Super Dogs!

Happy Halloween!  When I did Monday's blog post, I forgot that I had this Howl-oween layout of my puppers, so I'm posting it today instead (and also, I didn't end up making another Halloween card yesterday).

I miss my sweet boy Vader so much.  As long as he got all the pets and we told him what a good boy he was, then he was perfectly happy to go along with anything, including Halloween costumes.  Sadie, on the other hand, has perfected the art of the silent doggo protest in regard to dressing up.  (If you can't tell, Vader was Superdog and Sadie was Batdog.)

Today's color palette isn't obviously Halloweeny, but it worked with the pictures:  Basic Black, Real Red, Crushed Curry, Smoky Slate, and Whisper White.

Happy Halloween!  Have fun, y'all.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Taffy Alphabet, Headline Alphabet, Moon Baby
Ink:  Smoky Slate, Real Red, Crushed Curry, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Basic Black, Real Red, Crushed Curry, Smoky Slate, Whisper White, Toil & Trouble DSP
Accessories:  None

Spooktacular Witch

Oy, y'all.  Ryan has been EXTRA two this week and uuurrrrgh.  I'm tired.  But I needed to make a card because the secretary at the hubs' work is quitting her job so she and her husband can go RVing all over the States.  We got her a little going away present, so here's the card to go with it.

She's a biiiiiig fan of Halloween, and decorated the entire building with all kinds of Halloweeny goodness, so I think she'll like this witch.  I pulled out a couple of retired stamps to play with today, and brayered the background to match the gift bag we're giving her.  And it's all on Shimmery White cardstock because sparkly.  Oh, I embossed the sentiment with that new Shimmer Black embossing powder because it's fun.

Here's the sketch from Fab Friday:

Just perfect for my little witchy-poo :)  I may try to squeeze in one more Halloween card this year, how about you?  Uh, maybe it would help if I actually sent cards out instead of just making them and letting them gather dust in my craft room...

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU! (some retired)
Stamps:  Haunt Ya Later, Trick or Tweet
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Pineapple Punch, Mango Melody, Versamark, Stampin' Blends in Pineapple Punch, Mango Melody, Petal Pink, Granny Apple Green, Highland Heather, & Smoky Slate
Paper:  Shimmery White, Granny Apple Green, Pineapple Punch, Highland Heather
Accessories:  Layering Circles dies, Ornate Frames dies, Shimmery Black EP, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella

SUO Challenges: Tuesday Twosome

Mornin' stampy friends!  It is time once again for a new challenge at SUO Challenges!

This time around, we're asking you to use your favorite holiday catalog product(s) or bundle.  Well, there's a lot of things I love in the holiday catalog, but as I am still resisting the urge to make anything Christmas or winter related, that narrowed down my choices a bit, and finally I decided my favorite product in the fall/Halloween/Thanksgiving part of the catalog is...the Ornate Frames Dies.

They're designed to go with the Spooktacular Bash stamp set, but that doesn't mean they aren't great for all kinds of other things.  Still, for my first card, I did use Spooktacular Bash and the super-fun Monster Bash DSP:

And I somehow resisted the urge to add a bunch of Granny Apple Green to a Monster Bash card ;) I can't help it, I love that bright green with the more muted tones in this DSP.  Anyway, my lil vampire there hadn't been inked up yet so this was a good chance to do that as well.

But, to show you that the Ornate Frames aren't just for vampires, here's a card featuring more awesome fall products:

I love the nontraditional colors in the Come to Gather DSP, and I used the coordinating Gather Together stamp set and Gathered Leaves dies.  Love the texture on those leaves!  And this time the ornate frame goes around the sentiment.  My dad will be having some surgery in the next couple of months, so I think this will be a thinking of you/get well card for him.

So there's my two cards for this challenge!  I have some other Christmas favorites too but none of them have gotten inked up yet ;) Plus I have a box due to arrive later today with more Christmas stuff, so I imagine it will start creeping into my stamping after November gets here.  So it's your turn!  Make a card with your favorite product from the holiday catalog, and I'll ooh and ahh over it even if I'm not ready to start making Christmas stuff myself ;)

Cheers!

Supplies for the first card, all SU!

Stamps:  Spooktacular Bash, Little Twinkle
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Terracotta Tile, Crushed Curry, Soft Sued
Paper:  Terracotta Tile, Basic Black, Thick Very Vanilla, Monster Bash DSP
Accessories:  Ornate Frames Dies, Dimensionals

Supplies for the second card, all SU!
Stamps:  Gather Together
Ink:  Early Espresso
Paper:  Mint Macaron, Pretty Peacock, Early Espresso, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Ornate Frames Dies, Gathered Leaves Dies, Mini Dimensionals

Edinburgh

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I'm waiting for my tea to steep so I can have my breakfast.  Yes, I'm drinking tea even though it's still ridiculously hot here for the end of October.  Seriously, it was over 80 degrees yesterday!

