Nachos: Little Mr. Right

Heyyy Nacho fans!  We have an awesome sketch for you today, check this out:

Aaaand here's what I made:

Squee!  Okay, so I was a little liberal in my interpretation of the two banners, but you can definitely see the sketch in my card, right?  I made it to match this baby onesie:

My friend Tiana's girls (who call me Aunt Christy) sent this to me, isn't it adorable.  And why are they sending me baby clothes?  Because this:

Yes, that is an ultrasound and yes, it's MY ultrasound.  Hubs and I flew out to Texas on Saturday to tell our families that we're expecting a wee baby boy to arrive in February of 2017.  I hear he should look more like a human and less like an alien by then.  SURPRISE!!!

Okay, back to the sketch!  This is a stampy blog, after all :)  Go check out the Nacho blog for more eye candy and don't forget to upload your own creation.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Made with Love, Greatest Greetings
Ink:  Night of Navy, Tempting Turquoise, Tangerine Tango, Cucumber Crush, Versamark
Paper:  Night of Navy, Tempting Turquoise, Tangerine Tango, Thick Whisper White, Cucumber Crush DSP
Accessories:  Baby's First Framelits, Sunshine Sayings Dies, clear EP

Harry Potter Studio Tour, Part 3

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Hubs and I are in Texas right now but I still have some scrapbook pages for you today.

This is Harry Potter layout #4, and the pics are of some of my very favorite things in the whole studio--there's a section of a bunch of printed materials made for the movies.  Harry's first Hogwarts letters, his Hogwarts Express train ticket, the library book Hogwarts: A History that Hermione always quotes, some textbooks, Umbridge's kitten stationery, and of course all the wanted posters for Harry, Sirius, and Bellatrix.  (Sadly, the pictures in the posters don't move in real life like they do on film.)  So much of this stuff is hard to see even if you're watching the movies on the big screen so I loved the opportunity to get a close-up look at all this.

The last two big exhibits are Diagon Alley (sadly, you can't go in the shops and I would so love to go in Weasley's Wizard Wheezes) and a giant model of Hogwarts Castle, after which you exit into the huge shop where they try to sell you all kinds of Harry Potter swag.  I cut down these pictures as much as I could and still ended up with five layouts....hey, I love me some Harry Potter!

Color palette is still the same:  Elegant Eggplant, Lavender Lace, Crushed Curry, Wild Wasabi, and Whisper White.  Check in with y'all tomorrow.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  None
Ink:  Elegant Eggplant
Paper:  Elegant Eggplant, Lavender Lace, Crushed Curry, Wild Wasabi, Whisper White
Accessories:  None

Friday Flashback: Baby Tees

Happy Friday, y'all!  I've got a busy day going here because I have a LOT to do before we leave for Texas tomorrow afternoon.  Wheee!  So let's get to the Friday Flashback, shall we?  This week's stamp set is Baby Tees, which was actually a jumbo wheel but I cut mine apart and made it into five stamps and I love it that way.  Okay, cards!

Also features Cuddles & Kisses

It seems like most of my friends for the last several years have had boys, so a LOT of these cards are boy cards.  Out of the last five baby books I made, four were for boys (and you know who got the girl one).  Anyway, I think I made a mask and sponged the color on the onesie for this card which I thought looked pretty cute.

Also features A Word For You

Watercolor Wonder Crayons for coloring on this one.

Also features Curly Cute

Oh look, girl cards!  I made the one on the right because I'd seen a purple and orange baby quilt that I really liked (more grape purple rather than reddish purple like Rich Razzleberry, but I have to work with the ink colors I have).  Might be interesting to try that kind of card with Peekaboo Peach and Sweet Sugarplum, hmm.

Also features Sweet Essentials and Confetti

The sentiment should be a little darker on this one but otherwise I think it's cute.

Also features Cuddles & Kisses

And from the name of the photo on this one, I made it after Duchess Kate gave birth to lil Prince George :)

Also features Alphabet Rotary

Okay, one last card from the archives, and here is today's new creation:

It's...another boy card!  But I'll get to why in a minute.  First up I used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

Cutting out all the pieces for the card and stamping the images and sentiment took like five minutes, and then it took me an hour to color in all the onesies (I used a blender pen and squished ink pad lids).  And it's more boy because it just happens that I liked the Color Throwdown this week and it's more boyish:

I used Wild Wasabi, Daffodil Delight, and the retired Coastal Cabana for my colors, plus some Basic Black and a wee bit of Soft Suede for the hangers.

