Mauve-y Desert

I love me a good pun.  And for today's card, we're visiting the Mauve-y Desert.

Let me tell you, this card was a *challenge*.  I started with this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

Which I found more difficult than usual.  I paired that with the Color Throwdown:

And this was a challenge because those are NOT my kind of colors.  I like bright, clean colors, not muted dirty ones.  But I went with the outgoing Blushing Bride (not sad to see this one go) and the incoming Moody Mauve (not very excited to have this one coming in) with a bit of Early Espresso.  So yeah, combining those two challenges this week was definitely a challenge for me.  I chose Desert Details because of the long thin stamp, and I thought the larger flower could stand in for the rainbow shape on the sketch and the two smaller ones for the cloud shape.

I did get something major accomplished yesterday, and it took a solid FOUR HOURS:

There's my paper hoard (I am a paper dragon, for sure).  It's 12x12 cardstock on the left (for all my scrapbook pages) and patterned paper on the right, though a couple of the containers have finished scrapbook pages in them.  I bought a LOT of 12x12 cardstock when it went on sale due to the color refresh, and yesterday I opened up all the packs and organized everything by color.  I have the current color families on top (brights sorted by color name, then regals, etc.), and then all the retired colors in alphabetical order underneath that.  Also one entire container has nothing but black in it, I wish they'd bring that back to the full-time cardstock lineup.  While I was doing this, I FINALLY found two packs of In Color cardstock I bought like three months ago that then disappeared and it's been driving me nuts ever since.  For some reason I had stuck them in the middle of my Garden Green 12x12 cardstock.  I have no idea why.  I also made myself an inventory sheet so I know how many sheets I have of each color, and whether or not I have patterned paper in each color.  Remember when SU!'s color family DSP was 12x12?  I put it in here with the 12x12 cardstock so I know exactly where to lay my hands on it if I need it.  Also I feel a little bit sad for our movers next month because this paper is HEAVY.  For reals, my back and shoulders are sore from everything I did yesterday to move all the paper around and get it organized.

Enough about my organization obsession.  The hubs just got home after being gone for 10 days for work, so I'm going to go be quiet in my craft room while he takes a nap and then I'll spend time with him when he doesn't feel like a zombie.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Desert Details
Ink:  Moody Mauve, Blushing Bride, Early Espresso
Paper:  Blushing Bride, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Desert Details dies, Mini Dimensionals, Artisan Pearls

Hello Sunshine

Mornin' y'all!  How's your week going?  We've had a few sunny days lately which oddly seems to make it more difficult for me to get good pictures of my cards.  And today's card is sunny, too!

I liked Better Days when I first saw it, but I put off buying it until it hit the retirement list at a big discount.  And I keep getting the name mixed up with Picturesque from the Occasions catalog, which I bought by accident when thinking of this stamp set, so then I had to do another order to get this one : p  Anyway, I used this week's sketch from the Paper Players:

I had to go through quite a few stamp sets to find a sentiment that was narrow enough to fit in the space on my card, but Peekaboo Farm had a couple of good options.

The Inkspirational challenge influenced my choice of patterned papers:

Got my dots and stripes on there thanks to the color family DSP.  I have to say, the color family DSP in the current catalog (well, current for a couple more days anyway) is probably my favorite ever.  I bought every single color family and when some went on sale, I bought extras.

Next up is the Global Design Project theme challenge:

Playing in the Rain would have been a good stamp set for this challenge too, but I wanted to ink up Better Days so I went for sunshine.  And last but not least is the As You See It color challenge:

Seems like Gorgeous Grape doesn't show up on too many color challenges so this was fun.  I used Grape for the outline stamp and the sentiment, and the other colors to fill in the image.

