The Clue in the Diary

It's my favorite day of the week which means it's time for another Nancy Drew challenge.  I'm actually thinking about starting a blog just for the book analysis part of this and then just sharing my cards here with the book covers and a short blurb, because if I have a separate book blog I can blather on all I want and just share the cards here.  Because it seems like I have more and more to say about each book as I go along : )  Anyway, for today today we're tackling #7, The Clue in the Diary!

Yes, I now own three copies of this book and they all have the same cover.  The one on the left is the OT version (with dust jacket) that I just got in the mail earlier this week, the middle one I bought a few weeks ago hoping it was an OT but it's not, and the one on the right is the RT that's been in my collection for years.

Case file:  The OT and the RT for this book are very similar so one synopsis will do.  Nancy, Bess, and George witness a country mansion explode and burn down, and then Nancy becomes involved in exonerating an inventor who has been accused of murdering a shady businessman who fleeced him out of money (he supposedly died in the house explosion).  She proves that the businessman faked his death and in the RT was going to have his wife collect his life insurance money, so in this one we get both mail fraud and insurance fraud.  In the OT he faked his death but his wife didn't know that, and yet was still happy to throw the inventor under the bus for it.  Also, Nancy meets Ned Nickerson who is destined to be her main man through many more mysteries.  Ned is adorable in this book, he has such cute interactions with Nancy and that's my favorite part.

So here's my card for The Clue in the Diary:

My vast stamping hoard is curiously deficient when it comes to images of burning buildings.  Weird.  So instead I picked out the colors of Nancy's outfit for the main colors of my card, and I chose the greenery images because of the bushes on the cover of the book into which the innocent-but-looks-guilty inventor is fleeing.  I chose a Cajun Craze strip for the color of the roof behind Nancy.

The Splendid Autumn DSP Stack continues to be a gold mine for patterns to coordinate with the Nancy Drew book covers.

Drop a comment below if you'd like to participate, I would be delighted to find more Nancy Drew card-making friends out there.  I am so very tickled that Tracy was not only inspired to read her very first Nancy Drew book, but she made a card for The Secret of the Old Clock!  I just love that.  If you'd like to play along too, feel free to play along for any of the books I've covered thus far (no time limit), and next up is Nancy's Mysterious Letter!  And if you want a spoiler of what the covers look like, you can check out this website.  I'd love to see if you're inspired to make a Nancy Drew card.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Nature's Prints
Ink:  Old Olive, Garden Green, Azure Afternoon
Paper:  Azure Afternoon, Thick Basic White, Splendid Autumn DSP Stack
Accessories:  Natural Prints dies, Matte Decorative Dots, Dimensionals

Shells on a Shelf

Mornin' y'all!  Daphne dragged me out of bed at 5:30 this morning but I did (eventually) get to go to sleep for a while before she made me get up AGAIN, this time aided by Ryan who wanted me to get him breakfast.  How old does he have to be before he can get cereal for himself?  But we have a lazy day ahead of us except for Ryan's baseball game tonight.

For the past couple of days I haven't been super thrilled with what I've been making in my craft room, I just seem to be having a block when I sit down to stamp, but here's one of the things I made:

I got Earthen Textures (the vase on the right) when it hit the retirement list last year I think; Stippled Shells and All-Year Cheer have been in my collection since pretty close to the beginning of my stamping career.  I put them together for the challenge at The Card Concept:

This is the first time I've used Earthen Textures and I'm just not sure I'm pleased with it.  I wish I had put the "shelf" lower or...something.  I don't know.  Anyway, I think my card falls into the clean and layered category which is mostly where I live.

Instead of trying to force things to happen in my stamp room yesterday, I brought out a cross stitch work in progress and stitched on that for a while; maybe if I stitch for a few days my stampy mojo will reappear.  Worth a shot anyway.

