The Bluebird of Happiness

Mornin' y'all!  Hope your Monday is off to a good start.  It's a gorgeous day out side so as soon as I finish this blog post, I'll be taking Miss Daphne for her daily walk.  It's lovely to be out in the sunshine for 30 minutes every day.

But let's start with a card, shall we?  Once again I have pulled a couple of stamp sets out of retirement, here's my creation for today:

I could not resist making a card with Bird's Eye View after seeing this Inspired By... Challenge:

I did use Pumpkin Pie for my bluebird's belly, but I used the lighter Blend so it's not reading as orange as the inspo pic.  Still I think you can tell where I started.  Next up is last week's Freshly Made Sketch:

And I will admit, you kinda have to squint your eyes and tilt your head to one side to see the sketch, but it IS where I started.  The bluebird is the circle element and the tree branch is the long strip, which would have been closer to the sketch if I hadn't stamped the leaves on the branch but I just had to.  I added some clear gems for the foliage behind the circle element and added my greeting underneath.  So it's not as strict of a sketch interpretation as I usually do, but I promise that's where it started and I do really love how this simple little card turned out.  I loved playing with Bird's Eye View again.  I need to remember to ink up my Azure Afternoon ink pad though.

The great outdoors is calling, so Daph and I must go.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Bird's Eye View, Perennial Postage
Ink:  Early Espresso, Azure Afternoon, Stampin' Blends in Lemon Lime Twist, Crumb Cake, Azure Afternoon, Pumpkin Pie
Paper:  Azure Afternoon, Basic White
Accessories:  Textured Notes dies, Clear Sparkle Gems

Hey Birdie

Mornin' y'all!  At least for another hour here, anyway.  I've got my first pan of cookies in the oven; I made double batches of two kinds of cookie dough yesterday (lemon crinkle and chocolate chip) and I'm baking today for the hubs to take into work tomorrow.  But I managed to carve out enough time yesterday to make a quick CAS card:

Let's start with the one-layer challenge from the Paper Players:

And I got my colors from CAS Colours & Sketches:

You know that even for CAS cards I like to do colored card bases, so the Bubble Bath worked nicely for that and you can still see the other colors.

Last up is the AAA Cards Challenge:

Gotta love anything goes!  And I think I did the optional twist too since my HEY is large and in charge.  You can't really tell but I coated the HEY in Wink of Stella for a bit of shimmer.

Okay, first batch is about to come out of the oven, so I'm on cookie duty.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Bird's Eye View, Saying Hey
Ink:  Secret Sea, Azure Afternoon, Highland Heather, Stampin' Blends in Bubble Bath, Highland Heather, Azure Afternoon
Paper:  Bubble Bath
Accessories:  Wink of Stella

Miss Your Face

Mornin' y'all!  Despite still going through Kleenex like crazy, I got up and did a workout this morning and the dishes are washed and now I'm sitting down to have a little breakfast and look at some blogs : )  And yesterday I made four cards so I'm pretty pleased about that.  Here's the first one I made:

My grumpy dragon card won the last Paper Players challenge, which just tickles me endlessly because I cackled the whole time I was making it and I'm sure my friend Krissy will laugh when she receives it in the mail.  I wanted to do something special for this Paper Players challenge:

You might notice that my relaxing tea card from earlier this week was done with the same sketch; I thought I could make something that I liked more than that and I ended up with this watercolor bird card.  I haven't used the Full of Life DSP Stack very much, I think because it's hard to work it into color challenges and some of the patterns I just don't know what to do with.  So since I'm only doing a sketch this time around, I started with the watercolory pattern and watercolored my bird to match.  The bird and sentiment are both stamped in Shaded Spruce ink but I just inked up my ink pad so it's extra dark.  The bird is Berry Burst and Daffodil Delight kinda blended together, with a bit of Granny Apple Green for her to stand on.

