Something Beautiful

Mornin' y'all!  It is a snow day here in Colorado and I think that Winter has been saving up all the snow for this snowstorm because we'd had almost nothing all winter and them BAM.  For reals, we had absolutely nothing on the ground when it started snowing yesterday morning, and when Ryan, Daphne, and I went out this morning, there were some places with drifts up to my KNEES!!

They were having the time of their lives, they both love it.  I should have taken pictures once we got to the big open green space, they both had so much fun running around.

I took this pic yesterday afternoon and we have far more snow today than we did then.  I think I shall be content to stay indoors with a lovely giant cuppa tea (more likely several in succession), the kids can enjoy the snow without me!

Anyway, I do have a card to share today:

Okay I told you I love that new Nature Walk DSP, I already ordered a second pack of it so I can have one pack to hoard and one pack to make pretty things with.  The deer and the trees are from the new Outdoor Adventure (I haven't seen other stampers do much with this yet, but I love it), and I chose a greeting from the long-retired Beautiful Thistle because it seemed right on this card.  The deer and trees are both stamped directly on DSP, the deer is on a different piece that has a bit of a grid pattern on it in a more Crumb Cake color, and then I did the greeting on Very Vanilla sponged with Pecan Pie.

I used this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

Lots of wide-open space for creativity with that sketch, love it.

Okay, now I really need that cuppa tea.  The hubs is out shoveling the driveway (I did it yesterday before he got home, but this morning it looked like I never even touched it), or at least that's what he was doing when Ryan, Daphne, and I came back from our walk through the snowdrifts.  I think Ryan is trying to sled down one side of the driveway.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Outdoor Adventure, Beautiful Thistle
Ink:  Early Espresso, Pecan Pie
Paper:  Pecan Pie, Very Vanilla, Nature Walk DSP
Accessories:  Outdoor Adventure dies, Deckled Rectangles dies, Faux Glass Dots

Lagoon Thistle

Mornin' y'all!  Insomnia must be contagious, because last night I was the one who couldn't sleep.  Wide awake at 3am and then super sleepy at 6:30 when I had to be up and doing, ugh!  But I did drink lots of tea yesterday and that made me a functioning adult for most of the day, so I'm currently on my first cuppa today.

And I have a card to share, here 'tis:

I have been wanting to make a Beautiful Thistle card for probably months now and kept getting the stamp set out for various challenges and then putting it back up.  But its day has finally come thanks to the Paper Players sketch:

And the lovely color challenge from Just Add Ink:

YES PLEASE, I love these colors together!  This card came together super fast because I used a slightly off-cut stamped image that I had in the Beautiful Thistle stamp case.  Easy!

That's it for now, peeps.  Not sure if Daphne and I will go for our morning walk...it's super misty outside and I don't much fancy getting wet, and actually neither does Daph.  Something about her dainty paws.  We'll see if it clears up a bit in the next hour or so.  In the meantime, I have tea and a muffin so I'm good, and Daphne just made herself comfortable on the only piece of furniture she's allowed up on so she's good too.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Beautiful Thistle
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends in Lost Lagoon & Highland Heather
Paper:  Lost Lagoon, Thick Basic White, Perennial Lavender DSP, Highland Heather DSP
Accessories:  Beautiful Thistle dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Layering Ovals dies, Mini Dimensionals, Purple Shimmer Gems

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

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

Beautiful Bees

Well.  I got a nice, big Sale-a-Bration order yesterday and all I've done is crack open the box so far.  I wasn't feeling good yesterday and ended up leaving work early, and today I feel like I've been hit by a truck.  I didn't even get out of bed until 11:30 this morning.  I think I'm going to have to get a Covid test done when I go to get Ryan off the bus (there's a testing center literally right next to our house).

But enough of that, before I went to work yesterday I had time to squeeze in two cards, so here's one of them.

The CAS Colours & Sketches sketch challenge made me think of these three bees from Honeybee Home, and I liked the sentiment from Beautiful Thistle to go with them.  True to the CAS mandate, I didn't add any embellishments, other than popping up the bee images on Dimensionals and a bit of Wink of Stella on their wings.  Here's the sketch:

And now I face a perplexing dilemma:  go lie down on the couch or get something to eat first?  Stay healthy, y'all.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Honeybee Home, Beautiful Thistle
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends in So Saffron, Pool Party, Smoky Slate
Paper:  Soft Sea Foam, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Honeybee dies, Dimensionals, Wink of Stella

SUO Challenges: Designer's Choice to Start the New Year

Hey y'all, happy Tuesday!  And today it's the first SUO Challenge of the year, too!

We're starting off the year with an easy one:  Designer's Choice!  That means as long as your card creation contains only Stampin' Up! products, it counts for the challenge.  Of course we have the new Occasions catalog that goes live in a couple of days so I had to break out a brand new bundle from that for my card today.  Take a look:

*happy sigh*  Being of theoretically Scottish descent (my dad went to Scotland once when I was in high school and loved it and therefore decided we must be Scottish because...reasons?), I had to get the Beautiful Thistle bundle.  I stamped the thistle with Memento Tuxedo Black and colored with Blends, very pleased with how it turned out.  Both the patterned papers I used are from the Favored Flowers DSP in the Sale-a-Bration catalog because that is starting soon too.  I am still sending weekly cards to two friends who are undergoing treatment for breast cancer, so this will be in the mail soon to one of them.

I hope your year is off to a crafty start and that you'll upload your card on the SUO Challenges blog.  Have fun!  I've got to do my French lesson, go grocery shopping, and make some cookies today, but hopefully I'll have some craft room time before the day is done.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Beautiful Thistle
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Rich Razzleberry, Stampin' Blends in Fresh Freesia, Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive
Paper:  Fresh Freesia, Thick Basic White, Favored Flowers DSP
Accessories:  Beautiful Thistle dies, Harvest dies, Ovals Collection dies, Dimensionals, In Color Gems