Gotta go let Daphne outside for at least the tenth time this morning.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Earthen Textures, Stippled Shells, All-Year Cheer I
Ink:  Pecan Pie, Night of Navy, Wild Wheat, Boho Blue
Paper:  Pecan Pie, Very Vanilla, Timeless Plaid DSP Stack
Accessories:  Earthen Textures dies, Stylish Shapes dies

Crustacean Crew

Mornin' y'all.  Yesterday afternoon Ryan was playing with some other kids in the neighborhood and they found a wolf spider, and then Ryan woke us up TWICE last night because he was having nightmares about giant spiders in his room.  So none of us got a good night's sleep last night except possibly Daphne.

Anyway, I had some quality craft room time last night and I have a couple of cards to share today that I made with Ocean Friends.  Is that still on the Last Chance List or is it gone?

I stamped a colorful lobster for the Color Dare Challenge:

I used Pumpkin Pie, Berry Burst, and Pretty Peacock for my colors.  I chose a watercolor pattern for behind my lobster so I could enter this at Inspire. Create.:

And then I didn't want the crab to feel left out so I had to make another card:

This time I used the colors from Color Hues:

I used Groovy Guava and Blueberry Bushel for my colors, with some Calypso Coral for a darker peach on the crab.  I think maybe I should have used Pale Papaya instead, apparently my Groovy Guava ink pad was still plenty juicy because ol' Crabby came out darker than I expected.  I also used the sketch from As You See It:

I made the three panels larger since I had to accommodate Crabby behind the greeting banner but I think they'll forgive me for altering the sketch a bit.

Okay, time to go get Ryan up and ready for his last day of engineering camp.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, lobster card, all SU!
Stamps:  Ocean Friends
Ink:  Pumpkin Pie, Berry Burst, Pretty Peacock
Paper:  Pretty Peacock, Thick Basic White, Bright & Beautiful DSP Stack
Accessories:  Ocean Friends dies, Dimensionals

Supplies, crab card, all SU!
Stamps:  Ocean Friends
Ink:  Groovy Guavy, Calypso Coral, Blueberry Bushel
Paper:  Blueberry Bushel, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Ocean Friends dies, Dimensionals, Calypso Coral twine

Crazy Quilt

Mornin' y'all!  Once again, I stayed up way too late last night reading a book (I will never learn my lesson on that score), and then Daphne got me up to go outside somewhere around 4am and I just kinda started the day a bit discombobulated.  But Ryan is at his engineering camp until 3:30 this afternoon so I'm going to take Daph out for a walk as soon as I write this and then go work on some projects in my craft room.  Maybe do laundry.

So here's today's card:

Which I made for this week's Atlantic Hearts sketch:

I didn't worry about following the sketch exactly, I just built my collage with the scraps I had on hand and I could probably do three or four more cards just with the Bright & Beautiful DSP Stack because I have a lot of scraps of it.  This was a great way to use up the littlest scraps too, and the long skinny strips.  I had my card front all done and then I had to figure out what greeting to put on it...well, what would go better with a crazy quilt type card than a quilt-related sentiment?  And believe it or not I have two different stamp sets with quilty sentiments, so for this card I chose Christmas Quilt and a flower from that set.

Okay, Daphne is more than ready for her tour of the neighborhood so I'm going to go take her.  She does make sure I get out to enjoy the beautiful Colorado weather almost every day whether I want to or not...okay we didn't go yesterday because it was raining, but almost every day we go!  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Christmas Quilt
Ink:  Blueberry Bushel, Berry Burst, Bubble Bath
Paper:  Bubble Bath, Berry Burst, Thick Basic White, Bright & Beautiful DSP Stack
Accessories:  Quilt Builder dies, Mini Dimensionals, Opaque Gems

A Pear of Fruity Puns

Actually there are no pears on today's cards but I couldn't resist an extra layer of pun.  I made two CAS cards yesterday:

I have a lot of that Fruit Salad DSP Stack left and it's just perfect for the current challenge at the Paper Players:

