Adventurous Octopus

Woohoo it's Friday y'all!  This weekend, a certain octopus wishes you to have a wonderful adventure.

When I saw this week's Freshly Made Sketch, I very quickly decided to bust out my still-nameless octopus...seriously, why doesn't he have a name yet?  OH WAIT I'VE GOT IT!  Let's call him Octavius, but for short we'll call him Gus like the mouse on Cinderella.  Gus the Octopus.  I like it!  Okay, I feel better now that he has a name.  Anyway!

Fun news to share, my Sunflower Mosaic card was chosen as a Princess card!  I was also a special mention at Global Design Project for the same card.  I was rather proud of that card, so it's nice that it got chosen for those two challenges :)

Back to Gus!  Sea of Textures was one of the first two stamp sets I got from the catalog when it went live last summer, and it's been far too long since I last inked it up so I was glad of this sketch for an excuse to use it again.  I decided to use some Lovely Lipstick foil cardstock for the little stripe on the right--it was a Sale-a-Bration option but has since sold out.  Might as well use it, right?  I inked up Gus with Grapefruit Grove and then sponged on a bit of Lovely Lipstick, which left me with a nice bit of shading on his head and his tentacles.  I love that technique for achieving some color variation on more solid stamps.  I also went over him with Wink of Stella for a bit of shine, but you can't see it at all in the photo.  Looks nice in person.

Well, you heard Gus...have a wonderful adventure this weekend!  Cheers.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Sea of Textures
Ink:  Grapefruit Grove, Lovely Lipstick, Night of Navy
Paper:  Night of Navy, Thick Whisper White, Tranquil Textures DSP, Lovely Lipstick Foil Sheet
Accessories:  Under the Sea Thinlits, Dimensionals

Safari Duo

Mornin', kids!  My little one took an extra-long nap yesterday so I actually got cards made for both today and tomorrow, which means I can use naptime for scrapbooking today, woo!  In the meantime, I am quite fond of the card I made for today.

I got the Animal Outing bundle when I did a big order for my birthday back in January, and this is the first card I've made with it.  Don't know what took me so long!  I adore this giraffe and frog duo, whom I colored in with a combination of watercoloring with an Aquapainter and coloring with Crumb Cake Stampin' Blends, which gave me a couple of values of Crumb Cake for my giraffe with little effort on my part.  I chose three patterns from the coordinating Animal Expedition DSP.  The sentiment is from a My Paper Pumpkin kit from earlier this year that coordinated with the Animal Outing bundle, I just had to get that one :)

It's this week's Global Design Project sketch that finally prompted me to get these stamps inked up:

I know it says "sentiment" but I thought that horizontal strip was just the perfect place to put the frog and his branch.

Just a reminder that there's still a bit of time to play along with the coloring challenge at SUO Challenges!

Y'all have a good day, peeps.  I'm actually going to my barre class for the first time in six weeks!  Seems like life has been working against me getting to the gym on Thursday for some reason.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Animal Outing, coordinating MPP stamps
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Crumb Cake, Lemon Lime Twist, Call Me Clover, Crumb Cake Stampin' Blends
Paper:  Pool Party, Thick Whisper White, Animal Expedition DSP
Accessories:  Animal Friends Framelits, Mini Dimensionals

Sweet Celebration

Hey kids!  How's your week going?  Mine is a bit less hectic than last week, for which I am thankful.  Yesterday got off to a less-than-stellar start though...Sadie (my baby girl doggo) knocked my tea over...but it was in the kitchen so it was easy to clean up.  Then my water bottle got turned over in my bag on the way to the gym and of course the lid wasn't shut all the way, so all the stuff in my bag got wet...but at least it was just water and the worst of the damage was to an old blue folder, nothing permanent to anything else that was in my bag.  So even though those were annoying events, there was still a silver lining to both of them, and in the afternoon I managed to make this card before my kiddo woke up from his nap...although he's talking now and trying to get me to go get him up as I type this blog post :)

The lighting in my picture isn't great but it's what I can get at 5:00 in the afternoon.  The cupcake is from a Sale-a-Bration set, and the sentiment is from Sweetest Thing in the current Occasions catalog.  On the inside of the card, I stamped a "Happy Birthday" from Sweetest Thing on a scrap of Bermuda Bay, cut it out with the Stitched Shapes Framelits in an oval, and stuck it on the Lovely Lipstick card base.