Time to get the kiddo out to the bus stop and today I will be organizing my 12x12 cardstock.  I bought a LOT when it went on sale thanks to the color refresh, so I need to get that put up and ready for us to have our house packed out in under a month.  Have a great day, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Better Days, Peekaboo Farm
Ink:  Gorgeous Grape, Coastal Cabana, So Saffron, Parakeet Party
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Thick Basic White, So Saffron & Parakeet Party DSP
Accessories:  Layering Circles dies, Dimensionals, champagne sequins from a prior Paper Pumpkin kit

Kind Succulents

Mornin' y'all!  I made this card last week but I'm sliding in just under the wire to enter it at Festive Friday, take a look:

And here's the inspo list for the challenge:

The first item, kindness sentiment, made me think of Simply Succulents right away.  I used that plus alcohol markers and two shades of blue (Night of Navy and Misty Moonlight) for my card.  I thought it would be fun to incorporate the large die for the background, so I cut it out of the Night of Navy card front, backed it with some Country Gingham DSP, and then put another piece of Night of Navy cardstock on the back of it so the inside of the card is solid navy (well, I added a piece of Basic White so I can write in the card, but you know what I mean).  Then I just put on some music and went to town coloring in the succulents, which takes a while but it's kind of relaxing.

That's it for me today, cheers peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Simply Succulents
Ink:  Night of Navy, Stampin' Blends in Mint Macaron, Misty Moonlight, Highland Heather, Flirty Flamingo
Paper:  Night of Navy, Thick Basic White, Country Gingham DSP Stack
Accessories:  Potted Succulents dies, Polished Dots, Dimensionals

SUO Challenges: A Colorful Farewell

Happy Tuesday and get ready for a new challenge from SUO Challenges!

I know we did a color challenge last time but surprise!  It's another color challenge : )  We don't have a firm rotation of different challenge types, we make it up as we go along and I like it that way!  This time, we're bidding a fond farewell to the retiring In Colors:

Since Fresh Freesia is moving over to the Subtles family rather than retiring, I decided to focus on the other four colors and ended up with two cards.  So here they are:

Beautiful Thistle and the coordinating dies are (were? I don't know, I think the dies might be sold out now) available at a deeeeep discount in the retirement sale and as someone of possibly Scottish heritage I had to buy them months ago.  Shades of purple are the obvious choice for thistles, but a quick Google search showed me some bright pink milk thistles so I went with that.  The thistle is stamped with Evening Evergreen and then colored with Soft Succulent and Polished Pink Blends; I saved the Pale Papaya for the plaid background.  Because it's Scottish, of course there's plaid.

This was actually the first card I made, I was playing around again with the Freshly Made Sketch from a little while back and thought I'd try the dies in the set that don't cut out stamped images.  I had cut out and colored the large thistle and the two smaller ones but couldn't seem to find an arrangement with all three stamped flowers that worked right, so I did the cardstock ones on this card and used the leftover big stamped thistle for the other card.

I hope you will make the time to play with the retiring In Colors one more time before they go off to play golf at St. Andrews.  You can focus on one color, use two or three, or go for all of them--you'll see that the design team members went with all of those options!  Don't forget to post your colorful creation on the SUO Challenges blog.  Have fun!

Supplies, first card, all SU!
Stamps:  Beautiful Thistle
Ink:  Evening Evergreen, Stampin' Blends in Polished Pink & Soft Succulent
Paper:  Evening Evergreen, Thick Basic White, Pale Papaya DSP
Accessories:  Beautiful Thistle dies, Stitched Rectangles dies, In Color Opal Rounds

Supplies, second card, all SU!
Stamps:  Beautiful Thistle
Ink:  Evening Evergreen, Stampin' Blends in Polished Pink & Soft Succulent
Paper:  Evening Evergreen, Soft Succulent, Polished Pink, Thick Basic White, Delicate Desert DSP
Accessories:  Beautiful Thistle dies, Stylish Shapes dies, In Color rhinestone

Dover Castle (Redo)

Scrappy Monday, y'all.  Hope you had a good weekend...it's still pretty cool here (it warmed up on Saturday but was back to cool and rainy yesterday) but Ryan and I managed to get out of the house for a little bit and go pick some tulips at the blumen feld down the road from us, so that's something.  I'm doing a temperature tracker cross stitch this year and we've been in the blue ranges for a long time!