Okay, off to work on my to-do list.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Baby Tees, Made with Love, Hearts a Flutter
Ink:  Basic Black, Coastal Cabana, Daffodil Delight, Wild Wasabi, Soft Suede
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Daffodil Delight, Thick Whisper White, Wild Wasabi DSP
Accessories:  Dimensionals

Golden Friendship

Heyyy I got a card made today.  Take that, Anne McCaffrey!  (Okay, so I did read a lot more than I intended to at lunchtime, and then didn't get downstairs until after 3:30 to work in the craft cave, but hey, I made something!)

Admittedly I stared at all my stamps for a bit (and maybe perhaps possibly ate a handful of Raisinets for inspiration) before I finally figured out what I wanted to do.  I'm convinced those Metallic Enamel Shapes just don't photograph well, they always just look weird in pictures.

Anyway, for this one I used the sketch from Fab Friday:

Once I picked out the stamp set and settled on colors, I had this card done in under ten minutes.  So I should strike while the iron is hot and work on my card for tomorrow right now :)  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Artistically Asian
Ink:  Real Red, Wild Wasabi
Paper:  Thick Whisper White, Gold DSP
Accessories:  gold doily, Decorative Label punch, Dimensionals

Baby Shower Projects

I blame the Olympics and Anne McCaffrey.

I had every intention of making a card today, but here it is 11:00 at night and I didn't do it.  Oops.  I'm part of a group of nerds on Facebook and they got started talking about Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books and I was suddenly seized with a burning desire to read the books again, which I haven't read in I'm sure over ten years so it's like they're new again.  And I have lots of other things to do but it's always been hard for me to tear myself away from a book.

So anywha, here are a couple of artwork pieces I made for my sister-in-law's baby shower in January.

If you remember, the theme of the shower was Cinderella.  My awesome friend Tiana cut out the words for me and I sent her a bunch of extra cardstock so she cut out some other shapes too and sent them all back to me.  However the castle she cut out wasn't the color I wanted for this piece, so I traced it onto Pool Party cardstock and cut it out, then coated it with Iridescent Ice EP.

Same thing for the Cinderella--I traced her onto the back of some Blushing Bride glimmer paper.

And here is my army of paper mice favor boxes I made; they all have a teabag inside, herbal in the pink mice and black tea in the blue mice.

So there you go and I really should go to bed and don't let me read another chapter tonight. :)

Moroccan Lanterns #2

So when the new SU! catalog came out this summer, one of the first stamp sets I wanted to get my grubby inky little hands on was Moroccan Nights.  It was on my first order but somehow I've only used it once before today.  I really need to sit down with this set and get to craftin'.

I do love those lanterns.  I started out with this week's Global Design Project challenge:

I kinda flipped the layout upside down so I could do hanging lanterns instead of floating balloons, and instead of stamping around the edges I did some light sponging.  Speaking of light, check out the Paper Players challenge:

Thanks, Paper Players, for giving me a great excuse to ink up the Moroccan lanterns again.

Hubs is home early from work today so maybe we'll go watch some Olympics until dinnertime.  Or maybe I'll go make something else in my craft room, who knows.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Moroccan Nights, One Big Meaning
Ink:  Emerald Envy, Dapper Denim, Early Espresso, So Saffron
Paper:  So Saffron, Thick Whisper White, Moroccan DSP
Accessories:  nothing unless you count the Stamp-a-ma-jig

Harry Potter Studio Tour, Part 2

Mornin', y'all, how's it going?  I've got a dog with an upset stomach, so while I was outside with her, Vader the gimpy dog helped himself to her breakfast.  Knowing how much he loves his food, I really should have put Sadie's up out of his reach so that was my fault.  Vader looked very happy though.

Anyway, I'm back with more Harry Potter layouts today:

The circles have numbers on them, and then the journaling is a list of what is in each picture.  See the giant clock pendulum on the right-hand page?  It took me about 20 tries to get a picture of it because it moves and it's pretty low-light conditions in the sound stages, but I do like how that one turned out.

More costumes, sets, and creatures!  Hubs and I went to the HP studio tour twice, and somehow both times I didn't get a picture of Buckbeak the hippogriff.

Same colors as last week:  Elegant Eggplant, Lavender Lace, Crushed Curry, Wild Wasabi, and Whisper White.  I'm off to go put together a lasagna for dinner tonight.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Calendar Alphabet & Numbers
Ink:  Elegant Eggplant, Crushed Curry, Wild Wasabi
Paper:  Elegant Eggplant, Lavender Lace, Crushed Curry, Wild Wasabi, Whisper White
Accessories:  1/2" circle punch

A-Team Baby Book: The Last Page

Heyyyyy we're finally at the last page for the A-Team's baby book!  And since both my brother and his wife are terrifically rah-rah for their respective college sports teams, I just couldn't resist adding a bit of my alma mater:

But that's not all, I added a picture!