I started with this fabulous color challenge from Just Add Ink:

It is all things bright and beautiful and I am HERE for it.  I don't know what flavor my bright purple cupcake is, maybe it tastes like grape Jolly Ranchers.  I paired the color palette with the Paper Players sketch:

Fun sketch, I like it.  I always like it when sketches give me a good way to use up skinny scraps of cardstock!

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

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Hello Cupcake, Sweetest Thing
Ink:  Lovely Lipstick, Gorgeous Grape, Bermuda Bay, Memento Tuxedo Black, Whisper White
Paper:  Lovely Lipstick, Gorgeous Grape, Bermuda Bay, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Dimensionals, Stitched Shapes Framelits

Going Green

Mornin', y'all!  I can't believe it's the last week of March already.  Yesterday I did an SU! order so I could get some of the newer Sale-a-Bration offerings...I can't wait to get my hands on the Painted Seasons paper and matching stamp set :D  But in the meantime, I pulled out some stamps I got last summer when the current catalog was first introduced.

Shaded Spruce, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways!  Green is my favorite color, and Shaded Spruce is a particularly beautiful shade of green.  In our last house, we painted the computer room a similar color, and it had a white chair rail and white beadboard on the bottom half so the green wasn't oppressive.  I loved it. 

Anyway, today's card started with the Fab Friday sketch:

Love it, love it.  And then I couldn't resist the color challenge from As You See It:

I managed to resist using the Tropical Escape DSP and went with the beautiful Nature's Poem instead.  And I love Granny Apple Green, but I didn't want to to get too loud and overpower the other colors, so I just did a bit of watercoloring with it on my die-cut leaves.  Pretty pleased with how this turned out and happily for me it didn't take long at all to do.

That's it for me today, peeps.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Rooted in Nature
Ink:  Shaded Spruce, Granny Apple Green
Paper:  Shaded Spruce, Soft Suede, Thick Whisper White, Nature's Poem DSP
Accessories:  Nature's Roots Framelits, Dimensionals

Dublin, Part 2

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I actually went in my craft room yesterday and did some work on scrapbook pages, so yay me.  It's been a while since I scrapped.  I've got four layouts that are partially done right now, but I just realized last night that I shared part 1 of my Dublin pages, but I hadn't done part 2 yet, so here it is!

I did all my Ireland layouts on various shades of green for the page bases, because of course I did.  This one is Emerald Envy, which might be my favorite shade of green.  I love that watercolor chevron pattern from the retired Naturally Eclectic DSP.

Not so sure about my dragonfly accent here, it feels a little bit random.  I used that "laughter" quote stamp because if you look we're being silly in several of the photos.

Today's color palette is straight from the patterned paper:  Emerald Envy, Fresh Fig, Soft Sky, Peekaboo Peach, and Whisper White.

Looks like this week will be a little bit less busy than last week for me, so maybe I'll actually get some of those in-progress layouts finished.  Wish me luck.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Feel Goods
Ink:  Fresh Fig
Paper:  Emerald Envy, Fresh Fig, Soft Sky, Peekaboo Peach, Whisper White, Naturally Eclectic DSP
Accessories:  Lots of Labels Framelits, Detailed Dragonfly Thinlits

Spring Sunflower Mosaic

Confession:  I have no idea what time of year sunflowers bloom.  And I know that generally they don't have pinkish centers, but two of the fabulous things about stamping are that a.) you can have flowers anytime you want and b.) they can be any COLOR you want too :)  So here's my spring sunflowers!

