Baby Luke: Luke James

Okay y'all, I'm going to start sharing Luke's baby book layouts on Saturdays I think.  So here's the first full layout:

Baby Luke was named after a friend and mentor of my brother's, who gave his life in service to our country on his first deployment, leaving behind his own infant son.  Ryan's middle name is Luke partially because of that too--when Ryan was born we didn't know if my brother and SIL were going to have any other kids (Luke has a big sister), or if they'd have a boy, so we chose that for my son's middle name to honor my brother's friend even though we never met him.  (And also Ryan's grandfathers are Rich and Larry, so he shares an initial with each of them.)  Anyway, bestowing this name on his son was very important to my brother, so I wanted to have a layout in the baby book where he could write about why they chose this name and maybe have a picture of the first Luke there.

I kept the colors muted, mostly greens and brown as a nod to Army uniforms.

Supplies:
Stamps:  For Your Country, The Free & The Brave, Land That I Love
Ink:  Always Artichoke, Dapper Denim, Crumb Cake
Paper:  Mellow Moss, Always Artichoke, Dapper Denim, Very Vanilla, Manchester DSP
Accessories:  Sizzix letters

Disney Cruise: Nassau

 Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I'm back with another Disney cruise layout, this one from Nassau.

I'm not 100% happy with this layout, I think the photo placement could have been better but it's done and done is better than perfect.  I did enjoy playing with these bright colors (that Artistry Blooms DSP is so fun) and I enjoyed busting out a super old stamp set, In the Sky, for the sun.  For reals I've had that stamp set for years.

Today's bright and fun palette:  Bermuda Bay, Magenta Madness, Mango Melody, Granny Apple Green, Daffodil Delight, and Whisper White.  I'm hoping to work Magenta Madness into another layout very soon, it's such an '80s color and I love it :)  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Taffy Alphabet, In the Sky
Ink:  Magenta Madness, Mango Melody, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Bermuda Bay, Daffodil Delight, Granny Apple Green, Thick Whisper White, Artistry Blooms DSP
Accessories:  Layering Circles dies

Polar Plunge

I've got lots of friends and family in Texas so I've been seeing a lot of chatter on Facebook about the recent snowstorm and issues with power outages and pipes bursting.  So if you're dealing with any of that, I hope you're staying warm and safe and that things get better soon.  As it turns out, I have a polar card to share today.

My friend Sarah is obsessed with polar bears so as soon as I saw the Festive Friday challenge for International Polar Bear Day, I knew I had to make a card for her.  This is my first try at using the blending brushes and, um...I need to practice.  Anyway, Polar Bear Day challenge!!

I use Stampin' Up! stuff only 99.999% of the time but they have a serious dearth of polar bear stamps--and bear stamps in general if you want my opinion.  If they came out with a punny bear stamp set along the lines of Way to Goat or Zany Zebras, I would buy the heck out of that.  Anyway, back to the challenge, I dug up a Whipper Snapper stamp for my polar bear, I used a lot of blue, there's some silver, and I added some bitty snowflake embellishments around the sentiment, so I managed to use half of the inspo list.

My polar pals fit in with the theme challenge at Global Design Project:
 

And I was tickled to use the sketch from Fab Friday:

I needed a sketch that had a large space for my image, so this fit the bill perfectly.

Okay, sounds like Ryan just upended the bucket of 1500+ Legos that his grandparents sent for his birthday (not sure what we did to make them angry but Legos all over the house is definitely revenge for something) so I'd better go put some shoes on and supervise the mess making.  Cheers!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Peaceful Moments, main image from Whipper Snapper
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Balmy Blue,  Stampin' Blends in Balmy Blue, Smoky Slate, Mango Melody
Paper:  Balmy Blue, Thick Whisper White, silver foil
Accessories:  Hippo & Friends dies, Rectangles Stitched dies, snowflake embellishments, Dimensionals

SUO Challenges: Mambo No. 5

Oh man, I'm feeling off this week since the hubs was home for 4 days in a row and yesterday was a holiday so here it is nearly lunchtime and I'm like OH WAIT IT'S TUESDAY so here I am for a brand new SUO Challenge!

It is time for a color challenge, and here it is:

My first thought was hearts, especially with Valentine's Day just passed, but I decided to do something different and came up with this instead:

Still loving A Touch of Ink from the SAB catalog.  The strip on the bottom looks gray in the photo but I promise it's silver foil.  For the background, I stamped the Stacked Stone background with Versamark ink and heat embossed with clear EP, in person the background is pretty subtle with a nice texture to it, I like how it turned out.

