China: Mountain Descent

Happy Sunday, y'all!  Our friend and her girls just left so the house is (relatively) quiet and I'm still making waffles because I did a double batch and apparently when one batch makes about 8 waffles, a double batch makes 8,472 waffles.  Good thing I like waffles.

So!  More China pictures, and another layout that I somehow FORGOT to take a picture of when I put the books together.

I wanted to use Poppy Parade since I had used that as an accent color on all the other mountain pages, and I found this Sahara Sand pattern with blue accents and it was just PERFECT for what I wanted.  It's hard to tell, but the photo mats are Night of Navy, so they're slightly darker than the Midnight Muse letters on the title.

Today's color palette:  Poppy Parade, Sahara Sand, Midnight Muse, Night of Navy, and Very Vanilla.  This is one of very few layouts (in fact, it might be the only one) in the China books where I used Very Vanilla.  Guess Whisper White is my default.

After we finished our tour in the mountains, we drove back into town and went to Elephant Trunk Hill.  This layout is a rerun:

But I'm posting all the layouts in order on Sundays so here it is again.  Ooh!  The very last waffle just finished cooking.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, Mountain Descent layout:
Stamps:  Asian Artistry, Rough Type
Ink:  Night of Navy
Paper:  Poppy Parade, Night of Navy, Midnight Muse, Very Vanilla, Blueberry Crisp DSP
Accessories:  Lettering template

China: Dragon's Backbone Summit

Hey, y'all, and welcome to this week's China scrapbook post.  To my consternation, I discovered this morning that I had three layouts that I apparently never took pictures of, so I had to go fix that!  First up I have two layouts that I've shared before:

Original blog post here.  I used Coastal Cabana, Crisp Cantaloupe, Calypso Coral, Island Indigo, Garden Green (mostly in the photos), and Whisper White on this layout, I thought that color combination worked out well.

Original blog post here.  This is one of my favorite layouts from China, I love the bright colors thanks to that giant polka dot paper:  Tangerine Tango, Daffodil Delight, Gumball Green, Island Indigo, Night of Navy, and Whisper White.  And that was one of the best meals we had on the whole trip.

Now for some new pages!  These are some of the ones I had to take pictures of.

You may notice the color combination I used here is quite similar to a layout at the beginning of the book; I made these pages pretty close together and at that moment I was a bit obsessed with Barely Banana and Poppy Parade together (this was even before it was announced that Poppy Parade was making a comeback!).

You can see the original pictures here; after I did that blog post, I edited a lot of these pictures to lighten them up a bit.

Today's color palette:  Barely Banana, Poppy Parade, my favorite Baja Breeze, Basic Black, and I forgot Whisper White.  We're off to eat breakfast, so cheers y'all!

Supplies, Dragon's Backbone Layouts:
Stamps:  Rough Type Alphabet, Ancient Asia
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Poppy Parade, Baja Breeze, Basic Black marker
Paper:  Barely Banana, Baja Breeze, Basic Black, Whisper White, Pocketful of Posies DSP
Accessories:  punches I can't remember the names of

China: Jade

Happy Mother's Day to all the mamas out there!  Ryan supervised as his dada made waffles with strawberries and cream for breakfast :)

I'm sharing two more China layouts today.  The first one has been seen 'round these parts before:

I didn't really notice until I was flipping through the finished albums, but I really like doing horizontal strips of patterned paper on my layouts.  And here is what comes next:

I think it's a law in China that the tour guide takes you to places specifically for you to shop and spend all your moneys.  And we did buy that jade pixiu (pronounced pee-shoo) so it worked this time.  See the pictures here.  Anyway, this is not my favorite layout but I tried.  I don't know, it's just not my favorite.

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, Stampin' Up! had a color called Mint Melody which was the perfect match for the pixiu.  I only had a little bit of cardstock from an assortment pack I bought way back when, and I never got the matching ink, so I had to be creative with how I used it.  I stamped white swirls on it for the mat and used some to cut out my title.

Since I only had I think two pieces of the Mint Melody cardstock, I never cut a sample for my color swatch book.  But here's the palette anyway:  Peekaboo Peach, Dusty Durango, Brocade Blue, and Mint Melody.

I'm off to go play with the kid...or else get me another waffle, I haven't decided yet.  Have a great Sunday!

Supplies, Shanghai Museum layout:
Stamps:  Rough Type, Gifts from the Orient (floral vase), Asian Art (coin and characters), Ancient Asia (dragon vase), Asian Artistry (flower)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Basic Black, Marina Mist, Garden Green, Crushed Curry
Paper:  Primrose Petals, Basic Black, Thick Whisper White, Crushed Curry DSP
Accessories:  circle punch, Circles & Ovals Framelits, lettering template 

Supplies, Jade layout:
Stamps:  Gorgeous Grunge, Stars & Swirls
Ink:  Brocade Blue, Whisper White, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Peekaboo Peach, Dusty Durango, Brocade Blue, Mint Melody
Accessories:  1/2" circle punch, lettering template

Guilin: Mountain Ascent

Hey y'all, welcome to another Scrappy Monday.  Today we're going back to China!

I think most of today's pictures are from this blog post.  I kept the layout pretty simple to keep the focus on the photos.

Didn't realize until I saw this picture that I had some errant glue around the E, oops.

So this stamp set (Asian Artistry) is similar to a new one we just got in the catalog which is called Artistically Asian.  I got that stamp set in my first new catalog order but I haven't gotten to play with it yet...or anything else I just got for that matter :(  After I hit up the gym today, I'm going to get to craftin'.

Today's color palette:  Coastal Cabana, Crisp Cantaloupe, Calypso Coral, Island Indigo, Garden Green (mostly in the photos), and Whisper White.  I was surprised and delighted how well it came together to showcase my photos, if I can toot my own horn just a bit :)

Well, I'd better finish my breakfast and then head off to the gym so I can break in all my new stampy goodies this afternoon.  Cheers!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Rough Type, Asian Artistry
Ink:  Garden Green, Island Indigo, Calypso Coral
Paper:  Coastal Cabana, Island Indigo, Calypso Coral, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Lettering template

Shanghai Museum

Hey kids!  Since Scrappy Monday got pre-empted by the Nacho blog hop, I thought I'd share my scrappy goodness today.  So I did the Gifts from the Orient Friday Flashback pretty recently, and I just had to use the stamp set one more time.  However it wasn't still out on my desk, I'd been a good girl and put up my toys so I had to pull it back out again to make today's scrapbook layout.

China pictures!!! (HI MISSY!!!)  Our very first stop on our very first full day in our very first Chinese city was the Shanghai museum.  And I think I used half of my Oriental stamps on this layout--Gifts from the Orient, Ancient Asia, Asian Art, and Asian Artistry (yeah, those are two different stamp sets).  I think I have most of the Asian stamp sets that SU! has produced, though there are a few I'm missing.

Today's color palette:  Primrose Petals, Crushed Curry, Marina Mist, Whisper White, Garden Green, and Basic Black.  I continue to love Thick Whisper White cardstock.  I think regular Whisper White might be relegated to being inside card liners on really dark cards...

Cheers, y'all!  And wasn't Chinese New Year not too long ago?  Happy Year of the Monkey!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Rough Type, Gifts from the Orient (floral vase), Asian Art (coin and characters), Ancient Asia (dragon vase), Asian Artistry (flower)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Basic Black, Marina Mist, Garden Green, Crushed Curry
Paper:  Primrose Petals, Basic Black, Thick Whisper White, Crushed Curry DSP
Accessories:  circle punch, Circles & Ovals Framelits, lettering template

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!