I started with this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

The first thought that popped in my head was to do a larger image and then cut it up to form the nine squares on the sketch, so that's what I did.  Then it took me a ridiculously long time to figure out how the squares fit together again because I'm silly like that.

I used the springy color palette from Global Design Project:

And that was it.  Pretty simple, really--stamps and ink, a couple sponges, and a paper trimmer.  And a bit of adhesive, but that's it.  I know who needs this card too, so I hope to get it in the mail before the end of the week.

Gotta run--cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Painted Harvest, Part of My Story
Ink:  Grapefruit Grove, Lemon Lime Twist, Daffodil Delight
Paper:  Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  none

Stained Glass Butterfly

Hey y'all!  I finally got in my craft room on Sunday afternoon and made a card to share today because it's SUO Challenges day!

This week's challenge was all about coloring.  Well, it had been long enough since I last stamped that for a while I just sat in my chair and stared at everything, wondering what on earth to make.  Then I thought of the Stampin' Blends markers and pretty soon I was humming along and I made this:

I only used one ink pad (Memento Tuxedo Black) for this card, and both the light and dark Blends in Shaded Spruce, Mango Melody, Blackberry Bliss, and Flirty Flamingo.  I colored each section of the butterfly with the light marker, went around the edges of the area with the dark one, and then used the color lifter on the middle and this is what I got.  I fussy-cut the butterfly, popped up the wings (the center of the butterfly is glued to the card front), and then I went over the black outlines with some Wink of Stella because why not.

Hope you'll hop on over to the SUO Challenges blog to see what the rest of the design team has made, and then take on the challenge yourself.  Have fun!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Beautiful Day, Butterfly Gala
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends in Shaded Spruce, Mango Melody, Blackberry Bliss, and Flirty Flamingo, Color Lifter
Paper:  Flirty Flamingo, Mango Melody, Thick Whisper White, Tropical Escape DSP
Accessories:  Dimensionals, Wink of Stella

Vader

Hi, y'all.  It's been a while.  I haven't felt like getting in my craft room at all for the last several weeks because our dog Vader died three weeks ago.  He would usually follow me in to my craft room and lay down in there while I worked--mostly right behind my chair so I couldn't move :)  He got sick the week before we left for our Disney cruise, and we boarded him at the vet's office, hoping that he'd make it to at least when we got back, but he died while we were gone.  I'm having a hard time with it.

Last year I decided to make a concerted effort to scrap my older pictures, particularly the ones from before we moved to Okinawa, so from 2003 to 2007, and these two pictures are from the day we adopted Vader, Easter weekend of 2007.  He was 15 months old and had spent 12 of those months living at the Humane Society before he joined our family.  We brought Sadie up to the Humane Society to "interview" prospective playmates for her and Vader was the best fit, but he acted totally crazy so we really wondered what we were getting ourselves into--but the hubs and I figured that if we didn't take him, no one else would.  One of the best decisions we ever made.  Vader turned out to be a pretty laid-back dog...I mean, he'd get the zoomies in the yard when he was young, but for the most part he wanted to make us happy and just be close to us, like right behind my chair in the craft room, or right in front of the couch, or generally just within three feet of us.

I can't think of any other instance where I've done a two-page layout with just two pictures, but those were the only two from Vader's adoption day so I just went with it.  When my dog Chewie died in 2006, I realized that I didn't have a whole lot of pictures of him so over the years I've tried to take lots of pictures of Sadie and Vader.  I've scrapped a lot of their pictures, but it's going to be a little harder for me to do that now that Vader is gone.  Some part of my brain keeps trying to convince me that he's just snoozing in a different room or something.

Miss you, buddy.  15 January 2006 - 24 February 2019

Today's color palette:  Baja Breeze (my all-time favorite SU color), Not Quite Navy, Ruby Red, River Rock, and Whisper White.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Headline Alphabet
Ink:  Not Quite Navy, Whisper White
Paper:  Baja Breeze textured, Night of Navy, Ruby Red, River Rock cardstock & DSP, Western Star DSP
Accessories:  Stars Collection Framelits