And then I laughed and laughed and laughed and Adrienne can't take it out because that's where I signed the book.  She opened it at the baby shower, flipped all the way through and when she got to this page she said, "And we were doing so well up till now!"

There's my color palette:  Whisper White, Handsome Hunter, Crushed Curry, and Early Espresso.  The bear paws were from a very, very, VERY old sheet of scrapbook cut-outs that I have from a scrapbook expo I went to probably at least 15 years ago.  Yay for using old stash.

I took all the pictures of the baby book pages (and corresponding color palettes) at the same time, so out of curiosity I kept out all the colors I used on the entire book and put them in sorta rainbow order.  It's a pretty colorful creation.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies:
Stamps: My Paper Pumpkin
Ink:  Crushed Curry, Handsome Hunter
Paper:  Whisper White, Crushed Curry, Early Espresso, college mascot DSP
Accessories:  Sizzix alphabet, Beary Patch embellishments

Friday Flashback: Sketch an Event

Hey y'all, happy Friday.  I finally rustled up a card for today's Friday Flashback, which is in celebration of Sketch an Event.  So let's check it out...

When we lived in Okinawa, I made up some baby shower invites for a friend who didn't know at the time if she was having a boy or a girl (it was a boy) and I think this is the one we went with.  Even though it's green and blue she still liked it for a boy or a girl.

I also tried a Real Red version because Sarah likes her some bright, saturated colors.  And that is the end of the Flashback, because I've had this stamp set for a long time and I'm absolutely sure I made more cards with it but they musta been before I got a digital camera.  So y'know, ancient.

Here's the new card:

I stamped the flowers in Bermuda Bay and carefully watercolored with Cucumber Crush, trying not to blur the lines too much.  And then I got the bright idea to add Dazzling Details glitter glue to the wings and I should have used Wink of Stella instead because the Dazzling Details mostly blew bubbles everywhere and I'm not sure much actual glitter got on the card front but I didn't want to redo it.

I used the sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch:

Granted I added the patterned paper on the left, and I only did three butterflies because they were too tall to do four and have room for a sentiment.

I also used the Retro Rubber color challenge:

I've had Sketch an Event since at least 2006, when it retired, and So Happy for You (the sentiment) was from 2011's Sale-a-Bration so both are quite retro ;)  I'll have to see if I can work this stamp set in on some scrapbook pages or something, it's pretty cute and it's sad that I haven't used it more.  Or that I don't have photographic proof that I used it more often, anyway.

Happy weekend, y'all!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Sketch an Event, So Happy for You
Ink:  Bermuda Bay, Cucumber Crush, Chocolate Chip, Crumb Cake
Paper:  Cucumber Crush, Thick Whisper White, Bermuda Bay DSP
Accessories:  Dazzling Details glitter glue

Jellyfish Note

Well, somehow I've managed *another* quadruple challenge for today's card, and they're four completely different challenges from yesterday.  So here it is:

Hubs and I went to the National Aquarium in Baltimore a few weeks ago, and I love watching jellyfish in the tanks where there's no way they can sting me.  It's just fascinating to watch how they move.  So there was one inspiration for this card, on to the challenges.

First up is Color Throwdown:

I used Crumb Cake, Tempting Turquoise, and Shimmery White, though I think Coastal Cabana might have been a closer color match to the swatch (and I do dearly miss my Coastal Cabana).

Next is the Global Design Project theme challenge:

And then the Mojo Monday sketch:

I left off the little flower element because I thought the card had enough going on...well, maybe I traded it for the enamel dots which no matter what I do always photograph weird.

And finally (because alphabetically it came last) is the Paper Players tic-tac-toe challenge:

I did the left column of enamel dots, beach, and texture.  For the texture-y background, I started with a 4x8.5" piece of Crumb Cake cardstock, tore it in strips and sponged the edges, and then overlapped them and glued them back together.  So even though the piece I started with was 8.5" tall I ended up with a piece that was just over 5 inches tall.  Then I just cut the strips apart until I liked the widths and adhered that to the card base.  It just makes me think of tide lines on the sand at the beach.

In other news, HI MISSY'S MOM!!! Thanks for reading the blog and leaving me comments, that was very sweet of you! :)

Okay kids, I'm off to the gym.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  From Land to Sea, Picture Perfect
Ink:  Versamark, Crumb Cake, Tempting Turquoise
Paper:  Shimmery White, Crumb Cake, Tempting Turquoise
Accessories:  Clear EP, Metallic Enamel Dots

A Little Foxy Thanks

Allow me to toot my own horn just a bit...y'all, today's card is a quadruple challenge.  I mean like, whoa.  Four challenges in one!