I have a variety of stamp sets I could have used too, but the paper won out.  Here's my first card:

Those two patterns are the same sheet, just different sides, and I had a couple of smallish scraps of it and I couldn't resist doing a watermelon tag.  Second card:

There was a Paper Pumpkin kit a while ago that was all food-related puns and I HAD to have it and this might be the first time I've used any of the stamps.  This was simple, I just die-cut the banana paper and found a good place to put my a-peel-ing pun : )

Time to get Ryan to engineering camp, how can it take him this long to get ready??  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Cute Fruit, My Paper Pumpkin
Ink:  Early Espresso
Paper:  Pool Party, Pecan Pie, Thick Basic White, Fruit Salad DSP Stack
Accessories:  Stylish Shapes dies, Nested Essentials dies, sequins, Dimensionals

June 2021

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I got Ryan off to camp this morning (engineering camp this week) and it's basically the same length as a school day from now until Thursday, which means more crafty time for me!  And I can go to the grocery store without "help", ha.  Hope he has a good time with that camp this week.

Anyway, I do have a layout to share today:

This is a monthly catch-all layout and I had to go with red, blue, and lime green for the shirts that Ryan and I are wearing in a couple of the pictures.  Sometimes it's tricky to come up with a color scheme for this type of layout since the pictures are taken on different days throughout the month, but I think it works here.  And even though it's a June layout and not July, I still added stars for accents because I like stars.  And striped paper.

There's my bright, summery color palette:  Pacific Point, Parakeet Party, Real Red, Cool Caribbean, Tempting Turquoise, and white.

Time to take Daphne for her tour of the neighborhood and then get crackin' with the craftin'.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  My Paper Pumpkin, Be the Star
Ink:  Pacific Point, Versamark, Night of Navy marker
Paper:  Pacific Point, Cool Caribbean, Tempting Turquoise, Real Red, Thick Basic White, Flowers & More DSP
Accessories:  White EP, Stars dies

Happy Father's Day!

Mornin' y'all!  We went to the movies last night; the boys saw the live action How to Train Your Dragon and since I have zero interest in seeing that, I saw an anniversary screening of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was awesome.  The hubs and Ryan enjoyed their movie and I had a blast watching Indy and his dad take on the bad guys.

It's Father's Day here and I have a few cards to share.  I was helped out by this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

And here's the card I made for the hubs:

It says "Happy Father's Day" on the inside, I need to get Ryan to write in it.  The hubs is still asleep though and the card is in the next room so I don't want to wake him up.

Now here's the one I made for my dad:

I had never used the Sale-a-Bration Trusted Toolbox DSP from last year but I like it here.

Last up, I made a card for my brother who has two kiddos:

I still have quite a bit of that Classic Garage DSP so this was a good way to use some of it.  Adam and my dad both love orange since they're graduates of Oklahoma State University, so I made Adam's card orange.  Didn't use the same paper on Dad's card since I had just recently sent him a card with it.

The mouse batteries are about to give out, so I'd better charge it and take Daphne for her walk.  She's extra crazy this morning.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, plane card:
Stamps:  Adventurous Sky
Ink:  Night of Navy, Stampin' Blends in Smoky Slate & Darling Duckling
Paper:  Night of Navy, Thick Basic White, Take to the Sky DSP
Accessories:  Adventurous Sky dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals

Supplies, tool card:
Stamps:  Geared Up Garage
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends in Smoky Slate & Lost Lagoon
Paper:  Lost Lagoon, Basic Black, Thick Basic White, Trusted Toolbox DSP
Accessories:  Garage Gears Thinlits, Stitched Shapes dies, Dimensionals

Supplies, steering wheel card:
Stamps:  Geared Up Garage
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends in Smoky Slate & Pumpkin Pie
Paper:  Pumpkin Pie, Thick Basic White, Classic Garage DSP Stack
Accessories:  Garage Gears Thinlits, Stitched Shapes dies, Dimensionals