on the background paper on this one.  I think that's about the only time I used Fintastic, but I was super excited to get it and I'm sure I'll use it again somewhere else.

Also features Baby Bundle

One last baby card for the Flashback part, I'm not sure how all my projects with Confetti ended up being baby-centric, but as it turns out my new card is also baby-riffic as well!

I did try to let Confetti be the star of the show on this one, with the polka dots on the Pistachio Pudding piece and the heart background underneath.  I used the sweetheart punch to cut a heart out of the Pistachio layer so you see the card base through it.  The "baby" is from All-Year Cheer II and I just hand-wrote "hey" next to it.  Seems like everyone I know is having boys right now, but sooner or later the pendulum will spring back and someone will have a girl and I'll have this card all ready and waiting.

I used the color combo from Colour Me...!

And the awesome sketch from Freshly Made Sketches, super easy to work with this week:

So there's your Friday Flashback for this week!  Hope you have a great weekend, peeps.  Cheers!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Confetti, All-Year Cheer II
Ink:  Blushing Bride, Pistachio Pudding, Rose Red
Paper:  Blushing Bride, Pistachio Pudding, Whisper White
Accessories:  Sizzlits labels (I think they're retired), Sweetheart punch, Dimensionals

Totally Busted

I love to participate in card challenges, which I'm sure you've figured out if you've spent any amount of time here at Snapdragon Stamps.  When it comes to scrapbooking, though, I prefer to just do my own thing and not try to fit my photos into challenges.  My scrappy muse is temperamental.  Every once in a while, though, a challenge just speaks to me, like this one from Cupcake Inspirations:

I have the perfect set of photos for a comic book scrapbook layout, so I set to work.

The pictures are from when my family came out to visit us and this was their last day in London; they got involved in an undercover police operation and helped subdue some dude who was high as a kite after he ran from the po-po and crashed into Laura.  You can read the whole story here or maybe if you click on the photo it might be big enough to read on the layout.  The border on the left page was cut off some patterned paper I bought, and the red mat on the left page is part of the piece that the Avengers came out of on the right page.

My color palette, and I think this might be the first time EVER that I've used Yoyo Yellow!  What's funny is I'd picked out these four colors, then went to the craft store to find some appropriate comic book paper.  Is it bad that I ignored the four sheets of Superman paper I had in my stash to go find something with the Avengers on it?  I'm more a Marvel girl than DC, though DC does have Wonder Woman and I love her.  Not that I read many comic books anymore, but I'm a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC just hasn't done that great with Superman lately, and they haven't done anything with Wonder Woman yet, so Marvel is where it's at for my money.  Anyway, I picked out these colors, then went out shopping, and happily for me the colors worked with the paper I brought home.  Yay!

That's it for me today, peeps.  Have a great day...Pow!

Supplies, mostly SU!
Stamps:  Well-Worn Alphabet, Calling All Heroes
Ink:  Poppy Parade, Island Indigo, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Yoyo Yellow, Island Indigo, Whisper White, Marvel's Avengers paper from Sandylion
Accessories:  None

Happy Spring

Happy Wednesday, peeps!  It sure is spring here in 'Bama, we've had quite a few thunderstorms the last several days.  I actually missed them when I was in England; I like a good thunderstorm.  So anyway, let's go for a spring card today:

Yep, these bright colors make me happy.  They're kinda like Baylor colors, so I think I know who I should send this to :)  I used the sketch from Retro Sketches:

Here I thought I had a good handle on the sketch and was following it pretty well, but somehow I ended up with the larger border on the bottom of my main image instead of the top.  Whoops.  I tried!

I also used the inspiration photo collage from Stampin' Celebration!:

This might be the first time I've ever played along over there, though I've lurked for a long time.  I just loved that one pic of the daffodils, those definitely remind me of England.  In the springtime, daffs would pop up all over our village, including our backyard.  Good thing they pretty much take care of themselves because I've got a black thumb.  I do love flowers, though!