Anyway.  On to today's scrapbook pages!

See the pictures up close here.  In late November 2011, the hubs and I took the train up to Edinburgh along with my parents and Bennet and Missy.  As you can tell, I'm still very behind on my scrapbooks, but I'm working on it.  This year's Mosaic Mood DSP worked well with my pictures and I had to bust out my long-retired thistle stamp from the stamp set Nature's Pace because Scotland.

Today's color palette:  Crushed Curry, Garden Green, Terracotta Tile (it is not that pinkish IRL), Mint Macaron, and Very Vanilla.  Once again my scrapbook pages mysteriously end up green and gold when Missy is on them.

Cheers y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Empire Alphabet Upper, Empire Alphabet Lower, Nature's Pace
Ink:  Garden Green, Crushed Curry, Early Espresso marker
Paper:  Crushed Curry, Garden Green, Terracotta Tile, Very Vanilla, Mosaic Mood DSP
Accessories:  None

Friday Double Feature

Happy Friday y'all!  As it happens, I have two cards to share today.  Here's the first one:

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

And I paired that with the colors from Color Throwdown:

I used Pumpkin Pie, Gray Granite, and Very Vanilla for my colors, but I didn't want the orange to be overpowering so when I watercolored the pumpkins, I did a wash of Gray Granite first and then just added a tiny bit of Pumpkin Pie.  I usually don't go much for cards with such a muted color palette, so my brain rebelled and I had to make another card:

Okay, so the card base is still neutral, but I used Gorgeous Grape, Pumpkin Pie, and Granny Apple Green to up the fun factor.  I love those colors together for Halloween!  Also I think this sentiment is large and in charge enough to count for the Paper Players challenge:

When Ryan goes down for his nap this afternoon, I'm hoping to do some work on his baby book. I've only got a few pages left and then I'll be done with it!

Have a great weekend, y'all!

Supplies for the first card, all SU!
Stamps:  Gather Together
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Gray Granite, Pumpkin Pie, Soft Suede
Paper:  Gray Granite, Thick Very Vanilla
Accessories:  Stitched Rectangles Dies, Dimensionals

Supplies for the second card, all SU!
Stamps:  Wonderfully Wicked
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Gorgeous Grape, Pumpkin Pie, craft Whisper White
Paper:  Basic Black, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Stitched Rectangles Dies, Glitter Enamel Dots, Dimensionals

Rustic Bear

Hey y'all!  I mentioned on Tuesday that I had wanted to do a woodsy scene for a card, so here it is.  We spent a week in the Bar Harbor area of Maine earlier this month and there were GORGEOUS fall colors, with lots of evergreens mixed in, so that was my inspiration for this card:

I did the polished stone technique on the background panel; you wet a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol and then add drops of ink refill, then pounce on glossy white cardstock.  It starts out looking polka dotty but if you keep going it blends together and you get something like this.  Believe it or not, I had SIX drops of Crushed Curry ink on my cotton ball, and one drop each of Pumpkin Pie and Cherry Cobbler.  Maybe next time I'll try doing the colors in stages instead of all together at once and see how that works.  At any rate, that technique was a favorite of mine years and years ago and it's nice to pull it out again.

I used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

The As You See It challenge has expired, but I was thinking of it nonetheless:

And my card also fits in with the Cupcake Inspiration challenge:

And here is just one of the pictures we took in Acadia National Park:

We took just over 1,000 pictures over one week, and I haven't gone through them all yet except to just quickly look but I think we got some really nice ones.  We were there for peak fall foliage and happily missed the storms that came through starting the day after we got home.  We didn't see any fauna larger than a squirrel; all the moose and bears were hiding I guess, though I did get a sweatshirt with a moose on it and I love it :)

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Rustic Retreat, Rooted in Nature
Ink:  Shaded Spruce, Early Espresso, Versamark, ink refills in Crushed Curry, Cherry Cobbler, & Pumpkin Pie
Paper:  Shaded Spruce, Crushed Curry, Thick Whisper White, Glossy White, Vellum
Accessories:  Nature's Roots Dies, Stitched Shapes Dies, Mini Dimensionals, Clear EP

Mermaid Wishes

Hey y'all!  Hope your week is off to a good start.  I ran yesterday for the first time in about a month and man, I'm feeling it.  But Ryan took a nice long nap yesterday, so I got some work done on a couple of scrapbook layouts and made a card for a friend's upcoming birthday!

It was already getting dark outside by the time I took the picture of this, so the color is a bit off in the picture.  And of course you can't see the sparkle on her tail at all, I painted the whole tail with Wink of Stella and it looks really pretty and sparkly IRL.