And pretty stinkin' cute, if I do say so myself.  This will be going out in the mail today or tomorrow, I know exactly who's getting it.  As always you can't tell in the picture, but the hearts have Wink of Stella on them so they sparkle a bit.

So, challenge #1 is Cupcake Inspirations:

As always, that cupcake is adorable and I really want to eat it.  Especially if that's cream cheese frosting.  It's very unfortunate that Wegmans sells red velvet cake by the slice in their bakery, because I have zero willpower and also red velvet cake is pretty awesome.

Challenge #2 is ColourQ:

I switched out the Glorious Green for Emerald Envy since Emerald Envy is pretty much Glorious Green 2.0 anyway, and it's easier for me to get to than the Glorious Green cardstock.  Which I still have.

Challenge #3 is today's Freshly Made Sketch:

And finally, Challenge #4 is What Will You Stamp?

I had much better luck getting good ink coverage on my fox today, so here's what I did:  I inked it up with my regular Calypso Coral ink pad, which is still way too juicy and doesn't give me a great impression with photopolymer stamps.  Before stamping it, I got out a Calypso Coral ink spot that I got in some past Paper Pumpkin kit and pressed it all over the stamp too, not to add more ink but to make sure that the stamp was inked evenly (I suppose a brayer would work too, but then I'd have to clean it).  Then I put my cardstock on top of my piercing mat and stamped it that way--the extra cushion helps a bit with photopolymer stamps.  And whaddya know, it turned out pretty great!

This card took me sufficient time to make that I have missed my 11:00 gym class, so I suppose I'll just have to go to lunch at Panera instead.  Oops.  Haha.  No, I mean oops.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Foxy Friends, One Big Meaning
Ink:  Calypso Coral, Blushing Bride, Night of Navy, Crumb Cake
Paper:  Calypso Coral, Emerald Envy, Whisper White
Accessories:  Wink of Stella clear pen

Nachos: Summer Picnic

Hey kids!  How's it going today?  Are ya ready for a fun theme challenge from the Nachos?  'Cause here it is:

I thought about it a bit and what says summertime more than...a picnic.  And what's better at a picnic than a nice fat piece of watermelon?

I love watermelon, but my hubs doesn't like it (or cantaloupe or honeydew, the weirdo) so I only get small containers of cut watermelon for myself every once in a while.  I have one in the fridge right now so I'll have to eat that at lunch today :)  Anyway, the watermelon is easy enough to make, I just used some graduated sizes of the Layering Circles Framelits and then cut it in half (so I can make a second watermelon card).  I hand-drew the watermelon seeds and then looked through all my current stamps and eventually pulled out a sentiment from an old Paper Pumpkin kit because it was the right style for my watermelon card.

So go check out the other summertime creations at the Nacho blog, and be sure to post your own card there too.  Have fun!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  My Paper Pumpkin, Gorgeous Grunge
Ink:  Basic Black, So Saffron
Paper:  Emerald Envy, Watermelon Wonder, So Saffron, Basic Black, Whisper White, Watermelon Wonder DSP
Accessories:  Layering Circles Framelits

Harry Potter Studio Tour, Part 1

Scrappy Monday, y'all.  Yesterday was Harry Potter's 36th birthday (uh yeah, we can celebrate the birthdays of fictional characters) *and* the script for the London play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released (my hardback copy is on its way from Amazon), so today seems particularly appropriate to share the first of the Harry Potter Studio Tour layouts that I *finally* finished :)

I did five layouts in total, and that was cutting it down as much as I could but seriously I love the books and movies and there was just so MUCH to see here and I took so many pictures and I'm lucky it's not an entire scrapbook album unto itself.  You can see the pictures close up here, here, and here.

Muchas gracias to my friend Tiana, who cut out the title for me with her Silhouette and mailed it to me for this page.  She's awesome :)  The new Harry Potter park at Universal Studios in California opened the week that we were in LA to go to Disneyland with Tiana and her family, and we *almost* tried to go but ended up deciding against it.  One day we will though.

My color palette for today (and for the other four layouts) is Elegant Eggplant (not black, it's dark purple), Lavender Lace, Crushed Curry, Wild Wasabi, and Whisper White.  I chose the purples because magic and purple just seem to go together, and the yellow and green seemed like good accent colors to me.  So stay tuned for the next bit of HP goodness next Scrappy Monday :)

Cheers, yo!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Rough Type
Ink:  Lavender Lace, Elegant Eggplant
Paper:  Elegant Eggplant, Lavender Lace, Crushed Curry, Wild Wasabi, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  letters cut with my friend's Silhouette :)