Friday Flashback: Happy Watercolor

Happy Friday, y'all!  Well, I failed in my goal to have this post up before noon, but here it is anyway :)  Today's featured retired stamp set is the beautiful Happy Watercolor, which debuted in the 2014 Occasions catalog.  So let's take a look through the archives!

Also features Bodacious Bouquet

I think that sentiment stamp is my very favorite stamp in Happy Watercolor.  That stamp makes me happy :)

Also features Postage Collection

I love orchids.  They will forever remind me of living in Japan, where the Make-Man Store had beautiful orchids in a huge variety of colors and some of the plants were as cheap as 500 yen (about five dollars at the time).

Also features Hardwood

And poppies remind me of living in England.  They grow all over the place in late fall and of course they sell plastic ones to put on your jacket for Remembrance Day (which is like the US Veterans' Day).

So even though I post things on here five (and lately six) days a week, somehow I still don't use some stamp sets nearly as much as I might want to....like why isn't this Flashback a lot longer?  So it was fun to play with this stamp set again.  And both of my cards count for the Retro Rubber Challenge:

Easy peasy!  Happy Watercolor is just two years old, so not as retro as some other stamps but hey, it's over a year old so it counts :)

First up is another orchid card!  We have an orchid in our kitchen right now.  I'm very surprised I haven't killed it yet, but it's got three blooms on it so yay us.  I almost called this post a Friday Frustration though because I was all done with this card when I decided to put some Wink of Stella on the flowers (because hey, I've got that pen now so let's wink up everything!) and then the pen BARFED all over my image panel!  So I had to rip that off and re-do all of the stamping and coloring.  Then I was much more carefuller (haha) and managed to give it a little bit of shimmer without having glitter barf all over everything.

Anyway, thank you to the lovely folks at Fusion for this inspiration photo:

Yay orchids!  I love the color on that vase on the left too, I wish we had that exact color in cardstock and ink.  I also used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

I suppose I wanted to make up for yesterday's lack of motivation, and I didn't realize that it was already pretty late in the morning because I decided to make a second card for today's Flashback.

And darn it all if this one didn't take multiple tries too!  I used the color combination from Global Design Project:

You can probably tell from my two new cards today that I'm kind of in love with that diagonal stripe patterned paper.  What can I say?  It makes me happy too.  I always try to make the stripes point upwards though because that looks "happier" to me.  Maybe I over-think it.

This was attempt #1 on the poppy (I finished up with attempt #3).  The Tangelo Twist came out more orangey in this one which I liked better (it seemed to get a little muddier the more I stamped with it?) but I just didn't like the placement of the sentiment.  If I had stamped the poppy on there first, I would have moved the sentiment up and over a bit, but I stamped the sentiment first and then it just didn't work for me so I had to redo it.  Bleargh.

Well, I've got lots of errands to run today and my little girl dog Sadie just came in and reminded me that today is her 10th birthday and I owe my birthday dog a walk.  A long walk she says, not like yesterday's short one.  Who am I to deny the birthday dog?  So off we walk.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, orchid card:
Stamps:  Happy Watercolor
Ink:  Basic Black, Blushing Bride, Rich Razzleberry, Tip Top Taupe
Paper:  Blushing Bride, Rich Razzleberry, Thick Whisper White, Blushing Bride DSP
Accessories:  Wink of Stella glitter pen (clear), Dimensionals, hexagon punch, Party Pennants Bigz die (still available on the clearance rack)

Supplies, poppy card:
Stamps:  Happy Watercolor
Ink:  Tangelo Twist, Bermuda Bay, Early Espresso
Paper:  Bermuda Bay, Early Espresso, Shimmery White, Tangelo Twist DSP
Accessories:  Hexagon punch, rhinestones, Dimensionals