Anyway, that's it for me today, peeps.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Painted Petals
Ink:  Daffodil Delight, Pear Pizzazz
Paper:  Daffodil Delight, Pear Pizzazz, Garden Green, Whisper White, Trim the Tree DSP Stack
Accessories:  Hello You Thinlits, On Film Framelits

Nachos: Love You More than Chocolate

Hey, Nacho fans!  What was up last week, where was everyone?  We only had two players for last week's fun color challenge.  This week the Nacho Average Challenges crew has a fun sketch for you, so I hope you can carve out some time to get stampy.

Remember, you don't have to use circles.  You could use flowers, or hearts, or butterflies, or seashells, or whatever else your little heart desires.  So here's what I made:

See, only one of my elements on here is a circle :)  This is going to a friend of mine who got some not-so-fun news (not necessarily *bad* news, but just not what she was hoping for) so I'm going to send her this card with some brownie mix, because sometimes you just need brownies.

That's it for me today, peeps.  Your homework assignment is to make a card with this sketch and post it on the Nacho blog...there might be a quiz later.  ;)

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Lovely Amazing You
Ink:  Crumb Cake
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Chocolate Chip, Melon Mambo, Whisper White, Sweet Taffy DSP
Accessories:  Circles & Deco Labels Framelits, Sweetheart punch, Dimensionals, Brights Candy Dots

Attempting the Impawsible

Scrappy Monday, peeps!  Today I'm sharing a layout that features my two adorable little black dogs, plus their cousins.

Last year, the hubs and I sent our two dogs back to Texas to spend a couple months with my parents before we left England so they could travel before it got too hot.  And then when we got to Texas it was a big happy hairy reunion :)  The other dogs belong to my brother and his wife, and the spotted one is my dad's, and all of these pictures are my attempt to get all five dogs looking in the same direction at the same time.  Impossible.

Closeup of the title.  Once that pun occurred to me, I just couldn't help but make it my page title.  I just hand-drew the little paw prints on the cutout letters so I wouldn't have to cut out the insides of the letters.

I think I use basically this same color combination on all my doggy layouts:  Basic Black, Baked Brown Sugar (on the non-SU! patterned paper from my stash), Riding Hood Red, and Pacific Point.

Anyway, it's a new week and I'm hoping to get lots of scrappin' done, so I'm outta here.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, mostly SU!
Stamps:  None
Ink:  Basic Black
Paper:  Basic Black, Riding Hood Red, Pacific Point, Very Vanilla, non-SU DSP (I forget the company and the logos are both glued to the page base)
Accessories:  Lettering template from Deja Views, Hearts Framelits

Friday Flashback: Outlined Occasions

Happy Friday, peeps!  Every once in a while, I draw a stamp set name for the Friday Flashback that is all virgin rubbah...like today.  Outlined Occasions was a Sale-a-Bration set in 2012 (so at least it was free) that I had never inked up before today.  So here's my one and only card for today's Friday Flashback!

The set has two other pairs of sentiments, Thanks/so very much and Love/be mine.  It is pretty cute so I'm not sure why I never used it before, other than maybe Sale-a-Bration is such a short window that I sometimes run out of time to really play with all the schtuff.  Like I know I have at least one SAB set from this year that I haven't inked up at all.  So back to today's card, I stamped the bigger stamp in Night of Navy ink and then dumped some clear EP on it.  I'm not sure much of it actually stuck, but after I heated it up, it did keep the NON ink from running when I used blender pens to color in the letters and confetti, so I'm calling that a win.

Anywha, I used the very awesome color combo from Create with Connie and Mary:

Love it, and that the Calypso Coral and Crushed Curry are both found in the Best Year Ever DSP.  This card was super fast to put together thanks to this color combo and the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches:

And that's it for me this week, peeps.  Hope you have a fantabulous weekend!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Outlined Occasions
Ink:  Night of Navy, Calypso Coral, Crushed Curry
Paper:  Night of Navy, Whisper White, Best Year Ever DSP
Accessories:  Clear EP, Regals Candy Dots