That's it for now, peeps.  Have a great day!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Bird's Eye View, Saying Hey
Ink:  Versamark, Shaded Spruce, Daffodil Delight, Berry Burst, Granny Apple Green
Paper:  Granny Apple Green, Shaded Spruce, Daffodil Delight, Thick Basic White, Full of Life DSP Stack
Accessories:  Stylish Shapes dies, clear EP, Dimensionals, Tinsel Gems

For the Birds

Mornin' y'all!  I got some new SU! goodies over the weekend, but they're mostly Christmas-related and I am not ready to be done with fall and Halloween yet so I've been playing with some other stuff.  I have two cards to share today, so I'm going to share the first one, then the challenges, and then the second one.  Here we go.

I saw the new challenge at SOS Challenges to use birds or feathers and couldn't resist playing with Bird's Eye View.  Next up is the CAS challenge from the Paper Players:

And I thought I could put a tag on the Inspire. Create. sketch in place of the greenery:

For some reason I really wanted to play with Summer Splash yesterday, so I made that color the main focus of the card.  Then I started to worry that maybe my card wasn't CAS enough for the Paper Players challenge, so I made a second one, still with Summer Splash but this time focusing on Peach Pie:

I've never been much of a peach person before but Peach Pie is the first of this year's In Colors that I had to buy a whole pack of cardstock for because I was using up the variety pack so fast.  (Pretty in Pink doesn't count because I already had that color from the first time it was in the lineup.)  Anyway, for this one I used several elements from the first card, but made my tag (and bird) smaller and only did one pattern for the strip going across the card front.  I actually used up most of the 6x6 sheet of DSP that I used for yesterday's pumpkin pie card, I have a 1/2" strip left  : )

That's it for me today, peeps.  We're going to take Ryan to another martial arts studio tonight so he can try out a class; we're trying to find something that was similar to what he was doing in Texas.  So we'll see how that goes.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies for the first card, all SU!
Stamps:  Bird's Eye View, Saying Hey
Ink:  Early Espresso, Stampin' Blends in Peach Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Poppy Parade, Pecan Pie
Paper:  Summer Splash, Thick Basic White, Summer Splash & Pecan Pie DSP
Accessories:  Merriest Trees dies, Mini Dimensionals, white baker's twine

Supplies for the second card, all SU!
Stamps:  Bird's Eye View, Saying Hey
Ink:  Early Espresso, Stampin' Blends in Peach Pie & Pecan Pie
Paper:  Peach Pie, Thick Basic White, Summer Splash & Pecan Pie DSP
Accessories:  Tags & Labels dies, Mini Dimensionals, white baker's twine

Mardi Gras Bird

Mornin' y'all!  I am happy to report that the hubs' brain surgery went well yesterday.  He had what's called a cavernoma or cavernous malformation, which is an abnormal clump of blood vessels.  His started bleeding and causing debilitating headaches a couple of weeks ago, which prompted an ER visit which is when he got diagnosed.  They're sending the tissue they took out yesterday to the pathology lab to make sure its non-cancerous, but the surgeon said everything is looking good.  I'll be going back up to the hospital today as soon as Ryan gets off to school; the hubs is in the ICU for now where kids aren't allowed to visit, but he should be transferring to a regular room later today.

Anyway, earlier this week I made a couple of cards and I have one to share today!

The bird's glasses are popped up on Dimensionals which I just thought was funny with that sentiment from Saying Hey.  I used the sketch from CAS Colours & Sketches:

And the fun color palette from Creative Colour Challenges:

Those colors together make me think Mardi Gras!  I haven't played much with the newest In Colors so it was fun to trot out Shy Shamrock.  I almost did a layer of DSP on the whole card front but I remembered just in time that the sketch is a CAS challenge, so I did a plain card front and a scrap of DSP for the horizontal strip on the sketch.  The sentiment is stamped a couple of times in Gorgeous Grape ink, it might look black in the picture but I promise it's purple.  I added a couple of Glossy Dots to the bottom because they come in two of the challenge colors and I just thought it needed a little something along the bottom to balance the card.