So now it's your turn!  It's up to you if you want to sing "Mambo No. 5" while you make your own card, but please share it with us at the SUO Challenges blog.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  A Touch of Ink, Stacked Stone
Ink:  Versamark, Memento Tuxedo Black, Melon Mambo
Paper:  Melon Mambo, Basic Black, Thick Whisper White, silver foil
Accessories:  Hippo & Friends dies, Wink of Stella, Clear EP, glitter enamel dots, Dimensionals

Look Who's Turning 2

Scrappy Monday, friends!  Today is Ryan's birthday and he's turning FOUR and I don't know when he got so big but he did and he keeps telling me he's never going to stop growing no matter what I say.  Today I'm taking a break from the Disney cruise pictures to share layouts from Ryan's second birthday (since I've been scrapping chronologically from his birth, I haven't gotten to #3 yet).

I loved Bonanza Buddies that came out last year and the coordinating paper, I was a little sad they didn't carry over but since I never get rid of stamps anyway it's not like it matters to my collection.  Obviously the hubs took all the pictures because he's not in any of them, the same thing happened last Christmas and I really need to work on that.

Before Ryan was even born, I had gotten a star-shaped cake pan to make his first birthday cake in and then we were in the big fat middle of moving house on his first birthday so we did a store-bought cake.  So I did get out the star pan for this birthday and made a red velvet cake (hubs' favorite, but we all like it and Ryan hadn't tried enough cake varieties to have his own favorite) with cream cheese frosting.

Here's a rather dark picture of today's color palette, which is much brighter and more fun than this picture would have you believe:  Bermuda Bay, Daffodil Delight, Mango Melody, Basic Black, and Whisper White.  Love it.  Also last week I discovered that if I take all my stuff out on the little balcony on the front of our house when it's cloudy out, I can actually get good pictures of my scrapbook layouts and color palettes.  Bit of a pain dragging things out there but worth it to get better photos, I think.

Have a great week, peeps!  We're eating lots more birthday cake tonight :D

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Number of Years, Bonanza Buddies
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Bermuda Bay, Mango Melody, Smoky Slate, Daffodil Delight, Stampin' Blends in Bermuda Bay, Mango Melody, Daffodil Delight, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Bermuda Bay, Mango Melody, Daffodil Delight, Thick Whisper White, Birthday Bonanza DSP
Accessories:  Bonanza dies, Stitched Shapes dies

Baby Luke: First Page

Hey y'all!  Today is my nephew's first birthday, so I thought I'd start sharing the pages from the baby book I made for him before he was born :) So here goes!

My brother and SIL are both car nuts and Luke has a lot of car-themed stuff in his room, so I chose Geared Up Garage to start off the book with.  I just pulled colors from the Classic Garage DSP for the rest of the layout and I really need to use colors like Tranquil Tide more often.  I love that color (retired now) but somehow I forget to use it much.

Anyway, there's the start of Luke's baby book, to be continued next week sometime.  Cheers!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Geared Up Garage
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends in Smoky Slate & Real Red
Paper:  Whisper White, Crushed Curry, Tranquil Tide, Basic Gray, Pumpkin Pie DSP, Classic Garage DSP Stack
Accessories:  Sizzix letters, Layering Circles dies, Garage Gears dies

Disney Cruise: Yum

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  The hubs took Ryan out for pretty much the whole day on Saturday, so I managed to get two layouts started and finished that day :) And I worked on sorting through pictures again yesterday, so that process is actually moving.  Slowly, but any progress is better than no progress, amirite?

So now it's time for the next Disney cruise layout!

PURPLE!!!  Pretty sure I mentioned before, I decided to go for a full rainbow of page base colors on the cruise layouts and I did manage to sneak in a purple one.  I don't know why it's hard for me to use purple on my pages?  Thank goodness for Rapunzel and her purple dress giving me the excuse!  I adore the Blooms & Bliss DSP on here, the style of it reminds me of Rapunzel's artwork in the movie and it was exactly the right colors for this layout so I couldn't be more thrilled with how that turned out.  And I love how Ryan is looking up at Rapunzel in that picture like "Hi pretty lady!" because he had no idea then who she was.  He does enjoy watching Tangled now, which is good because I puffy heart love that movie. 