I started with the Global Design Project challenge:

I chose to CASE the layout.  I don't have a large stitched square die, but I managed to make a square with my rectangle dies and I'm pretty proud of it.  I ran it through like normal the first time, then rotated my die-cut paper 90 degrees and lined it up with one of the long sides on the rectangle.  Then I ran it through again, only going far enough to snip the one side hanging out of the die, if that makes sense.  Instant square.

My colors are courtesy of Just Add Ink:

When I sat down to make a card, I had been planning to do something with a woodsy scene, but then I saw Magical Mermaid and this color challenge popped into my brain and I had to make a mermaid card instead.  As it happens, I used many muy multiple coloring methods on this:  sponging, watercoloring, Stampin' Blends, and regular markers.

Here's my other photo of the card, without the flash this time.  Still can't see the sparkle, but you can tell the mermaid is popped up on Dimensionals ;)

Have a magical mermaidy day, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Magical Mermaid
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Pear Pizzazz, Coastal Cabana, Close to Cocoa, Petal Pink Blends
Paper:  Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Stitched Rectangle Dies, Dimensionals, Glitter Enamel Dots

Madame Tussauds

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  We're back from a week-long trip to Maine with Bennet and Missy.  We totally lucked out too--we were in Acadia for peak fall foliage!  It was GORGEOUS up there and we had a fabulous time.  I finally got back in my craft room this weekend (I made the card and scheduled the post for SUO Challenges before we left) and did some work on scrapbook pages.  I doubt I'll make my goal this year, but I'm currently at 136 pages, which isn't terrible (original goal was 200).

Anyway, since we just got back from a trip with Bennet and Missy (and our sons, now), I thought I'd share a layout from a trip together in 2011.

Somehow it looks like I missed blogging these pictures, but it's when we went to Madame Tussauds in London.  If you've never been, I do recommend it--the wax figures are AMAZINGLY lifelike.  At this one, the first big exhibit is done like a red carpet premiere event with all the celebrities.  There's a wax figure of a photographer (you can see her on the far right, just above the pic of us all at McDonald's).  I saw that wax figure, then had to go to the bathroom and when I came back, I walked in front of the wax figure and then apologized before I remembered she's wax.  She looks so real!

Today's color palette is Rococo Rose (first time to use that in my scrapbooks, though I admit not a ton of it shows), Merry Merlot (I still haven't used this color very much), Mint Macaron, Perfect Peacock, and Whisper White.  For ONCE I did a layout with Missy on it that is NOT green and gold!!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Mosaic Madness
Ink:  Mint Macaron, Merry Merlot marker
Paper:  Rococo Rose, Merry Merlot, Perfect Peacock, Thick Whisper White, Perfectly Artistic DSP
Accessories:  Mosaic punch

SUO Challenges: Baby Mine

Good morning stampy friends!  Sorry for the radio silence; I've been working hard on some stitching projects and haven't been in my craft room for the past couple of weeks.  But it's time for a new challenge at SUO Challenges so I had to make something!

This time the challenge is COLORING!  Lots of options for line-art stamp sets :)  Here's what I made:

I love the Wildly Happy stamp set, and this time around I decided to bust out the watercolor pencils since I hadn't worked with them in a very long time.  Happily, the colors in the See a Silhouette DSP have coordinating watercolor pencils, so I used Pacific Point, Old Olive, Basic Gray, and Basic Black to color in Mrs. Jumbo and her sweet baby.

So now it's your turn!  Make a card using Stampin' Up! products and some form of coloring, then share it over at the SUO Challenges blog.  Can't wait to see what you make!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Wildly Happy
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Pacific Point, Old Olive, Daffodil Delight, Thick Whisper White, See a Silhouette DSP
Accessories:  Stitched Rectangles Dies, Stitched Shapes Dies, Dimensionals, watercolor pencils

SUO Challenges: Autumn

Good morning y'all and welcome to OCTOBER!  I love October, and I just know the weather is actually going to cool down.  Any day now.  Really.

It's time for a new challenge at SUO Challenges!  This time we're making fall and autumn cards.

 Since it is the first of October, I couldn't resist making a Halloween card.

This came together super fast but I just really wanted to showcase that fabulous DSP!  It's hard to tell from the photo, but the greeting is embossed with the black shimmer EP so it's sparkly.  Granny Apple Green isn't featured in the patterned paper, but I do like that pop of green with all the oranges and yellows.

Your turn!  Make a card that's fall themed--and of course Halloween counts!  So does Thanksgiving, fall leaves, pumpkins, you name it.  Anyway, link it up at SUO Challenges so we can see!  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spooktacular Bash
Ink:  Versamark
Paper:  Terracotta Tile, Crushed Curry, Granny Apple Green, Basic Black, Monster Bash DSP
Accessories:  Ornate Frames dies, Dimensionals