Anyway, it's Scrappy Monday, let's talk scrapbook pages.  Today's layout is actually a re-do, which I try not to do very often (because how am I ever going to catch up if I'm constantly redoing pages I already did?) but every once in a while something about a layout just bothers me enough that I do end up redoing it.  And that's what happened with this one, you can see the original layout here.  And here's the re-do:

As much as I love doing challenges for cards, I quickly discovered that trying to do challenges for scrapbook layouts just does NOT work for me (the original was a sketch challenge).  I also redid the layout for the Cliffs of Dover, which you'll see next week, and one layout from our 2012 Mediterranean cruise.  So for this layout, I started over with completely different colors and papers and I'm happier with it now.  I even ended up choosing some different photos to work with for the re-do layouts.

I also used those re-dos as an opportunity to try out a different photo printer.  I've used Winkflash for *years* but last time I ordered pictures from them (thankfully it was a very small order), the photos were super super cheap quality.  Like seriously, my fingers hated touching them, they looked like crappy one-hour photos from a pharmacy.  Needless to say I was not happy about it.  So I tried Shutterfly for these pics, and the quality was a bit better than the finger-shriveling Winkflash ones, but still not as good as Winkflash *used* to be (I'm still scrapping some older photos so I have a lot for comparison).  Anyone out there have an online photo printer that they like, with high-quality pictures that don't make me shudder when I touch them?  I cannot express how much I hated that last set from Winkflash, they were awful.

Today's new and improved color palette:  Bordering Blue, Buckaroo Blue, So Saffron, Basic Gray, and white.  The patterned paper I used technically has a very watered-down So Saffron as well as a smidgen of Pink Pirouette in it, but I focused on the grayish blues for my layout.  I was searching around for some kind of accent to stamp on the layout and ended up with Stippled Stencils, which is one of the oldest stamp sets in my collection, so it was fun to ink it up again.

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

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Rough Type, Stippled Stencils
Ink:  Basic Gray, Bordering Blue, Buckaroo Blue
Paper:  Bordering Blue, Buckaroo Blue, Basic Gray, Thick Basic White, Bella Birds DSP
Accessories:  None

Floral Silhouette

So I went to work at Arts & Crafts yesterday and for the last hour I was there, my coworker was sketching and I was cross stitching, so we were both artsing and craftsing.  Ha!

Bit late with my post today but that's because I just finished making this:

I absolutely love the Enjoy the Journey DSP pack, and when it was made a freebie option for Sale-a-Bration, I got several packs (don't talk to me about my paper hoard).  After seeing Helen Read's post about the silhouette technique, I really wanted to give it a try with the flowers from Greatest Journey.  After creating my blended background, I stamped the line-art image with Starry Sky ink and then used a Starry Sky marker to fill in the image and turn it into a silhouette.  Check out the silhouetted tree on this week's Inspired By Nature challenge:

That picture is what made me think to do an ink blended background for my silhouetted flowers.  I also used the sketch:

As for the colors, I chose the middle three from Sunday Stamps:

I used Melon Mambo, Polished Pink, and Starry Sky.  I think Polished Pink might be my favorite SU! pink to date, which is funny because when it was released I thought we didn't need another shade of pink.  And now it's my favorite : )

Have a good weekend, y'all.  Tomorrow we're attending a birthday party for Ryan's fiancee.  They're both six.  Ha!!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Greatest Journey, Celebrate Sunflowers
Ink:  Polished Pink, Melon Mambo, Starry Sky, Versamark
Paper:  Polished Pink, Melon Mambo, Basic White, Enjoy the Journey DSP
Accessories:  Layering Circles dies, Dimensionals, white EP

Stylish Swimwear

Well, today is my only work day in a three-week span *shrug* So I'm packing up my stitching project and we'll see if I can work on it while I'm minding the shop at Arts & Crafts today.  Then it'll be back to more moving prep.

I think I bought Sunny Splash last October maybe when they had a sale on all stamp sets?  Anyway, I was waiting for warmer weather to use it and now it's retiring and it's still a high of 52 degrees where I am, so definitely not warm enough for a swimsuit.