That's it for me today, folks.  Have a great day!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Bird's Eye View, Saying Hey
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Gorgeous Grape, Stampin' Blends in Shy Shamrock, Daffodil Delight, Gorgeous Grape
Paper:  Shy Shamrock, Thick Basic White, Daffodil Delight DSP
Accessories:  Deckled Circles dies, Deckled Rectangles dies, Dimensionals, Glossy Dots

Tropical Birds

Happy Friday, y'all!  I admit, I got a slow start today despite good intentions.  I did eventually get my workout done but it was too late for breakfast so I had an early lunch and it was GOOD and now I am ready to get to work today!

But first, get out your sunglasses because today's card is bright!

Yep, still loving that Saying Hey stamp set.  Let's start with this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

And the very fun Color Throwdown:

I used a mix of Lemon Lolly and Daffodil Delight (the Daffodil was a bit darker for watercoloring the birds, but the papers all feature Lemon Lolly), Pumpkin Pie, and Berry Burst for my colors and this was just so much fun.  I do love me some bright colors.  I also added some Pebbled Path for a neutral; I have been using this color A LOT on scrapbook pages as an alternative to Basic Gray.  Anyway, for this card, I decided to watercolor the birds rather than using Blends to color them, so I inked up each stamp with VersaMark, then whatever ink color I wanted, and then embossed with clear EP so I could do the watercolor without making the stamped ink run.

That's it for me today, peeps.  I've got a zillion pictures laid out on my craft table and it's time to start organizing them onto scrapbook pages.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Bird's Eye View, Saying Hey
Ink:  Berry Burst, Pumpkin Pie, Daffodil Delight, Pebbled Path, Versamark
Paper:  Berry Burst, Lemon Lolly, Thick Basic White, Bright & Beautiful DSP stack, Flowering Zinnias DSP
Accessories:  Countryside Corners dies, clear EP, white EP, retired glitter dots, Dimensionals

Glad You Exist

Mornin' y'all!  How is your Tuesday going?  I'm happy that I got to break out a brand new stamp set for today's card, take a look:

Saying Hey was on my first new catty order, it has some fun sentiments, like "Insert clever message here", which makes me giggle.  Plus it makes me think of Into the Spider-Verse and if you've seen that movie, you know why.  Ryan likes to put his hand on my shoulder, look in my eyes, and say HEY which makes me laugh.  (Miles Morales' uncle is trying to teach him how to flirt with a girl by using that move in the movie; Ryan ups the ante by making a goofy face while he does it.)

 Check out the color challenge from the Paper Players:

I admit this combination had me scratching my head at first.  I chose the birds from Bird's Eye View because I figured I could make them any color I wanted so I bet you could use them for just about any color combination under the sun :) I chose Pretty Peacock for my extra color, so I had two purples and two teals to work with.  I stamped several birds on scratch paper and colored them however seemed like a good idea at the time, and cut them out.  I really didn't have a plan for this card when I started since I wasn't working with a sketch, so I just kinda kept moving pieces around until I liked it.

I would not have put those colors together on my own, so I'm surprised how much I ended up liking my card when I finished it.  And that right there is why I am a challenge junkie ;) Helps me stretch my creativity.  And now I'm off to wrestle with the scrapbook layout that has been giving me fits with the color combination.  Too bad these colors wouldn't work with my photos, ha!  Also, thanks to LeAnne for choosing my octopus card as the winner of last week's challenge.  I always love to play along with the Paper Players!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Bird's Eye View, Saying Hey
Ink:  Fresh Freesia, Pretty Peacock, Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends in Lost Lagoon, Highland Heather, Fresh Freesia, Pretty Peacock
Paper:  Fresh Freesia, Thick Basic White, Bright & Beautiful DSP Stack
Accessories:  Nested Essentials dies, Mini Dimensionals, Tinsel Gems

Studious Bird

Mornin', y'all!  I am very excited that Texas is finally starting to get with the fall program, the high temps have been below 90 for the past couple of days and I am Here For It.  I got a new electric kettle and I have been using it every day since the beginning of September to make tea : )  I do love a cuppa every day.  Okay, multiple cuppas.