Speaking of Disney movies and such, GUESS WHO GOT DISNEY + YESTERDAY?!?!  Ryan immediately bogarted it to watch a bunch of Mickey's Roadster Racers but when he went to bed I got to watch the first episode of The Mandalorian.  So excited to see more of that!

Today's color palette:  Sweet Sugarplum, Rich Razzleberry, Blushing Bride, Cucumber Crush, Sahara Sand, and Whisper White.  I needed a contrasting color for photo mats so I picked that bright green...not 100% sure it was the right shade of green, but I tried several others and this one seemed to work best so I went with it.

Have a great day, peeps!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Taffy Alphabet
Ink:  Sweet Sugarplum, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Sweet Sugarplum, Cucumber Crush, Rich Razzleberry, Blushing Bride, Sahara Sand, Thick Whisper White, Blooms & Bliss DSP
Accessories:  Mickey punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, Layering Circles dies

SUO Challenges: Gifts, Tags, Boxes, & Bags

Gooooood morning stampy friends!  It is time for a new challenge at SUO Challenges!

 
And this time around it really was a challenge for me because we're doing 3D items (gifts, tags, boxes, and bags) and 3D is Not My Thing.  I had been mulling this challenge over in my mind for weeks (the DT has the list of challenges for usually several months in advance) and then, one day last week, I took the last two tea bags out of a tin and I had an idea.  I buy quite a bit of tea from Republic of Tea and I just hate to toss the tins when they're empty so...why not alter it?  Here is what I made:

So the tin is about 5 inches tall (not counting the top).  I peeled off the original label and discovered it was about 8 1/2" long, and I had the most recent Paper Pumpkin kit on my craft table so I grabbed one of the card fronts from that to wrap the cylinder.  If I had it to do over again I think I'd choose a regular patterned paper; the card front is heavier weight, more like cardstock, which makes it a little more difficult to wrap around a round object.  Definitely use some heavy-duty adhesive.  I added a cardstock band and then a stamped/die cut the main label part.

And then I filled it up with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, because who doesn't love those :)  I think this would be a cute little gift for Valentine's Day or anything else really--yeah I used Poppy Parade but there's no hearts so it's not strictly Valentine's Day themed.  Now I sorta wish I hadn't left all my other tins in storage but I've been collecting them for years and this is the first time I've actually done anything with one of them, haha!  I'm going to keep this in mind for when Ryan starts school, I think these would be cute for teacher's gifts.  Plus I never turn down an excuse to drink more tea.

So now it's your turn to make something three dimensional and share with us on the SUO Challenges blog.  If that is Not Your Thing either, be brave and try something new--I did, and I really liked what I ended up with!  Now I just need to concentrate on not eating all the peanut butter cups...

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Nothing's Better Than
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Poppy Parade, Pear Pizzazz, Basic Black, Thick Whisper White, card front from January 2021 My Paper Pumpkin kit
Accessories:  Layering Ovals dies, Love You More Than dies, black ribbon from January 2021 My Paper Pumpkin kit

Disney Cruise: Boatload of Fun

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Let's see how this week goes.  I'm interviewing two new babysitters this week (or they're interviewing me, not sure which) and hoping to get Ryan back in daycare two days a week since the first lady didn't work out.

Anywha, we're still trucking with the Disney cruise layouts, so here's the next one:

Ryan had just turned two when we went on this cruise (and he turns FOUR in two weeks) and he didn't really watch movies yet, so his "who the heck are YOU" looks at Anna and Elsa were pretty dang funny.  I chose Taken With Teal as one of my colors because of Elsa's dress, and of course that was featured in only like two packs of patterned paper before they retired it (and I LOVE that color) so this patterned paper is from a stack called Holiday Lounge, and it's all fun sorta retro mid-century modern patterns.

Here's our most-of-the-rainbow color palette:  Riding Hood Red, Taken with Teal, Summer Sun, Cucumber Crush, Night of Navy, and Whisper White.  It's interesting to me how my color palettes have shifted since I started scrapping pictures of Ryan, I guess that's because they always make little boy clothes in bright primary colors.  It's fun.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Calendar Alphabet & Numbers, Taffy Alphabet
Ink:  Riding Hood Red, Night of Navy
Paper:  Riding Hood Red textured, Summer Sun, Cucumber Crush, Night of Navy, Thick Whisper White, Holiday Lounge DSP
Accessories:  Mickey punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, Layering Circles dies