Check out this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

And the Color Throwdown:

I just wrote down the color names from the photo rather than converting them to SU! names, so maybe I would have switched to using Parakeet Party, Daffodil Delight, and Tahitian Tide to match the colors better.  But instead I used Lemon Lime Twist, Pineapple Punch, and Bermuda Bay--one returning color, one retired color, and one color that is retiring shortly.  And even though the swimsuit on my card isn't a bikini, it still had to be yellow with polka dots : )

I've got a bit of time before I have to leave for work so I'm going to go make a bit of progress on my current scrapbook layout.  Cheers.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Sunny Splash
Ink:  Bermuda Bay, Pineapple Punch
Paper:  Bermuda Bay, Thick Basic White, Lemon Lime Twist & Bermuda Bay DSP
Accessories:  Stylish Shapes dies, Happiness Blooms Enamel Dots, Dimensionals

Ginkgo Sympathy

Hey y'all, yesterday was a bit rough so minimal chatter from me today.  Thought I'd play along in a color challenge and I made this:

I prefer to make sympathy cards when I don't need them because I hate making them when something bad has happened to someone.  I liked this color challenge from Hand Stamped Sentiments:

I liked the contrast of Blackberry Bliss with the two pastels.  Dug up some old ribbon that I think was from when Blackberry Bliss was an In Color.  No other embellishments because I tend to lean in the CAS direction when it comes to sympathy cards.

Peace, yo.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Ginkgo Branch
Ink:  Pool Party, Mint Macaron, Blackberry Bliss
Paper:  Mint Macaron, Blackberry Bliss, Thick Basic White, Pool Party DSP
Accessories:  Blackberry Bliss ribbon, Dimensionals

Mrs. Frisby

Ya know, I have a very *coughcough* EXTENSIVE stamp collection, but the latest challenge from the Paper Players made me think my collection isn't quite as all-encompassing as I had thought...

Now, I have so many SU! stamp sets (I almost never get rid of any, yes I know my collection is ridiculously large and I like it that way) that I've taken pictures of them all and set it up on my computer so I can search for images of particular things, like animals or Santa Claus or whatever.  So I looked through the stamp sets with images of "household items" and out of ALL the stamp sets I have, there's exactly ONE image featuring a pencil or pen.  Well, I guess that makes my image choice easy for this challenge!

Mischievous Mice was, I think, a hostess set sometime in the past couple of years; I hadn't used it before now.  So this is proof that I should hold on to ALLLL the stamps just in case they come in useful later, right? ; )  The ribbon was part of a Sale-a-Bration offering several years ago (my ribbon collection is not nearly as extensive as my stamp collection, but it does still occupy multiple photo boxes).  As per the challenge, I kept it clean and simple.

I'm also entering this at Less is More:

That's it for me today.  I need to go vacuum up a lot of dog hair and go sort out the kiddo's extensive book collection (which is ALSO my fault, I am addicted to buying books for both him and myself).  And I should probably do some work on getting ready for our move, ugh.

Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Mischievous Mice
Ink:  Basic Gray, Stampin' Blends in Gray Granite, Daffodil Delight, Flirty Flamingo, Crumb Cake
Paper:  Gray Granite, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Stitched Rectangles dies, Daffodil Delight ribbon

The Hermitage

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I am (very) slowly starting to prep my craft room for our upcoming move...yesterday I pulled all my needle minders off the filing cabinet and packed them up, and went through all the Paper Pumpkin kits and consolidated things to take with me.  I think I'll send those kits in our unaccompanied baggage so I have something I can do for paper crafting when we get to Texas; most of our stuff will probably take close to two months to arrive.

Anyway, today I have a recent layout to share with you:

You can see the original pictures here and here.  This is from when we spent two days exploring St. Petersburg as part of our Baltic cruise in 2014;  the Hermitage is one of those mega museums where you could spend a month of Sundays there and still not see everything, and we were only there for about two hours.  Still, after a while your brain reaches capacity and says no matter what your eyes look at, it won't remember anything because brain too full.

