Friday Flashback: Artfully Asian

I haven't posted one of these in a long time so it's a FRIDAY FLASHBACK!  I actually have a bunch of FF draft posts and I figured that while we're once again doing the moving chaos, I might as well post a few of these flashbacks.  So let's take a look at Artfully Asian, shall we?

I made three cards, all with the same stamp set, colors, dies, and layout (one turned vertical).  Since the hubs and I lived in Japan for a couple of years, I am always drawn to any Oriental-type stamp sets.

I haven't made any new Flashback cards in a while, but my goal with these is to revisit retired stamp sets, make some simple cards, and use up some of the 6x6 patterned paper in my stash since I am less likely to use it on scrapbook layouts (I am very fond of making strips to go across a 12x12 page, which is hard to do with a 6x6 paper pad but I can't stop buying those anyway...)

So there's my Artfully Asian card trio.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Artfully Asian
Ink:  Early Espresso, Calypso Coral, Stampin' Blends in Pale Papaya, Calypso Coral, Soft Succulent
Paper:  Pale Papaya, Thick Basic White, Soft Succulent DSP
Accessories:  Stitched So Sweetly dies, Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: Floral

Time for the Friday Flashback again already!  This week's randomly chosen retired stamp set is just one stamp, the background Floral.  Back in the day before I had tons of patterned paper and embossing folders and such to play with, I used background stamps a LOT so today's Flashback is longer than like the last three put together (no wait, four flashbacks, I looked), and I didn't even post all my previous cards with Floral : )  So let's flash back with a visit to the archives, shall we?

This one features an old favorite, Roses in Winter, plus It's Your Birthday for the sentiment.

One of my favorite color combinations ever!  Baja Breeze, Pink Pirouette, and neutrals.  Main images on this one are from Eastern Influences (another favorite of mine).

 Flower and definition stamp on this one are from Bloomin' Beautiful.

A nice springy card with the morning glories from Morning Soft and sentiment from Warm Words.

Main image from Perfect Petals, "wish" from Small Script.

Here's a more autumnal take with a hummingbird from Spring Song and a second background stamp, Sanded.  I like this card but I wish I could move that sentiment up onto the main image panel--it would have fit just fine underneath the bird!

And here's something a bit different, I stamped the floral pattern with a contrasting color on light cardstock instead of doing tone-on-tone like I did with everything else.  So that's it for the flashback part, here's my new card:

This time I wanted the Floral stamp to take center stage, so I stamped it with Versamark and embossed with Early Espresso powder, then colored with an Aquapainter.  You can't tell from the picture, but the white bit with the sentiment is popped up from the card base, and then the butterfly is popped up again from there so it's multidimensional.

I used the colors from Dynamic Duos' Triple Threat Week:

So there you have it!  I've done nothing but flowery cards (and even a floral scrapbook layout) for over a week now, so I promise that next week I'll have at least two non-floral projects to share.  In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Floral, Best of Butterflies, Fancy Flexible Phrases
Ink:  Versamark, Melon Mambo, Tangerine Tango, Wild Wasabi, Elegant Eggplant (because pansies have to be purple!)
Paper:  Melon Mambo, Whisper White, retired Wild Wasabi DSP
Accessories:  Early Espresso EP, Circles Framelits, Artisan Label punch, Dimensionals, random ribbon from my stash that's probably not SU

Friday Flashback: Dream Gardens

Welcome to this week's Friday Flashback!  Today I get to feature one of my favorite stamp sets, Dream Gardens.  Since I used to live in Japan, I pretty much buy every Oriental stamp set Stampin' Up! makes ;)  So let's flash back!

I discovered pretty early on that I love this lady stamped in craft ink on patterned paper and then heat embossed.

I did Japanese Christmas cards one year.  See, you can use a non-Christmas stamp set and make perfectly festive Christmas cards.

Alternate Christmas card design; my hubs liked this one because he said the layout reminded him of kimonos with the obi around the middle.

Quick and easy thank you card for some friends of ours whom we met in Okinawa.

I shared these pages a few months ago and I was unhappy because I did the title and then decided to mat the kimono lady instead of stamping her directly on the paper, so it looked out of whack to me with too much space above the title.  It stuck in the back of my head for a while and finally I got it back out and added the little origami crane from Gifts from the Orient and voila!  Fixed.

And here's today's new card:

I love blues and greens together, they're very peaceful to me.  Something about using shades of those two colors together just makes me happy...which might be why 98% of the stuff we own is blue and/or green ;)  Anyway, I pulled out my favorite Baja Breeze (sniffle! please don't really be retired forever) and I picked the two stamps I'd never used from the stamp set.  I love that dream kanji stamp, don't know how it hadn't been used on something before.  And I used a couple of DSP scraps on this too.

Thanks for joining me for this week's Friday Flashback.  Have a wonderful weekend!

Supplies, last card only:
Stamps:  Dream Gardens
Ink:  Baja Breeze, Always Artichoke, Midnight Muse
Paper:  Baja Breeze, Midnight Muse, Very Vanilla, Always Artichoke retired DSP, retired Green Tea DSP
Accessories:  circle punches, Dimensionals

Friday Flashback: Oriental Retrospective

So before I left England to visit Texas for two weeks, I scheduled a bunch of blog posts to show up on here.  However, I forgot to factor in that I would leave Texas on a Thursday and wouldn't arrive back in England until Friday, so I didn't have another Friday Flashback post ready to go.  Oops.

So instead, I thought I'd just pick out some old favorite cards to post today, and the first one that caught my eye was using one of SU!'s old Asian sets so I thought hey, why not?  So this Friday Flashback is an Oriental retrospective.  (It's my blog, I can do that.)

Let's start off with a nontraditional Asian Valentine, shall we?  I think this is from the first year that SU! had In Colors, still love that Cranberry Crisp.  The stamp sets used are Artfully Asian and Kanji, and the Artichoke panel is done using the ghosting technique.

I loved Eastern Influences the moment I saw it, and this was a swap card I did as soon as I got those stamps in my hot little hands.  Love Baja Breeze and Pink Pirouette together.

Asian Artistry was a hostess set one year, the year we got Crushed Curry as an In Color.  I think I've said it before, but I wish they'd bring Crushed Curry back--that was probably my favorite yellow ever.  I need to bust out this stamp set again too, I really liked it.

I've always loved dragons, so I hunted down Ancient Asia on the Buy/Sell/Trade boards because that little dragon is pretty cool.  The background stamp is Bamboo II and the "Imagine" sentiment came from Natural Beauty.

Last one for today, another Artfully Asian card.  That flower is colored with Tempting Turquoise ink, just watered down so much that it looks like Cool Caribbean.  I've gotten a lot of mileage out of Artfully Asian, I've used it on a bunch of scrapbook layouts too.

Hope you've enjoyed this slightly different take on the Friday Flashback.  I'm going to go spend time with my sweet little stinky dogs since I haven't gotten to see them for two weeks.  Ta-ta!