Anyway.  Card!

I do so love the Bird's Eye View stamp set :)  Check out the sketch from Inspire. Create.:

I copied down the sketch in a notebook and took it upstairs to my craft room, so my proportions and placement are a bit off from the original sketch.

And here is the color challenge from the Paper Players:

And this was definitely a challenge!  I didn't add any colors unless you count white, or a teensy bit of Crumb Cake with the embellishments.  I don't have the Blends for the In Colors yet (well, I think I have Boho Blue, but none of the other ones), so I inked up the stamps with Versamark and Pebbled Path, then heat embossed with clear EP so I could watercolor.  Wild Wheat (Barley Barf) will never be my favorite color, but I like it okay with the other colors in this palette.  Have to say I love Pretty Peacock and Copper Clay together.  Anyway, I'll have to pick up the Blends for the other In Colors next time I do an SU! order, but for now, watercoloring works.  And I think Bird's Eye View might be my go-to stamp set for when I don't know what to do with a particular color combination, I can see them working for just about anything!

Have a great day, peeps.  I need to get this week's batch of cards ready to go out in the mail, and make some more : )  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Bird's Eye View, Rhino Ready
Ink:  Versamark, Pebbled Path, Copper Clay, Wild Wheat, Pretty Peacock
Paper:  Pretty Peacock, Wild Wheat, Copper Clay, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Deckled Rectangles dies, clear EP, Dimensionals, Speckled Dots

SUO Challenges: Back to School Blues and Bird

Happy Tuesday and hope you've got your backpack and books, 'cause it's time for a new challenge from SUO Challenges!

Yep, we're doing back to school cards for this challenge!  And my kiddo starts school tomorrow, woohoo!  There are actually several great choices for this theme in the current catalog and of course you could use retired SU! stamps too.  Here's what I made:

One of my besties is starting a new teaching job this school year, after being a SAHM for several years and then substitute teaching for a while.  So this card is for her to wish her luck with her new 4th grade class!  I love that Apple Harvest has carried over from last year, I don't know why they didn't make the coordinating dies a permanent thing.  The dies were on the clearance rack for quite a while, don't know if they still are.

And I have a bonus card for today!  As luck would have it, my last SU! order before leaving Germany arrived right before I had to start packing up my craft room, and I made time to make one more card for this challenge because I fell in love with the Bird's Eye View stamp set.  Here it is:

The sentiment is from Rhino Ready, and the papers are from the Inked Botanicals DSP Stack.  In the same order, I got the Nested Essentials dies, so I had to give those a try too (the die around the bookish bird).  So glad I got to make this before everything got packed up.

So let's see your back to school cards!  Post 'em over on the SUO Challenges blog.  And have fun, this is art class : )

Supplies, all SU!, apple card:
Stamps:  Apple Harvest, Sending Smiles
Ink:  Night of Navy, Stampin' Blends in Sweet Sorbet & Soft Sea Foam
Paper:  Boho Blue, Thick Basic White, Countryside Inn DSP
Accessories:  Apple Blossoms dies, Sending dies, Dimensionals

Supplies, all SU!, bird card:
Stamps:  Bird's Eye View, Rhino Ready
Ink:  Night of Navy, Stampin' Blends in Petal Pink, Calypso Coral, Daffodil Delight, Pool Party, Lost Lagoon
Paper:  Petal Pink, Night of Navy, Pool Party, Thick Basic White, Inked Botanicals DSP
Accessories:  Nested Essentials dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals, Milky Dots

P.S.  This is what my craft room currently looks like:

And this is the loft area next door to the craft room, where the *rest* of my stuff currently is:

Okay, not quite all of it is craft room stuff, but a lot of it is.  So these two areas are my next area to tackle in the house; I've got the downstairs about 80% unpacked and organized (including the garage, even!), and I need to work on these two places next before I can figure out where I'm storing certain things from downstairs.  I'm hoping that my craft room might be workable by the end of the week.  With Ryan starting school tomorrow, I think I can do it.  Wish me luck!