Today's color palette:  Poppy Parade, Just Jade, Pretty Peacock (I really started using this a lot when we found out it was coming back in the new catalog), Crushed Curry, and white.  So why a red color for the page base?  I laid out all my pictures from this place and several had a lot of red in them, so I picked the red cardstock that matched it the most closely.  Then I went through all the pictures and ended up not using any of the red ones *rolls eyes* but the Poppy Parade page base does contrast nicely with the photos.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Letterpress Alphabet, Rough Edges Alphabet, Artistic Etchings
Ink:  Just Jade, Crushed Curry, Pretty Peacock
Paper:  Poppy Parade, Pretty Peacock, Just Jade, Thick Basic White, Sweet Symmetry DSP, Poppy Parade DSP
Accessories:  None

Tropical Lolly

Happy Friday, y'all!  I spent some time in my craft room yesterday but I was working a little slower than usual because of my two doggo guests...every time I stood up to get cardstock or die cut something, they'd spring up too like WHAT IS GOING ON and then I'd have to convince them to lay down again.  Even so, I have really missed having dogs in the house!

Anyway, here's the one card I made yesterday.

That, my friends, is the brand new Lemon Lolly in action with Parakeet Party and Shaded Spruce and Lemon Lolly might be the new color I was the most excited about seeing in person, followed by Azure Afternoon, Bubble Bath, and Pecan Pie.  (TBH I am not feeling the new In Colors at all.  Especially Barley Barf...I mean, Wild Wheat. I like brighter colors and they're all so...muted.  And one is barfy.)

Anyway!  I used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

And the Color Throwdown:

As I mentioned earlier, I used Lemon Lolly, Shaded Spruce, and Parakeet Party for my colors.  This was giving me a tropical vibe so I had to dust off last year's Artfully Layered and you know what?  I still love it : )  It was fun to play with it again!

Okay, I'm going to try to work on some scrapbook pages today.  Wish me luck!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Artfully Layered
Ink:  Lemon Lolly, Shaded Spruce, Versamark
Paper:  Lemon Lolly, Parakeet Party, Shaded Spruce, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Tropical Layers dies, Stylish Shapes dies, white EP, Dimensionals, white sequins

Spring Flowers

Mornin' y'all!  Tell you what, the weather in Germany is taking that whole "April showers" thing seriously--I've gotten soaked two days in a row when I had to be out and about running errands.  But that means that spring flowers can't be far behind, and that's what's on my card today:

I had pulled out The Gifts of Spring for another card a while back, and then I left it out on my stamp table because I knew I'd want to use it again for the new Retro Rubber Challenge:

The Gifts of Spring is really, really REALLY retro--I've had it for seventeen years and in fact used it for my first ever upload to Splitcoast.  (Um, I have not updated my gallery there in...a long time.)  Not only are my stamps retro, so is the patterned paper (I think it's 3-4 years old?) and the embellishment--do you remember when they had Candy Dots in all the SU! colors?  I still have quite a few but I'm trying to do better about using things and not hoarding them.

Thought I'd play along with the Paper Players too:

I used So Saffron (retiring), Petal Pink, and Soft Sea Foam.  I've used Soft Sea Foam more often recently, it usually is not one I gravitate towards.  Anyway, I had wanted to try out some of the new colors like Lemon Lolly, but I didn't get them until yesterday after Ryan's doc appointment so I haven't gotten to play with them yet.  That's on my list of things to do today, if my doggo guests will allow me to work in my craft room!  I'm taking care of my friend Krissy's dogs for a few days while they're having their house packed out.  It's nice having dogs in the house again!

Okay, gotta go switch out laundry too.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  The Gifts of Spring (long retired)
Ink:  Gray Granite, Stampin' Blends in So Saffron, Petal Pink, Soft Sea Foam, Pool Party
Paper:  So Saffron, Gray Granite, Thick Basic White, Soft Sea Foam & Petal Pink DSP
Accessories:  Candy Dot, Dimensionals

The Birthday Squirrel

Someone please tell me how I could go to bed at 9:30 last night and still feel so tired!  I did get up and do my workout this morning but all I want to do is crawl back in bed.  But I have things I need to do instead, so might as well get after it.

Anyway!  I have a fun card to share today.

Okay yeah I'm a little bit obsessed with that last Paper Players sketch and I had to use it again.  And I love the squirrels in Nuts About You!  It's on the retirement list, so best snatch it now or you'll be sad and squirrelless.  I've stamped these squirrels in might-be-found-in-nature neutral colors and also several times in technicolor and I loves them.  Anyway!  (Did I say that already?)  I'm entering this at Festive Friday, just under the wire:

From the list, I used twine, fur (that squirrel looks furry to me), spots, and a birthday sentiment.  It took me several tries to figure out how I wanted to do the twine, but I ended up with two strands and a simple bow.  I added a few Calypso Coral gems for accents and called it done.

I have to pick Ryan up early from school for a doctor's appointment, so I'd better get started on what I want to get done this morning.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Nuts About Squirrels
Ink:  Starry Sky, Calypso Coral
Paper:  Crushed Curry, Starry Sky, Thick Basic White, Butterfly Kisses DSP Stack
Accessories:  Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals, Calypso Coral twine, Fine Sparkle Gems

Guest Designer: Retro Tulips

Surprise bonus post for today!  I'm a guest designer for Retro Rubber :)  I've guested there a couple of times and it's always fun!  So here's the new challenge for today:

I made my card before the retiring lists came out and wouldn't you know, Flowering Tulips is on the list.  Here's what made:

Flowering Tulips is just one year old but it counts for the Retro Challenge.  Seems like I used the sentiments from this set more than the flowers themselves, and when I did use the flowers I always used the long stem stamps too, so this time I thought I'd do a little flower arranging with the flowers and leaves and no stems.  The tulips have started blooming in the blumen feld near our house (that's a pick-your-own-flowers field that's just down the road from us, they have different kinds of flowers all spring and summer) so we'll have to go get some fresh-cut tulips soon!

After I finished my first card, I still had some flowers and leaves left over so I made another card:

and I colored some plain rhinestones with my Poppy Parade Blends to match my tulip on here.

So there's both cards, and I didn't even know when I made them that So Saffron would be retiring.  I am really looking forward to seeing Lemon Lolly in person though, it looks like it'll be a clearer shade of pale yellow rather than dusty like So Saffron.  I love getting to see new colors : )

Anywha, don't forget to upload a springtastic card on the Retro Rubber blog.  Have fun!

Supplies, love card:
Stamps:  Flowering Tulips
Ink:  So Saffron, Poppy Parade, Soft Succulent, Memento Tuxedo Black
Paper:  Poppy Parade, So Saffron, Thick Basic White, So Saffron DSP
Accessories:  Tulips dies, Timeless Labels dies, Dimensionals, white sequins

Supplies, birthday card:
Stamps:  Flowering Tulips
Ink:  So Saffron, Poppy Parade, Soft Succulent, Night of Navy, Poppy Parade Blends
Paper:  So Saffron, Thick Basic White, So Saffron DSP
Accessories:  Tulips dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals, rhinestones

SUO Challenges: Desert Sunshine

Happy Tuesday, y'all!  We went to see the Dungeons & Dragons movie yesterday and all three of us really enjoyed it : )  And none of us have any experience with D&D; my brother has played for years and he approved of the movie as well.  So go see it if you haven't already, it's a fun time!

Know what else is fun?  We've got a new challenge at SUO Challenges today!

We challenge you to use the colors Soft Succulent, Calypso Coral, and Pale Papaya, which just so happen to be featured in the Delicate Desert Desert suite.  I love this suite, the papers are gorgeous and so is the Desert Details stamp set, snag them now as they're retiring soon!  So guess what suite I used to make my card for today...

I totally CASEd this card by Amy Koenders that she posted a couple of weeks ago, isn't it beautiful?  Thanks for the inspiration, Amy!  I played around a while to figure out how I wanted to arrange my collage elements.

Hope you enjoy playing with these colors as much as I did, and don't forget to upload your card on the SUO Challenges blog.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Desert Details
Ink:  Calypso Coral, Pale Papaya
Paper:  Pale Papaya (you can't see it but that's what I used for the card base), Thick Basic White, Delicate Desert DSP
Accessories:  Desert Details dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Fine Sparkle Gems (retired), Dimensionals

April 2020

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Hope you had a good weekend.  The hubs is off work and kiddo is off school today so we're going to go see a movie this afternoon.  We had a good Easter yesterday--the hubs talked Ryan out of trying to trap the Easter Bunny because then no one would get treats, so the Easter Bunny was free to leave Ryan a bucket with far too much candy (seriously, Ryan was on a serious sugar high before his parents even woke up yesterday), a couple of books and small toys, and a giant whoopie cushion.  Don't ask me why.  The weather was beautiful yesterday so we went for a bike ride in the afternoon and then had a nice ham for dinner, followed by cherry pie.  Usually I'd make dessert from scratch but I decided to be lazy, and I got a frozen cherry pie at the store for ONE DOLLAR.  No, it's not as good as homemade, but it sure took less time and effort on my part.

Anyway, on to the scrapbook pages!  Today's layout also has to do with food, this time cookies:

Nothing's Better Than and the coordinating Love You More Than dies are both retiring, I don't even know if they've sold out or not because I've owned them for years : )  I just used the dies here, the baking-related stamps on the left page are (gasp) non-SU.  Originally I had a small group of April pictures and then a set of bathtub barber shop pictures and planned to do two layouts, but when I got to them I elected to combine them for one layout.

I'm always looking for color combinations with either Real Red or Poppy Parade because red is Ryan's favorite color and I think at least 75% of his clothes are red.  This combination might have come from the Color Coach, but I think it worked with my photos:  Daffodil Delight, Poppy Parade, Lucky Limeade, and Whisper White.  You could easily sub in either Granny Apple Green or Old Olive for the Lucky Limeade, which has been retired for a long time.  Anyway, I had fun working on this layout and if I'm lucky, maybe I'll get some craft room time today even with my boys at home.

Have a great day, y'all!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Full Calendar, Made from Scratch (Newton's Nook)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Versamark, Stampin' Blends in Poppy Parade, Old Olive, Pool Party, Ivory
Paper:  Daffodil Delight, Poppy Parade, Lucky Limeade, Thick Basic White, Celebrate Everything DSP, Lucky Limeade DSP
Accessories:  White EP, Tags & Labels Framelits, Love You More Than dies, Made from Scratch dies (Newton's Nook), ticket corner punch

Bonus Butterfly

Hey y'all, how's it going?  I didn't get to make anything in my craft room yesterday, but I did start moving things around to get ready for the new catalog--rearranging my ink pads and markers, and other organizational things that I'd been putting off like mounting several stamps on cling mount.  Once all my new cardstock gets here (oh man I stocked up, it's a little ridiculous), I'll have to reorganize my 12x12 storage and move the colors around to align with the color refresh so I'll be able to find things.  So lots of work happening in my craft room yesterday and pretty soon I'll have to start prepping it all to get moved back to the States.

But let's not think about that right now, I have a card to share!

Butterfly Brilliance is a single stamp with six butterfly images on it, and the die cuts out all six at once; when I made my butterfly card a couple of days ago, I stamped and die cut all six images so I had three more left over after that card.  So I thought I'd use one of them for this card, thanks to the Inspired By Nature challenge:

No bunny on my card, but I chose that patterned paper on Crumb Cake as a nod to the bunny in the inspo pic.  I used Orchid Oasis with some So Saffron highlights for the butterfly.  I also used the sketch:

My card came together super fast and now I have a pretty spring creation to send out soon.  I've been sending cards to two friends who are undergoing treatment for breast cancer; one of them messaged me yesterday with a picture--she'd taken several cards I had sent her and put them in a collage frame and it's hanging up in her house.  I know my other friend puts hers up on her mantle so she can see them every day.  And it gives me the warm fuzzies to know that my cards help brighten up their days a bit when they're going through treatment, so I will continue to send those out every week.

Have a great Easter weekend if you celebrate, peeps!  (And have a great weekend even if you don't celebrate Easter...that chocolate candy still tastes good, ha!)

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Butterfly Brilliance, Beautiful Thistle
Ink:  Night of Navy, Stampin' Blends in Orchid Oasis, So Saffron, Night of Navy
Paper:  Orchid Oasis, Night of Navy, Thick Basic White, Crumb Cake DSP
Accessories:  Stitched Rectangles dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Brilliant Wings dies, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella, retired Share What You Love Artisan Pearls